NEW YORK -- A former CIA agent wanted in the United States for supplying explosives to Libya said Thursday there are still four former Green Berets working for Libyan leader Col. Moammar Khadafy, but he denied they are helping train terrorists.
Edwin Wilson, named Wednesday in a CIA statement that said there was 'no official encouragement or involvement' by the intelligence agency in the training program, said he believes the United States until recently secretly supported the North African country.
Wilson made his remarks on ABC-TV's World News Tonight program.
The fugitive, who is currently living in Tripoli, Libya, was indicted by a federal grand jury in Washington, D.C., in April 1980 on charges of illegally supplying explosive timers to Libya, setting up a terrorist training school there and conspiring to commit political assassinations for Khadafy.
He admitted working as a middleman for a Swiss firm he declined to name, which recruits Green Berets to work in Libya.
'Almost without exception, they were staff sergeants, tech sergeants, master sergeants. Their forte was just like Vietnam, to teach low-level army tactics. Squad tactics, compass reading, map reading, platoon tactics, instruction on fire maneuver ... low-level things,' he said in the interview in which he appeared only in silouette.
When asked if there were still Green Berets working in Libya, he replied: 'At the present, four.'
But he denied they were training terrorists. 'That's an absolute lie ... first of all I don't think this country is training any terrorists, let alone the Green Berets training them.'
Wilson said another American named Brower worked with a Libyan who imported explosives from the United States for the government in Tripoli.
ABC said Jerome Brower is 'reportedly a regular CIA supplier ... convicted on an explosives charge for which Wilson is wanted.'
In discussing his allegedly sale of explosive timers, Wilson said, 'The timers were not to be used other than from our point of view, other than in a training position. So we discussed this with the local people, we held a small training school for minefield clearing, for clearing boobytraps.'
ABC said Wilson denied asking anyone to kill Libyan dissidents in Cairo and Denver, Colo., and promised to return to the United States for a court appearance, 'when the heat's off.'
The CIA statement Wednesday was issued in response to a New York Times story saying 10 men trained by the Army Special Forces went to work for the Libyan government in 1977, apparently believing 'they were infiltrating the Libyan government on behalf of the Central Intelligence Agency.'
The men went to Libya, the Times reported, believing they had Army endorsement and for a CIA operation.
It was understood that two CIA agents were fired as a result.
