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As presiding judge in the Ervin Qui Tam case, he "extend(ed) the seal almost four years, without evidence of any wrong doing," despite a confirming FBI investigation and HUD IG audit verifying it. He also let government prosecutors argue contradictory positions, coached Ervin's attorneys from the bench, and may have been involved in why critical transcripts were missing.
Yet he resigned from the bench when Hamilton's legal documents and information about his Ervin Qui Tam case management and other litigation became available online. At the same time, he was involved in the falsified affidavit (http://www.fas.org/sgp/jud/wilson102703.pdf), relating to former CIA and Naval Intelligence operative Edwin P. Wilson's conviction (what later got media attention), Wilson having been charged with shipping 42,000 pounds of C-4 plastic explosives to Libya's Moammar Qadaffy in 1977, then hiring Green Beret experts to instruct his agents on their use.
Wilson's defense was that his company, Consultants International, got CIA referral business, and was sanctioned by the Agency to gather intelligence, including about Qadaffy's access to Soviet military equipment. It didn't dismiss the case, but raised doubts in the minds of jurors.
Charles A. Briggs was CIA's third highest ranking official at the time he signed a declaration saying "According to CIA records, with one exception while he was employed by Naval Intelligence in 1972, Mr. Edwin P. Wilson was not asked or requested, directly or indirectly, to perform or provide any services, directly or indirectly, for CIA," later confirmed as falsified and untrue.
Yet as CIA General Counsel at the time, Sporkin certified the affidavit and affixed the Agency's seal, then had it notarized in Fairfax County, VA and presented it as evidence, the jury convicting Wilson on all counts.
On January 20, 2000, the Washington Post's Vernon Loeb headlined, "Back Channels: The Intelligence Community - Never Mind," saying:
"Nearly 17 years after former CIA officer and arms merchant Edwin P. Wilson was convicted of smuggling 20 tons of high explosives to Libya, the Justice Department conceded in a motion filed last week that a critical government affidavit used to convict (him) was inaccurate."
All along, Wilson insisted he was framed, his lawyer, David Adler (a former CIA agent) finding evidence to prove it. As a result, in October 2003, federal Judge Lynn Hughes reversed his conviction, ruling that prosecutors "deliberately deceived the court, (thus) double-crossing a part-time informal government agent" after he left the Agency, Sporkin playing a material role in his conviction as CIA General Counsel when it was decided to hang him out to dry with falsified evidence.
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