Charlie Wilson's War (72 page)

Authors: George Crile

BOOK: Charlie Wilson's War

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The inspiration for this book springs from the experience of covering the Afghans in an earlier time when we shared a common foe. Back in the 1980s, it was hard to find anyone who traveled among the mujahideen on the border or inside the war zone who was not permanently moved by their courage and sacrifice and by the hospitality, amidst so little, that the mujahideen always insisted on lavishing upon their guests.

It can be argued that the universal religion or spirit of the American people is the motto of the state of New Hampshire written on its license plates: “Live Free or Die.” The Afghans—and not just a few but almost an entire nation—seemed to embody the very essence of that American idea. Granted, the way the Afghans deal with invaders or, for that matter, with one another inside their own borders is terrifying. But never once during their jihad against the Soviet Union did they resort to what we identify as terrorism outside of their own country—no embassies were bombed, planes hijacked, diplomats taken hostage, or civilians put at risk. And so far, they have not directly joined the terror campaign that their Muslim and Arab friends from other countries have launched.

One can only hope that this continues to be true and that this time, at the end of America’s latest Afghan campaign, the United States will recognize its obligation to help in the rebuilding of this ravaged land. It is hoped that this book will revive the memory of the Afghans as we knew them back then, when—outmanned and outgunned—they faced our Cold War foe, the Red Army, and fearlessly took back their country.

Beyond the Afghans, an unlikely network of people made the telling of this story possible. I am indebted to the late president of Pakistan, Zia ul-Haq, who opened a window on the hidden war so that we could begin to tell the story. For all these years, the two extraordinary central figures in this history, Charlie Wilson and Gust Avrakotos, have occupied my imagination. There was never any question of what motivated these two men: a fierce love of country and the conviction that they had engineered a historic victory for America. They were so convinced of the virtue of their efforts that neither man placed any conditions on their cooperation, in spite of knowing that I would be listening to others, many with rival viewpoints. Over the course of many years, my respect and affection for these two men has only grown.

This long venture began with one of those wonderful commissions from Don Hewitt and
60 Minutes
that allowed me to explore a world that grew bigger and more fascinating at each stop. Special thanks to Jeff Fager, Patti Hassler, Maureen Cashen, and
60 Minutes II
as a whole for their patience, encouragement, and generosity.

Speaking of which, Morgan Entrekin has gone above and beyond an editor’s call of duty, first in his energizing belief in this story and then in his skillful editing of the text. Thanks to everyone at Grove/Atlantic for their ability to calmly cope with the unusual challenges posed by this project—particularly to Michael Hornburg and Muriel Jorgensen who repeatedly went above and beyond the call of duty.

Every author should have an agent as loyal and fiercely persistent as Andrew Wylie. He never wavered in his conviction and I appreciate his friendship as well as the efforts of Jeff Posternak and everyone at the Wylie Agency.

A book could be made out of the writing of this book. It is no ordinary experience navigating through the intelligence agencies of the United States, Pakistan, and all the other secretive worlds that came together for this campaign. It has taken a long time and more than a village—more like an international coalition—to finally nail it down.

Among those to whom I am indebted are Joe Spohn, Nicolas Beim, Tyler Clemens, Zeb Esselstyn, Reg Laing, James Morrow, Sam Osborne, Tasha Zemke, and the wise, late-night counsel of Otis Walters. Thanks to Roy Abrams for his dedicated efforts and Britta Fulla, the brilliant graphic designer who did the first-draft design for this book. Particular thanks go to John House who provided an invaluable edit of the first draft of this book as well as two close friends who were essential to the project, one at the beginning and the other at the end: Neeraj Khemlani and Justin Oppmann.

Finally, there are three more people without whom this book would simply not exist. Timothy Dickenson has served as a kind of Oxford don to this project, a role he has often played for me since our days together at
Harper’s
magazine. Every twist and turn of this chronicle has benefited from the endless store of historical wisdom and insight that Timothy has selflessly provided.

The best of marriages involve a sharing of the good times and bad. I am forever indebted to my wife, Susan, for her steady support and love but mostly for her unusually wise full-time assignment of her sister, Barbara Lyne, to serve as my in-house editor. No wife has ever given a husband a more valuable gift.

Barbara was by my side from the beginning. Equally as transfixed as I by the almost surreal wonder of the story that emerged from our labors, there was not a day’s work that was anything but sheer pleasure. And finally, it was only her quick and ruthless capacity to make judgments that made it possible for this book to come out in such a timely manner.

^*He was often branded with the name “Timber Charlie” for the legislation he pushed through for the timber interests dominating his district; his political patron was the maverick lumber king Arthur Temple. Temple was not your usual southern robber baron; he was a model of progressive liberalism. His company, Temple Inland, never unionized because he always paid union wages. He personally integrated Diboll, his company town, in the early 1960s. He built the best library for any town its size in Texas. And at a time when federal programs to help the poor were considered anathema, he did what local governments would not—he tapped federal aid to build housing projects, an airport, recreation centers, golf courses, and facilities for the elderly. Arthur Temple helped bankroll Wilson’s political career to perpetuate this tradition as well as to help the timber industry.

^*Philip Agee denies having anything to do with the exposure of Richard Welch or Gust Avrakotos.

^*The author has not seen the document, but this is the language and the message that came through as described to me by those who have read it.

*In those days it was a very rare event when the rebels could stop a tank. So rare that Alper says a picture of a downed Soviet tank was received at Langley in 1983 with almost as much excitement as the later pictures of helicopters brought down by Stingers. The interview was conducted the day after the San Francisco earthquake, and Alper said the tank looked just like one of the cars stranded on the Bay Bridge. The main difference was the context, in which the mujahideen posed triumphantly with gleeful grins for the camera, which revealed a Russian dangling from the turret with his genitals removed. “It looked like a beached whale,” Alper says, “and the poor bastards had to get out of the tanks once they were trapped.”

*What this meant in a practical sense is that the lawyers ruled that the Agency couldn’t provide the Afghans with sniper rifles or, for that matter, with satellite target studies if they focused on an individual. As extreme as it might sound, they argued that it might constitute a violation of the 1977 congressional ban on any assassination plotting. It didn’t matter that the Agency was dispensing hundreds of thousand of assault rifles, machine guns, mines, rockets, mortars, and RPGs for the Afghans to use in their killing war with the Soviets—in all, some ten thousand tons of weapons and ordinance in 1983 alone, according to the Pakistan intelligence officer directing the combat activities of the mujahideen. The lawyers dug in their heels and held to their strict interpretation of the law.

*The problem was that the Agency was operating on a small budget in the beginning and the procurement office could make buys only when they had funds, thus playing into the hands of the suppliers, who sensed the growing appetite and a limited supply.

^†For years Russia put the Afghan death toll at 13,000. The most recent official tally, based on previously classified files, puts the number at over 28,000.

*The District of Columbia, a federal city, is governed by the U.S. Congress, and all its funds are governed by the Appropriations Committee. This gives enormous influence to those subcommittee chairmen able to slash or augment budgets without much trouble.

*Rafiah and Shore said they were convinced that the Charlie Horse could work for the mujahideen, but the 2.75-inch ammunition it used would be expensive unless it turned out, as they believed, that there were enormous stockpiles of the ammunition left over from Vietnam. Wilson decided to put in a special appropriation to commission an inventory to find out how much ammunition could be raided from the leftover Vietnam arsenal.

*Wilson later claimed that he was not praying on his knees but was just a passive participant, holding hands with Joanne.

*In fact, this was a legitimate criticism. Even Avrakotos acknowledges that Pakistan all but forced the CIA to back its favorites, who were of the hard-line variety.

*After he became acting chief, Avrakotos actually interrupted one of these afternoon teas to declare that he did not come to London to drink tea and eat little cookies and if they wanted to do business with him, there would be no more interruptions. The ever-accommodating MI6, eager to win more CIA money for their Afghan programs, discontinued their afternoon custom.

*As always, the experiences of the CIA in Central America stood in marked contrast. While Avrakotos was in London his counterparts on the Central American task force were about to be strung up for commissioning a so-called assassination manual. Not only the Agency’s lawyers but Congress, the press, and hordes of concerned Americans moving about Nicaragua and Central America were attempting to stop the CIA’s war.

*Luttwak shared the CIA position, championed by John McMahon, that plausible deniability was critical, that it was in effect an unstated bargain with the Soviets. The Soviets would not invade Pakistan if the United States concealed its hand. And the American public did not want to take responsibility for defending Pakistan.

*The royal family was concerned not only about oil; they also had to please their own intensely fundamentalist religious establishment. The Saudi mullahs had been among the first to begin sending financial support to the Afghan jihad, and the king, as protector of the two holiest shrines of Islam, Mecca and Medina, could not afford to be indifferent toward this most passionate of Islamic causes.

*One of the most distinctive moments of the Reagan anti-Communist era came at a 1986 gathering in Washington of conservatives who rose to their feet chanting, “Get out, Gulf, get out, Gulf” as Savimbi marched down the aisle to address them.

*Fiers offered this account to David Rogers of the
Wall Street Journal
. It was Rogers who first broke the story of the $50 million supplemental.

*Coelho further explained, “During the eighties we had a divided government. The Republicans controlled the Senate, and the only institution controlled by Democrats was the House. We were not just the opposition party, we were the opposition government. It was a heady time for us. After the 1982 elections a political stalemate occurred and that stalemate gave Tip power and we were aggressively willing to take on Reaganism.”

*Once, however, in a particularly close and important vote on Contra aid, Wilson was confronted with an awkward choice. He had just voted with the administration when he was approached by Eddie Boland, the distinguished chairman of the Intelligence Committee, whose amendments were responsible for curtailing and then cutting off the CIA’s war. Boland was not only deeply respected in the House, he was Tip’s Washington roommate. “Charlie,” he said, “haven’t we always given you what you wanted on Afghanistan?” Wilson says he only thought for a second. He withdrew his card and voted with Boland and the Speaker.

^†“The president used to say I got my ideas of what policy should be from the priests and the Maryknoll nuns,” he said. “Which was true, of course. But I say I’d rather listen to them than to these people the president called freedom fighters. I was convinced that the only thing that kept us from invading Nicaragua is what we were doing in the House to stop the president.”

*Casey’s efforts to find a legal route to funding the Contras were fast disappearing. Soon, he would begin scheming with Oliver North and a weird collection of characters inside and out of government to raise money from private citizens—from the Saudis, even the sultan of Brunei. Ultimately it would lead to the disastrous arms-for-hostages sales to Khomeini, where the profits were diverted to the Contras.

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