Charlie Wilson's War

by George Crile

  Hart says he was fully prepared to return empty-handed from Bangkok and had anyone else made the recommendation, Cogan might have held back. But the Clandestine Services are built on trust. “You’re the guy on the ground,” McGaffin had told Hart when he went to Pakistan. “This is your war out there. Just tell us what you need.” In this same spirit, Cogan decided to run with his station chief. Together the three composed a cable to headquarters. “We spelled out what we wanted and why, and Chuck signed it. That was the beginning of the big time,” he said.

  If Howard Hart had explained any of this to Wilson, perhaps the congressman would have been more sympathetic. But Hart kept these stories within the family. It was hard to keep his mouth shut, however, when the congressman pressed to know what the United States was doing to stop the Red Army from sending its gunships to slaughter the freedom fighters. Hart found himself having to explain the basics—how, as a matter of long-standing Cold War policy, the CIA didn’t use American weapons that would reveal the country’s hand. It was critical to maintain the fiction that the Afghans had captured their weapons in battles with the Soviets. Hart wanted to help as much as Wilson, but surely the congressman would understand that it would be foolish to provoke the Soviets into a major retaliation against Pakistan.

  These perfectly sensible arguments fell on deaf ears. Hart was a master at maintaining a poker face, but this congressman was driving him crazy. Of course it was easy for Wilson, in his dream world, to come in shooting his mouth off about pumping up the program to the bursting point with untold millions but Hart had to live in the real world.

  It galled Hart to realize that Wilson didn’t even understand that the U.S. embassy had been torched by a mob of Muslim radicals who hated America and had been quite ready to kill as many as they could find. That’s why he was in this shithole of a station chief’s office. Hart not only had to operate from cramped quarters but he had to be ready to destroy all his files in seven minutes—the time he figured he would have if the KGB ever decided to rouse the ever-ready Islamic mob. And at the heart of it all, something he could never explain to Wilson, lay his triumph in having won over General Akhtar, the stern and secretive intelligence chief.

  Hart and Akhtar had met at least once or twice a week at the general’s offices, the Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate headquarters in Islamabad. The general always dressed in uniform, and tea was served. By the time Wilson swooped in, Akhtar and Hart had all but fallen in love professionally. Part of the secret of Hart’s success was the way on every public occasion he always deferred to the great General Akhtar, who took to affectionately calling him H2 because of the two H’s in his name. Akhtar’s affection for Hart was so enormous that when the next station chief took up his post, the general insisted on calling him H2, much to the CIA man’s annoyance. The friendship was genuine, but it was also the product of a highly disciplined operational effort. As Hart saw it, his relationship with Akhtar was the best way the United States could effectively influence the one man who truly counted. “I would meet with Akhtar and talk strategy,” he explained. “Then Akhtar would go to Zia, and Zia would approve every single item, every single incremental escalation.”

  Hart had gone to great trouble to establish his place in this process, so he found it aggravating to hear Wilson hinting that the Pakistanis were eager to fight a bigger war. What a laugh. Hart had sat in when the enthusiastic new CIA director, William Casey, had met with Zia in Rawalpindi, to offer more assistance, “What can we give you? How much do the Afghans need?”

  Every time anyone asked that question, Zia always responded with the same speech. “Ah, Mr. Casey, we must make the pot boil for the Russians but not so much that it boils over onto Pakistan.” Zia had given his little pot-boiling story so many times that Hart and Akhtar rolled their eyes at each other whenever he began.

  But that was the crux of the matter: how far was Zia willing to go? “No one knew the answer,” recalls Hart, “so one of my jobs was to figure this out. You must understand that, at the time, even Zia did not know the limits.”

  The station chief had no way of knowing that Wilson was then in the process of forging a direct relationship with Zia. Soon this link would end the convoluted process that Hart had so carefully erected to service his country’s goals. Back then, however, Hart could not imagine the Pakistanis taking Wilson seriously. He saw only a dangerously energetic meddler.

  The only overt tension that surfaced between the two men came when Wilson implied that Hart and the CIA were not doing enough to shoot down the Hind helicopters. Hart surprised Wilson when he argued that the weapons the CIA was already providing the Afghans—12.7mm DshK machine guns—were all that the mujahideen needed. Guns, including anti-aircraft guns, had been the congressman’s specialty when he had been in the navy, and he thought that Hart’s belief in the DshK was absurd: The Afghans didn’t believe machine guns were the answer, and he knew that the Soviets had armor-plated their Hind helicopters specifically to resist a 12.7mm shell.

  The congressman poured on the charm as he probed, trying to enlist the CIA man in his campaign. “Don’t you need more weapons?” he asked again. What was Hart supposed to say to a question like that—particularly when it was being asked again and again in different ways? Finally he explained, “If what you are asking is ‘Do I have as many weapons as there are Afghans who would like to be armed?’ the answer is, ‘No,’ but we’re doing very well.”

  The station chief had been very careful in making this final point, but Wilson heard something quite different than perhaps was intended. He heard Howard Hart sending a distress signal. He thought he could understand the code: Hart was asking for help.

  The CIA man was now in that insecure position that bureaucrats so often find themselves when single-minded politicians burst into their lives. He could feel that Wilson was trying to grab the helm, but these were dangerous waters. The last thing Hart wanted was for this energetic amateur to screw things up by offering his noisy assistance. He and McGaffin and Cogan and Akhtar were doing just fine. In fact, they were doing brilliantly. What Wilson could do would be to go away and not come back. But as the two men said good-bye in Islamabad that day in November 1982, Howard Hart had the uneasy feeling that it was not the last time he would see this congressman from Texas.

  CHAPTER 9

  Mug shot, Austin, Texas

  COCAINE CHARLIE

  When Wilson returned from Pakistan, Joanne Herring announced that everything was in place to give President Zia a reception he would never forget. At vast expense she had turned the main dining hall of the Houstonian Hotel into an exotic vision of a Pakistani palace. The heads of all the major oil companies had accepted, along with a surprising number of other CEOs from the Fortune 500. As she saw it, this was to be his coming-out party, designed to introduce America to the real Zia ul-Haq.

  She had both Charlie Wilson and Charles Fawcett scurrying about from table to table, changing place cards up until the very last moment. In deference to the guest of honor’s Muslim sensibilities, she even banned alcohol for the evening, but the congressman skirted the problem by occasionally excusing himself to meet Baron Ricky di Portanova at the hotel bar for fortification.

  The event resembled one of those typical charity balls, which always seem to end with droning, laudatory speeches. But Joanne Herring had summoned her powerful friends for a purpose, and when she rose to introduce the Pakistani leader, she had a surprise for them: “I want you all to know that President Zia did not kill Bhutto.”

  Buckets, Baroness di Portanova, could not believe her ears. She knew how much Joanne liked the president, but she winced as her fellow Minute-woman proceeded to deliver an impassioned defense of Zia’s role in the hanging of his predecessor, the former Pakistan president, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto.

  “Bhutto had a trial,” Joanne told the hushed gathering. “He was found guilty. President Zia did not commute the sentence, because the constitution of Pakistan is based on the Koran and the Koran be
lieves in capital punishment. Zia did not murder Bhutto.”

  It was a curious maneuver, and if nothing else, Herring succeeded in stealing everyone’s thunder: no longer could her guests harbor confidential thoughts about Zia’s treachery. But, it was hard not to feel a little sorry for the dictator, forced to sit there with a genial smile as his honorary consul carried on.

  American liberals and human-rights advocates would never change their view of Zia as a Third World thug, but his American visit was something of a triumph, and Joanne’s dinner was part of the reason it succeeded. The Reagan administration was trying to encourage him to hold the line in Pakistan against the Soviets, and this state visit was part of that persuasion process. Zia had dangerous decisions to make in the coming months about the CIA’s involvement in his inflamed North-West Frontier, and all of them centered on whether he could trust the United States.

  Joanne’s startling toast was strangely therapeutic for the much-maligned leader, who remembered how quickly Jimmy Carter had turned on him. In Houston that night, Joanne Herring saw to it that a host of powerful Americans actually honored him. And that same night, Charlie Wilson provided yet another dimension to Zia’s growing partnership with the United States when he took the general into a side room for a private talk. The congressman had a novel proposition for the Muslim dictator. Would Zia be willing to deal with the Israelis?

  This was not the sort of proposal just anyone could have made. But by now, the Pakistanis believed that Charlie Wilson had been decisive in getting them the disputed F-16 radar systems. As he saw it, Wilson had pulled off the impossible. Now the congressman, in his tuxedo, began to take Zia into the forbidden world where the Israelis were prepared to make deals no one need hear about.

  He told Zia about his experience the previous year when the Israelis had shown him the vast stores of Soviet weapons they had captured from the PLO in Lebanon. The weapons were perfect for the mujahideen, he told Zia. If Wilson could convince the CIA to buy them, would Zia have any problems passing them on to the Afghans?

  Zia, ever the pragmatist, smiled on the proposal, adding, “Just don’t put any Stars of David on the boxes.”

  With that encouragement, Wilson pushed on. Just the previous month, he had learned that the Israelis were secretly upgrading the Chinese army’s Russian-designed T-55 tanks. In Islamabad, he had been startled to see that the Chinese were supplying Pakistan with T-55s. The congressman now proposed that Zia enter into a similar secret arrangement with the Israelis. “I was trying to rig it for Israel to do the upgrade without the Chinese operating as the middlemen,” Wilson explained.

  It was no simple proposition. Three years earlier, a mere rumor that Israel had been involved in an attack on the Great Mosque in Mecca had so radicalized the Pakistani Muslim population that thousands had stormed the U.S. embassy in Pakistan and burned it to the ground. Zia was mindful of his people’s hatred for both Israel and the United States, and he might have been expected to nip this in the bud. Instead, he encouraged Wilson to continue.

  The congressman was acutely aware of the minefield he was walking through. Publicly, Pakistan and Israel would have to remain foes, he conceded. But as Zia well understood, Pakistan and Israel shared the same deadly foe in the Soviet Union. And the fact was that each could profit mightily by secretly cooperating with the other. If Zia would follow the lead of the Chinese, Wilson said, he could increase the striking power of his tanks, and there might be other areas of military and technological cooperation where both countries could mutually profit.

  Pakistan did not have diplomatic relations with Israel, and Wilson certainly had no authority to serve as a quasi secretary of state. In fact, with this kind of talk, the congressman was walking dangerously close to violating the Logan Act, which prohibits anyone other than the president or his representatives from conducting foreign policy. But as the two rejoined Joanne’s party, Zia left the congressman with an understanding that he was authorized to begin secret negotiations to open back channels between Islamabad and Jerusalem. Wilson would leave for Israel in March and travel on to Pakistan to brief Zia immediately afterward.

  The entire evening had been a fantasy manufactured by Joanne to set the stage for Charlie to perform his magic with President Zia. It had worked beyond their expectations. As they compared notes at the after-dinner party that Baron di Portanova threw at his River Oaks mansion, this unusual Texas couple suddenly felt as if together they could conquer the world.

  The CIA has a polite ruse for keeping senators and congressmen out of its hair. Whenever a member not on the House or Senate Intelligence Committee calls to request a briefing on a secret operation, the Agency always returns the call. The representative says they would be more than happy to accommodate the request, but—and this is a mere formality, of course—could the member please clear it with the chairman of the appropriate Intelligence Committee?

  The catch, however, is that members of the Intelligence Committees are as human as anyone else. Information in the capital is power, and Intelligence Committee members don’t like sharing it. Thus the CIA regularly manages to ignore the hundreds of individuals in the Senate and Congress who don’t possess a key to the secret bureaucracy. The strategy is different, however, for members of the Foreign Affairs and Military Affairs Committees. The Agency talks to these committee members but doesn’t feel obligated to offer much inside information.

  Charlie Wilson’s Defense Appropriations subcommittee is another matter. It controls the CIA’s budget, even if historically its members haven’t concerned themselves with the details of Agency operations. Yet here was Wilson enthusiastically seeking a meeting with someone in the CIA who had the authority to act on the Afghan problem. At first, the Agency merely dragged its heels but after he was put off repeatedly Wilson discovered, quite by accident, the magic words for summoning a high-level officer. “Don’t worry,” he innocently said to a deputy director at Langley who was explaining on the phone how busy they all were and how difficult it would be to come over to the Capitol. “I’ll drive out there myself. I’ll come this afternoon.”

  Bureaucrats at the Pentagon and the State Department consider it a boost to their ego and prestige when congressmen travel to their offices. But the CIA doesn’t work that way. It is a forbidden place, so Wilson was not exactly surprised when his offer to pay a visit yielded a rather quick call back from Langley. The Agency’s Near East division chief, Mr. Charles Cogan, would be in the congressman’s office at five that afternoon.

  The female members of Wilson’s staff, the “Angels,” were fascinated by the bustle of activity that preceded Cogan’s arrival. The technicians came first, almost an hour before the appointment, looking like doctors with stethoscopes hanging from their necks. They probed the telephones, cleared the congressman’s office, and moved about listening to his desk and walls. One of them explained that the KGB could place a beam on the windowpane from far away and pick up everything that was said inside.

  By the time all of this curtain-raising activity had concluded and the two CIA technicians had tucked themselves away in an adjoining office to monitor any suspicious probes, the Angels were eager to see what this Mr. Cogan would look like. Right on cue at the stroke of five Charles Galligan Cogan, accompanied by two dark-suited aides, swept through the outer office and into Wilson’s. But in that fleeting moment the Angels had glimpsed a figure out of another age. Cogan moved with the ease of the great natural athlete, exuding the air of a master spy. At fifty-five, the old Harvard man was still riding to the hounds and hammering the goals at polo.

  Wilson was impressed, just as the CIA man had intended him to be. But for the congressman, everything that followed was devastatingly anticlimactic. “I had a thousand questions for him. I wanted to know about frostbite, sleeping bags, boots, food, more Kalashnikovs, and, always, the problem of the anti-aircraft weapons. I needed to get a feel for what was going on, particularly to find out if they needed something.” But Wilson soon realized that thi
s mandarin of the Near East Division had come for no other reason than to patronize him. Cogan was pulling out all the stops with his noblesse oblige routine—exceedingly gracious, appreciative of the congressman’s interest, full of impressive facts about the geopolitical situation. But in the end, he made it clear that it was rather premature to consider any new initiatives.

  When a frustrated Wilson suggested that Cogan’s man in Pakistan, Howard Hart, was dissatisfied with the weapons he was receiving, Cogan didn’t blanch. This statement would later cause Hart no end of trouble, but Cogan let it pass with a smile: he would deal with Hart later. Yes, he admitted, the helicopters were a problem, but he elaborated on the CIA’s argument that the DshK heavy machine guns were putting up a good show.

  Wilson, the old gunnery officer, didn’t buy it. He just wasn’t able to figure out how Hart, Cogan, or anyone else could believe that the 12.7mm weapon was effective against those killing machines. Zia didn’t think it was up to the job, and by that time, all sorts of Afghans had told Wilson the same thing. His office had become a visiting center for mujahideen coming to Washington. “All I heard twenty-four hours a day from these people was how the DshK bullets were bouncing off the Hind’s bellies. So I said, ‘Look, that’s all well and good, but we ain’t shootin’ down the damn helicopters.’”

  Chuck Cogan was not about to be deflected by such anecdotal evidence, and Wilson soon discovered that it is not easy to argue with a man who purports to be in possession of secrets that justify CIA policies. At that very moment, Cogan confided, his men were engaged in very sensitive and highly promising operations in Eastern Europe. They were on the verge of opening up a source of Soviet SA-7 shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles that would soon be making their way over the Hindu Kush mountains to the Afghans. Everyone was quite optimistic.