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Link: Court overturns former CIA agent's conviction for selling arms to Libya

Hughes said the government had refused to disclose records of Wilson's continued work for the spy agency during the former agent's trial.

The government had convinced the judge in Wilson's trial that the ex-spy had virtually no contact with the CIA following his supposed retirement from the agency in 1971.

However, Hughes said "there were, in fact, over 80 contacts."

"Confronted with its own internal memoranda, the government now says that, well, it might have misstated the truth, but that it was Wilson's fault, it did not really matter, and it did not know what it was doing," Hughes wrote in a scathing ruling quashing Wilson's Texas conviction.

"The government's preparation, presentation and preservation of false evidence are not the process that is due from the government," said Hughes, who presides in the US Southern District of Texas.

Wilson is serving a 52-year sentence in a federal prison in Pennsylvania.