Another scandal broke out around Wilson when a company he had formed to ship United States military aid to Egypt was convicted of overcharging the United States Department of Defense by $8 million. A partner with Edwin P. Wilson in this company was another former CIA officer, Thomas G. Clines. Wilson also maintained that Major General Richard V. Secord was also a "silent partner" in this company, though Secord denied this allegation. Nonetheless, Wilson, Clines and Theodore Shackley (another former CIA officer) were all working together with Secord in the summer of 1984 when Oliver North approached Secord to ask for help in buying arms for the Contras, a group of armed rebels then trying to overturn the leftist Sandinista government of Nicaragua.