According to the Dublin magazine Magill (August 1984), Frank Terpil was ‘kicked out’ of the CIA in 1972. He apparently admitted this while visiting Beirut in the autumn of 1980. He also claimed to have worked for the UN in New York and to have been Idi Amin’s advisor there. These ‘revelations’ were made at an intimate little social gathering in the basement restaurant of the Wilner House Hotel (where Terpil was staying with a travelling companion called ‘Ruth’). Those present included Marie McCarthy, who managed the restaurant; her Dutch boyfriend Gerrit; and George Korkala who claimed to be a ‘dealer in electronics’ and who had been a frequent visitor to the restaurant in the weeks preceding Terpil’s visit. Korkala introduced Terpil as ‘Jim’, and Magill states that it was only after ‘Jim’ returned to Damascus (where he apparently lived) that Marie McCarthy found out he was Terpil.
The following year McCarthy and Gerrit were living in London. Gerrit returned to Beirut in September and met Korkala who was living in their old apartment. Gerrit claims that it was only then that Korkala told him he was wanted in the US for jumping bail in connection with gun-running charges. He said he wanted to discuss the case ‘with the American people outside the confines of a courtroom’, and asked Gerrit to set up a newspaper or TV interview. He was (apparently) speaking for Terpil as well.
The interview was arranged from London with Mike Wallace of CBS’s ‘Sixty Minutes’ (McCarthy knew Wallace from her time with the UN in New York) and took place in Beirut. It was transmitted on Sunday, 7th November 1981.
Shortly before the scheduled broadcast Korkala and Terpil disappeared. It was rumoured that they had been kidnapped (though by whom and why is still not known), and McCarthy, Gerrit and Donna Korkala (Korkala’s wife who had flown in from the US) set off for Beirut to search for the ‘missing’ men.
Although they found no trace of the two men during the 10 days they spent in Beirut, they did discover Korkala’s address book ‘lying around the flat’, and Donna suggested McCarthy take it and contact some of those listed to see if they knew of his whereabouts.
Korkala surfaced on New Years Day, and Terpil early in 1982. Within two months Korkala was arrested at an arms fair in Spain, held in a Madrid jail, and extradited to the US on 11 March 1982.
The Beirut/London episodes take up 2 pages of the 8 page article – the remaining 6 cover McCarthy’s ‘Irish connections’ (which are/were normal family ties), and the shoddy nature of the Irish media fraternity . It also throws some curious light on Gordon Thomas (best-selling author of a growing pile of rubbish), who made a number of desperate attempts (one word used is ‘hysterical’) to get his hands on whatever documents McCarthy might have relating to Terpil and (presumably) Korkala.
Thomas became involved when he was contacted by McCarthy’s brother who had heard that his sister was the subject of police enquiries concerning a crashed BMW car which belonged to the wife of a fugitive ex-CIA agent. (This came about when Marie McCarthy and Gerrit used Marilyn Terpil’s car to visit McCarthy’s family in Cappoquin, County Waterford, in January 1983.)
Magill claims that during 1982 Marilyn Terpil (who lived in Wales), contacted McCarthy and Gerrit in London on a number of occasions, and shortly before Xmas that year she decided to sell out and move back to the US. She left the BMW in London with McCarthy, apparently asking them to sell it for her. Instead, they took the opportunity to head for Ireland via the Fishguard-Rosslare ferry. En route to Cappoquin, Gerrit crashed into a bridge and this resulted in the Irish police ‘finding’ the car weeks later. Their inquiries eventually led them to the McCarthy family in Cappoquin, whom they questioned about Gerrit, the CIA, international gun-running and Idi Amin!
John McCarthy (Marie’s brother) had heard Gordon Thomas being interviewed on Irish radio a few weeks earlier about his latest book ‘Pontiff’, and figured he’d know about the CIA and people like Terpil. Thomas (who lives tax-free in Ashford, County Wicklow) used John McCarthy to lure his sister to Ireland, claiming she was being hunted by the FBI, CIA, Scotland Yard and the Irish Special Branch. Thomas also referred to ‘high level’ sources in Washington when he told McCarthy that Gerrit was a member of the CIA, and, hinting that the Vatican was involved, mentioned that the present Pope was “the most political of all Popes”.
Magill doesn’t make it clear whether Thomas actually got his grubby paws on any ‘relevant’ material, though it does state that McCarthy’s papers were tampered with the night she spent at Thomas’ house in Ashford (22 March 1983), and that although the file she brought to Ireland contained a lot of information on Terpil (from press cuttings) and Korkala’s address book, it was examined (and presumably photocopied) by the Irish Special Branch and found to contain “nothing that any police force anywhere would be interested in”.
Thomas wrote two articles about the affair in the Sunday Press (27 March and 3 April 1983) in his usual ‘well-researched’ sensationalist style. Under a headline “What has a car crash in Wexford to do with a plot to kill the Pope?”, the opening paragraph of the first article reads:
“A car mishap on an Irish road has raised the shattering spectre that the US Central Intelligence Agency is implicated in the plot to assassinate Pope John Paul 2 in Rome in May 1981.” According to Magill “from reading the article in the Sunday Press it is impossible to see how this conclusion is drawn.”
The same day another Dublin paper, the Sunday Independent (which had been contacted by McCarthy the previous day following a TV programme the night before which had been ‘inspired’ by Thomas, and was similar to the Sunday Press piece) carried a lead story: “Irish girl denies Pope plot link”. The following Sunday Thomas expanded on his theory by saying that from conversations with Marie McCarthy he concluded that “Terpil had been in the CIA when they trained Ali Agca to shoot.” He also wrote that the Sunday Independent “engaged in the kind of reporting of a story that simply gives journalists a bad name.”
The affair seems to have petered out there, at least as far as the Irish media is concerned, until the Magill article 16 months later. I should say at this point that in the past Magill has produced some excellent investigative and accurate articles concerning corruption in Irish politics and criminality in the Irish police (of which the ‘Kerry babies’ tribunal being conducted at present is yet another cruel example), but it is rather weak when it has to tackle the international parapolitical underworld. The article on Marie McCarthy is no exception, with no sources given for the comings-and-goings between Beirut and London in 1981/2 – so I’m assuming this is McCarthy’s and Gerrit’s version of events – and overall the article has a Catholic ‘self-righteousness’ about it.
McCarthy is portrayed as an innocent abroad, trying to bring a little joy to a troubled world, who came under the influence of the big, bad ex-CIA wolves (a sort of parapolitical Little Red Riding Hood).
Her innocence is proclaimed on the cover of the magazine, and this eliminates the possibility of an objective article. However the piece does raise some interesting questions.
- Was it really Korkala’s address book reproduced in Lobster 7? And if so, is it the same one that was examined by the Irish Special Branch and dismissed as being of no value to any police force (and, by inference, of no value to anybody else)?
- Did the Irish SB let the significance of the book slip through their fingers? Or are there two address books, one useful (for parapolitical purposes) and one useless?
- When did McCarthy come into possession of the book? (a) in Beirut in 1981, or (b) through the post in 1982? (She may, of course, have returned it after Korkala surfaced in January 1982 – Magill (McCarthy) isn’t clear on this point and makes absolutely no reference to any contact, physical or otherwise, between Korkala and McCarthy after the latter gave up managing the restaurant in Beirut.) The article is clear, however, in stating that she had the address book in her possession in Ireland a year after Korkala’s extradition. Did she ‘edit’ it to pass police inspection, or did Thomas get his hands on something of value before the SB.? Again, Magill isn’t clear about this point either.
- Who does Gordon Thomas represent? Who are the ‘high level’ sources in Washington he referred to? Is the man simply a buffoon, a sort of second-rate Robert Moss, and these some of the ingredients for his next ‘torrid’ work?
- Finally, what is McCarthy’s precise role in the whole affair, and when did she change from ‘innocent abroad’ to parapolitical ‘mole’? Or did she change at all?
O’Cuilleagain
Korkala postscript
One of the entries in Korkala’s address book (see Lobster 7) is Jim Megis (Paris). The Sunday Times (23 December 1984) reported the deportation from Britain of a Jim Megis. He had been held under the Prevention of Terrorism Act after his arrest on November 28th. The Times claims “his interrogators accused him of being the ‘Mr Big’ of terrorism”, and added that “privately police are saying Megis was ‘doing a bit of work for the Libyans.’ “
Given Korkala’s connections to the Wilson/Terpil story this is interesting in itself. More interesting is the statement by Megis’ lawyer in Paris that he (Megis) was working for the CIA.
This is made more plausible by information we received recently identifying a ‘Jim Megis’ as an anti-narcotics officer with the US Armed Forces in Paris in 1969/70. The (anonymous) author of the letter we received says s/he was at school with Megis’ son in Paris, and that Megis used to tell them stories of his experiences in Vietnam, interrogating prisoners.
The Paris-based ‘Jim Megis’ arrested and deported from London was 51. This would make him 35 in 1969, old enough to have a teenage son in 1968/69. If this is the same Megis – and that seems quite plausible – how many ‘Jim Megis’s are there likely to be in Paris? – the Armed Forces story he told his son’s friend in the sixties was presumably a routine CIA cover story.
The Sunday Times, while not terribly specific, has Megis assumed to be working for the Libyans by (a) the French, (b) the Austrian and (c) the British authorities. The tempting inference through all this is that whatever complicated games Wilson/Terpil were playing with the Libyans are continuing.
Megis, it should be said, has claimed that he has been framed by the Libyans, and the CIA has denied that Megis is working for them.
RR