At the New York Hilton Hotel in December 1979, Frank Terpil was laying out his bona fides for a business deal that was in progress. He boasted of having worked for Ugandan dictator Idi Amin and spoke of a dinner with Amin and his aides that he attended. At this event, a tray had been brought into the room and when the lid was lifted, the severed head of the minister of defense was revealed. Another minister gasped in horror, after which Amin took out a .357 Magnum and killed him as well.

Moving on from his story, Terpil’s associate, Gary Korkala, explained what kinds of weapons were available for purchase. He asked if he was dealing with an army or terrorist group. “I made it quite clear that we were a terrorist group,” recalled Jimmy Rodriguez, one of the buyers.

The buyers, purported Latin American terrorists, were looking to purchase 10,000 submachine guns and 10 million rounds of ammunition. They had brought with them $56,000 in cash, looking to secure a contract from Terpil and Korkala. According to Rodriguez, the businessmen promised to provide them with a weapon that could help them “assassinate someone that same evening,” a .22 caliber pistol with a silencer. This was a sample of the type of gun they could provide in lots of up to 10,000. The next weapon they sold to the buyers was a .22 silenced sniper rifle with an electronic sight, which permitted the shooter to keep both eyes open when firing. Both weapons were sold for $1,500 each. Korkala also sold a $800 bottle of strychnine poison, which could kill up to 25 people. He explained that the poison was known to cause severe convulsions in the victims, such that only the top of their heads and heels would be touching the ground after death, their bodies completely arched upwards. Also on offer was an exploding briefcase and a cigarette lighter/pen contraption which fired a .22 caliber bullet.

Terpil’s eyes lit up when describing their binary liquid explosive product, which he handed to the Latin American terrorists. The bottles, when mixed together, formed an explosive liquid three to four times more powerful than dynamite. Terpil regaled them with the story of how on one occasion, he had drained the radiator of a car and filled it with the substance: “You put the liquid into the cooling system. You put it, then, right into the top of the radiator. The car went about 40 feet in the air.” Only small pieces of the car remained after the detonator was activated. Terpil had also used the explosive to blow up a hotel lobby by pouring it into a potted plant. “Oh, it’s great, Jimmy. It’s great,” he enthused. “You take a flower pot—we did this in the Middle East—and you put the one part liquid. Then you wait a week and you put the second part. And then the third time you come over and you put the detonator. The whole hotel went up in the air.” The more Terpil spoke, the more excited he became; he apologized for not having captured the moment for posterity: “I didn’t have—I couldn’t film it. It was great to see it. I stood on the corner and watched it.” Rodriguez reflected on this comment: “At that point, I realized I was dealing with a maniac.”

Another product on offer was a poison dart pen, described as being fired through a Teflon barrel and recommended for use on airplanes. Korkala explained that the assassination method worked as follows: the assassin would walk down the aisle of the plane and fire the dart in behind the person’s ear as he passed by, striking the carotid artery or jugular vein. The assassin could then return to their seat as the dart began to take effect.

The deal being finalized involved the transfer of 10,000 submachine guns stored in an English warehouse, which Rodriguez had previously tested in London and was satisfied with the goods. Once the deal was secured, Rodriguez picked up a hotel phone and dialed “5” to place an order with room service: “coffee, donuts, and a French cruller.” That last item happened to be a codeword, which activated the police stationed outside the room, who burst in two different doors armed with shotguns.

The whole deal had been a setup; New York City police had been recording the proceedings for three days and the supposed terrorists, including Rodriguez, were actually undercover officers. Terpil and Korkala were led out of the building in handcuffs into an unmarked car. Jailed in lower Manhattan, the pair were arraigned in court, where the Assistant District Attorney Matthew Crosson opposed bail for the suspects. The judge, however, granted them bail at $100,000 and the two were soon back on the street.

On April 20, 1980, a grand jury returned an indictment against Terpil and his associates Edwin P. Wilson and Jerome Brower on multiple counts, including violating explosives export laws and attempting to assassinate former Libyan government official Umar Muhayshi in Cairo in 1976. The indictment alleged “the conspiracy was to supply covertly and for a profit the government of Libya with personnel, explosives, explosive material, and other goods necessary to make explosive devices, and to teach others how to make explosive devices in a terrorist training project.”

Blissfully unaware that he was a wanted man, Terpil showed up at a U.S. Secret Service conference, located at their training school in Maryland. “He was out trying to sell his wares, not knowing that we were looking for him,” Assistant United States Attorney for the District of Columbia Lawrence Barcella explained. After Terpil was arrested, Barcella feared that given his substantial wealth, Terpil would certainly flee the country. A federal judge once again released Terpil with a bond of under $100,000. “I’ll wager everything I own that I’ll never see that bastard again,” Barcella said to an associate.

An FBI surveillance team watched on September 4, 1980 as Terpil, his girlfriend, and his 18-month disabled son drove away from their suburban home in McLean, Virginia. A few miles into the drive, Terpil took an unexpected U-turn, which allowed him to evade the FBI agents. Terpil abandoned his son at a Catholic relief agency in Alexandria, Virginia and sped to Washington National Airport, where he and his girlfriend flew to Chicago and Canada. After about a week, they flew to Beirut, Lebanon. Korkala also fled the United States, bound for the Middle East. Terpil and Korkala in their court case would have to be tried in absentia.

Origins of a Dangerous Man

Terpil was born in 1939 in Brooklyn, New York and lived at 223 East 8th Street. “On my particular street,” he recalled, “we had Irish, Italian, Polish, and one French family that somehow found their way there.” Terpil’s father worked for Western Electric and he served in World War II and the Korean War: “I don’t remember too much of him, except that...he was in uniform most of the time.” Losing his father at the age of 12, Terpil had no desire to discuss this with anyone, including his mother, Viola. She remembered broaching the topic only once with her son: “I said to him, ‘Frank, now that Daddy is gone, how do you feel?’ And he just looked at me. He said to me, ‘I would rather you not ask me, ’cause I don’t want to discuss it.’ So, we never, ever discussed it again. Never. To this day, we never discussed his father...I think Frank has blanked out a lot throughout his life that he didn’t—and I think that’s why he’s the personality that he is. But it’s an art, believe me, to blank things out. It’s not that easy to blank things out.”

At age 15, Terpil began his first foray into arms dealing: he purchased a confiscated machine gun from a policeman. Terpil saw there was a chance to make “a margin of profit...by selling it to somebody else, which happened to be the son of my high school science teacher.” Terpil’s mother was unconcerned with her son possessing and selling this firearm: “he was just creative, I guess.” Upon seeing him briefly at the police station following his arrest, she offered her support: “Whatever your story is, stick to it.” Terpil viewed the morality of New York as his own: “I certainly learned at a very early age that a dollar placed in the right hand could do wonders.” His mother agreed: “I think all the big cities are so corrupt. I would say even the small towns are so corrupt. New York City, especially, is corrupt, corrupt, corrupt.”

Terpil was glad to leave his surroundings in 1958, when he joined the Army: “The people of Brooklyn normally—and this is only the people that I know. They’ve got very, very—a very narrow scope of life. Quite honestly, they are kind of like the Archie Bunkers depicted on TV. If I would have stayed there, I would have never known any difference. I mean, I would be in the same syndrome they would be, probably working in light industry, or one of the keys of success there may be to work for the telephone company or a very established company like that.” He took his technological expertise and interest to the CIA, which recruited him in 1965 to join the Technical Services Division (TSD). He was now at home in group responsible for facilitating the Agency’s dirty tricks, including employing LSD, audio/video surveillance, and assassinations. The experimental drug testing led by TSD, later most famously revealed to have included Project MKULTRA, was separate from Terpil’s work: “I had not been involved in [it]. That’s a different section.”

By 1971, he was stationed overseas in New Delhi, India. The Foreign Service List published that year revealed that a Francis E. Terpil was a telecoms tech with a junior rank. Terpil ruined his reputation with the local CIA Station Chief almost immediately by smuggling whiskey into the country. He was told by management that if he violated the prohibition on alcohol again he would be returned home. Rather than heed the warning, Terpil spent a significant amount of time on smuggling and black-market activities in lieu of his CIA work.

Despite his modest GS-8 salary, Terpil lived a lifestyle that was beyond his peers: “I lived in a large house in the West End colony, with the normal amount servants, which were from 13 to 15. I had a large car, a Cadillac.” In order to finance his lifestyle, Terpil supplemented his income with side jobs: “I would collect foreign currencies from various individuals, groups; take the foreign currencies to Afghanistan, which had a very large banking center there; reconvert the foreign currencies into Indian rupees, which had a very high exchange value; bring the Indian rupees back to New Delhi; reconvert them back to foreign currency. And it was a never-ending circle.”

Terpil’s self-enrichment on the job caught up with him quickly. While working in neighboring Afghanistan for another black-market money deal, the Indo-Pakistan war of 1971 broke out, blocking his entrance back into India. His illicit schemes now exposed, the CIA sent him back to Langley, Virginia to await his punishment. Not assigned any new work, he walked the walls of the headquarters building aimlessly, and found others in the cafeteria in the same situation: “So you form a little cafeteria club or walk-the-halls club, or whatever you call it.” Facing certain dismissal for his actions, Terpil resigned from the CIA in mid-1972. In his early thirties, Terpil emerged from the Agency a more trained and connected operative, ready to act as a profiteer without concern for who paid the price.

Qaddafi

In early 1976, another former CIA officer, Edwin Wilson, was looking to do business in Libya. “I might have just the man for you,” a friend replied at a London pub. “Now, you’ve got to know, up front, that CIA fired him a few years back because he is an all-around shady character. But he does know the Libs and how they spend their money.” Wilson replied: “Good, buddy, lead me to him.”

With Terpil on board, Wilson added Kevin Mulcahy, an electronics technician, as their Washington officer. Mulcahy, an alcoholic, had also been forced to resign from the CIA in 1968. With two small children at home, he had begun a secret affair, spending many nights at a Warrenton, Virginia motel with a woman who also worked at the Agency. Working for a computer company, his behavior remained unchanged, with numerous affairs and his alcoholism impairing his day-to-day life. He woke up one morning in his car with a severe hangover, clothes covered in vomit, wondering if his memory of running over a pedestrian was a dream or had actually happened. He eventually got divorced and fired from his job. He attempted suicide twice; once with pills and on another occasion, he jumped off a bridge into the Shenandoah River. “I surprised myself,” he recalled. “I floated. The water was warm, and I just let it carry me along for a while, until I asked, ‘Just what am I doing here?’”

After happening to rent a house from Wilson’s wife, he was brought into the Wilson-Terpil operation. “I’m getting more foreign contracts that I can shake a stick at,” Wilson explained, “and I need somebody who knows where to find the stuff I’m selling, and how to arrange to ship it out.” Mulcahy began working for Consultants International for $1,000 ($5,500 today) a month; he learned quickly that something was amiss, Wilson explaining one day early on that: “a lot of times Consultants International supplies guns, ammunition, that sort of thing, to other nations. We pretty well run the spectrum of munitions.” At first, Mulcahy was not disturbed by the requests coming through: “I’d get an order from overseas, or a possible contract, that a foreign government wanted to build a dayroom, a recreation room for the Libyan Navy or something like that.”

Once he met Terpil, however, Mulcahy began to become bothered by what they were involved in: “I just didn’t like the drift of the conversation...that I knew was flagrantly in violation of the law. They were talking about equipping M-16 rifles with silencers, and I knew that silencers are illegal.” Mulcahy approached the FBI and ATF in an attempt to allay his concerns, but they did not provide him with much information. “I felt whatever they were doing, they were probably doing legitimately, and in light of...their past experience with CIA, I became fairly convinced...that what they were doing was probably undercover in the auspices of the Central Intelligence Agency.”

Mulcahy watched Terpil closely in action, in awe of his ability to sell anything to anyone, likening him to a “New York street thug who looked and talked like he should be mugging little old ladies and knocking off liquor stores.” Terpil’s value to Wilson became clear: “This guy could sell. He sold those people [the Libyans] stuff they didn’t even need, they could never use. Frank would tell them to buy something, and they would buy it. It was absolutely incredible.” This included alcohol-free powdered wine, which the team was able to manufacture through Wyler’s, a company that made juice drink mixes. “As I say, he literally could tell these people to buy anything.”

In addition, Mulcahy was a witness as to how their contracts came to be awarded. In a London hotel room, Terpil tossed a stack of papers on the bed: “These come from the competition,” he explained. He had obtained contracts for computer equipment from the Libyan finance minister. “This Brit firm had the inside track, and the Libs are about to give them the contract. Can you beat these figures?” Mulcahy spent the next few hours crunching the numbers. “Sure,” he concluded, “we can come in under the British.” Terpil was elated: “Good show, buddy. Let’s go downstairs and have one to celebrate.” Before they did that, Terpil ripped up the competition’s contracts and flushed the pieces of paper down the toilet: “Can’t afford to have that sort of thing go out in the trash.” Terpil and Wilson ended up winning the contract in the end. “Frank had that kind of power,” Mulcahy insisted. “He could pick and choose the contracts he wanted to supply, even if the contract was on the verge of being let to someone else.”

Whereas it was easy and legal to obtain an export license for computer equipment, weapons of war were another matter. In March 1976, Terpil typed out a contract, full of spelling mistakes, for Libyans looking to purchase explosive devices:

An ideal operational “Cover” would be a minefield clearing contract for one of the major oil companies engaged in exploration and drilling. A team of Explosive and Ordnance Experts would obviously be employed in this capacity. These same experts would be simultaniously [sic] training selected students in covert sabatage [sic] operations, employing the latest techniques of clandestine explosive ordnance...After a six month program of intense training, the student would be completely capable and confident in the design, manufacture, implimentation [sic], and detonation of explosive devices effectively used in conjunction with Psycological/Espionage/Sabatage [sic] warefare [sic] activities.

Mulcahy saw Wilson was involving current CIA personnel in their seemingly illegal operations: “I had a good idea about most of the people he was talking to. They treated Ed like he was still one of the boys. [William] Weisenburger made no bones about the fact that he was still with the Agency, although he did say something about ‘doing this on my own time.’ I couldn’t conceive of an Agency technician doing this kind of moonlighting unless he had approval.” In fact, Weisenburger never sought Agency approval, but instead built timers for the explosive devices in his spare time and was paid between $1,500-$2,000 ($11,000 today). CIA contract employee Patry Loomis assisted the team with the creation of a contract for purchase of up to 200,000 timers. Terpil raved that Loomis had “the Middle East locked up” and was “the best man in the world to handle Southeast Asia.”

Separate from the deal involving explosives, Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi requested that Wilson and Terpil provide him with assassins to kill his political enemies, Umar Muhayshi and Abdel Moneim al-Houni, who had participated in a coup attempt against Qaddafi in 1975. To carry out the assassinations, Wilson hired anti-Castro Cubans, whom he knew from his work in naval intelligence and the CIA. One of the recruits who had worked on initiatives against Castro was former CIA operative Rafael Quintero. Terpil handed him a series of photographs at a motel called Hospitality House in Arlington. “I want somebody killed,” Terpil explained. “This is a person who is sort of hated by several governments. This operation is going to bring about a million dollars. Plus expenses. Are you willing to take it?” Quintero thought they were targeting Carlos the Jackal, a Venezuela terrorist, but eventually learned from Terpil that the true target was Umar Muhayshi: “This is a Libyan politician who is living down in Cairo and shooting off his mouth about the Libyan government. He’s a troublemaker and a revolutionary and the guy who runs Libya wants him shut up.”

After declining to participate in the plot, Quintero later confronted Wilson: “What is this? This is not a government operation. What we are getting into is crazy.” Wilson admitted: “No, this is not a government operation, this is not a CIA operation. I’m really disappointed that you people don’t want to be a part of it because [there] is a lot of money to be made in this.” Quintero replied, in a statement destined to be ignored: “There are more things in the world than money, Ed.”

Once Mulcahy learned the full extent of what he was now involved in through discovering the explosives contract with the Libyans on Terpil’s desk, Mulcahy was overcome with emotions and thought of jumping off the roof of the building to see “what it felt like to jump twelve stories down onto K Street.” Instead, he sat in his chair thinking, Man, oh man, are you in the shit. As a last ditch effort, hoping to discover that this was an undercover CIA operation, Mulcahy phoned Theodore Shackley, Associate Deputy Director for Operations at the CIA. Shackley’s non-committal answer disturbed him. “I had to know whether this was an Agency operation or not,” Mulcahy remembered. “I found out that it was not. The Agency wanted nothing to do with it. They insisted that I contact the FBI right away. I did so.”

The FBI, distracted with recent cases such as the Letelier car bombing assassination in 1976, took years to act, despite information on the activities of Wilson and Terpil sent their way from several sources. By early March 1977, the FBI had managed to determine that there was “no record of TERPIL registering with U.S. Department of State as employee or agent…TERPIL was registered with Munitions Control, U.S. Department of State, from August, 1975 until August, 1976, but was granted no export licenses. Neither TERPIL or WILSON are licensed by U.S. Treasury Department to deal in explosive devices. Both TERPIL and WILSON declined to be interviewed by FBI.” In addition, according to the view of investigators, Mulcahy lacked credibility. "Lots of times,” Mulcahy recalled of his interviews, “I got the distinct impression they thought I was some kind of drunken nut. One of the FBI agents asked me point-black whether I had a history of drinking problems.”

Jonestown

When over 900 people died in the mass murder-suicide in Jonestown, Guyana in 1978, Terpil saw a business opportunity. Hearing from a friend in the State Department that the American victims were being brought back to the United States for burial, Terpil thought that with the number of burial caskets that would be required for the funerals, there was an opportunity to make some quick cash for himself and his friend. This deal ultimately fell through, but there was no limit to the kind of deals Terpil would try to strike, whether it involved a crooked congressman, an Army explosives expert, or a former CIA associate. “American politics is so fucked it’s unbelievable,” Terpil believed. “When they shake their finger at somebody else, they really should be looking in their own backyard.”

McKenzie

In May 1979, former Kenyan politician Bruce McKenzie visited Idi Amin in an attempt to negotiate an end to border tensions with Uganda. Amin presented him with a gift: a mounted head of a Kenyan antelope. Amin then began giving a long-winded speech, jeopardizing a secret plan, which involved a bomb planted by Terpil inside the antelope. “Amin’s speech ran so long that I was afraid the damned thing would explode while the plane was still at Kampala airport,” Terpil recalled. “So I had to send a guy aboard to set the timer back another half hour.” To Terpil's relief, the plane exploded mid-air and McKenzie died as planned. McKenzie had been targeted due to his assistance provided to the Israeli Mossad in the Entebbe raid of 1976.

Korkala

Gary Korkala, owner of Amstech International, was another Terpil partner of this period. A New Jersey manufacturer of safety equipment such as airport metal detectors, when they met in late 1977 or early 1978, Terpil could tell that Korkala possessed a similar lack of morals, which meant for their work a willingness to violate export laws to sell to blacklisted countries. “You’re wasting your time here,” Terpil told him. “Come on out to the Middle East with me; we can make oodles of money.” Korkala joined him, opening an office in Beirut and was soon doing business in several Middle Eastern countries. Terpil spent a lot of time in Damascus, Syria: “I got about ten million out of these guys, what with one thing or another.” Some of the sales included the type of surveillance and communications equipment that he had worked with at the CIA.

Their willingness to take almost any job that came their way led to their eventual capture. An undercover New York police investigation in the fall of 1979 inadvertently snared a much larger criminal enterprise. “Sure, I can get you drugs,” Korkala told an undercover policeman, “but who do you need them for? I don’t want to put my neck out unless I’m sure I’m dealing with straight people.” A detective responded that the buyers were “Latin-American revolutionaries” who wanted to sell drugs to raise enough cash to buy weapons. “Oh, hell,” Korkala laughed, “don’t bother with the drugs. If your guys have any money, we can get all the guns you want—tell me how many and what kind.” As tapes rolled in the next room at the hotel, the police recorded the sellers’ braggadocio when it came to their past exploits. Korkala described what kind of poisons were on offer. “Maybe one guy wants a heart attack, and maybe another guy wants to see the guy scream and crawl all over the floor.” He held up a vial to show the police: “This one is my favorite. That stuff will work. What the stuff does, you get a very strong tingling sensation in your fingers and in your toes, the way it starts. Then your hair falls out, and...you can’t walk. It’s a metal base that’s not reversible. If you really want to hurt a guy, give him this shit.”

The deception operation as it turned out went both ways: while the police were making a fraudulent deal for the purposes of arrests, Terpil for his part was preparing to defraud the buyers: the 10,000 Sten British submachine guns were owned by someone else and he intended to collect as much of the $2 million promised as early as possible, before reneging on the deal and disappearing completely. Once freed on bail, Assistant District Attorney Matthew Crosson remarked: “We’ll never see Frank Terpil here to stand trial.”

At one point on the tapes used by the Justice Department to build their case, Terpil asked the supposed terrorists: “You guys aren’t knocking off Americans, by any chance, are you?” Worried that such a possibility might scuttle the deal, an undercover agent replied: “No. Come on. Would I go around knocking off Americans? Oh, come on.” Terpil replied, nonchalantly: “Well, we have in the past.” Even though this was a chilling moment of admission that Terpil was involved in domestic assassinations, it was not the most disturbing moment captured on the tapes.