Charlie Wilson's War

by George Crile

  At first, Wilson thought he might be up against a turf battle led by the Senate Intelligence Committee, whose staffers were up in arms about the way he had usurped their role. Ordinarily, a CIA program can be funded only if it is first authorized by the two Intelligence Committees. Having bypassed that step, Wilson now found himself having to make the process legitimate. Because the money had to be taken from existing Pentagon funds—“reprogrammed”—he had pursued the chairman and ranking members of the House and Senate Arms Services Committee, as well as Intelligence, to sign off on the bill.

  The House was no problem. Mel Price, the chairman of the Armed Services Committee, was so senile that Charlie got a staffer to sign for him. Lee Hamilton, the highly respected House Intelligence Committee chairman, appeared ready to block the bill until Wilson warned his old ally Speaker Tip O’Neill that he was prepared to take to the floor and accuse the Democrats of selling freedom down the river. It was Wilson’s way of cashing in an IOU, and O’Neill put in a call to Hamilton, who dropped his opposition.

  That left the Senate—a distasteful place for any congressman to have to go hat in hand. Nevertheless, the Texan booked an appointment with Senator Sam Nunn, who surprised Wilson by quickly signing off. Nunn would turn out to be a quiet and forceful backer of this and all future Afghan programs. Wilson’s next stop was Senator Moynihan, the ranking Democrat on Intelligence, whom he lured out of a hearing; Charlie soon won his approval. The last remaining obstacle was the chairman of the Intelligence Committee, Barry Goldwater. Here Wilson figured he had a certain in if he dared to use it. The senator’s son, Barry Junior, had been a target of the same federal drug-prosecution effort that had hounded him, and Charlie had always suspected that the senior Goldwater had been helpful in getting the case dismissed. So he took a gamble on a joke: “Both Barry and I were subjected to police brutality by Rudolph Giuliani and the Justice Department,” he said with that infectious, rumbling laugh of his, and Goldwater told him to come into the office.

  “I know this was turf trespassing on my part,” Wilson began, “but what we want to do is shoot down the Russian helicopters.” Goldwater was an old air force pilot and a legendary anti-Communist, and Charlie told him it was unacceptable for the greatest power on earth not to give the mujahideen an effective anti-aircraft weapon. Wilson was at his patriotic best, and he struck a responsive chord.

  In the 1960s, Goldwater’s best-selling political manifesto The Conscience of a Conservative had set the conservative revolution in motion with its warning of dire consequences should the United States fail to act boldly and counter the Soviet menace. “Well, fuck the turf,” the silver-haired senator said after listening to Charlie’s appeal.

  Wilson realized that this congressional rebellion had been much ado about nothing and that his real problems were not at State, the Pentagon, OMB, or on the Hill. They were coming from Langley. Wilson had thought that the CIA’s main stumbling block must be money, and on this point he was sympathetic. His Democratic colleagues in the House had been so antagonistic to the CIA for so long that it was no wonder the Agency didn’t believe Wilson when he said money was no object. He had assumed that his $40 million gift would have established his bona fides with the CIA’s leaders and encouraged some bolder thinking.

  Even after the war was over, Wilson would always remain convinced that Director Casey supported everything he was trying to do for the mujahideen. The director was the last of the adventuring World War II heroes, a man who had been responsible for dropping spies behind the lines in Germany and who talked Wilson’s Churchillian language of standing up to tyranny. And Charlie had witnessed Casey’s emotional response to Mojadeddi that day in the White House when the Afghan leader had turned to Mecca in prayer.

  As the months wore on and the Agency surfaced as the problem, Wilson chose to believe that it was the bureaucrats who were poisoning Casey’s thoughts. In Wilson’s mind there was no question who was responsible for this cynical policy of leaving the Afghans helpless in the field. It had to be Charles Galligan Cogan, a man no one had elected, who thought he should decide what the United States would and would not do for the Afghans.

  In later years, while affiliated with Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, Cogan would acknowledge that the CIA had overestimated the Soviet Union and that, in retrospect, the rigid concerns about concealing the American hand to prevent Soviet retaliation had been exaggerated. But back in 1984 he believed that the way to run a U.S. proxy war was the way the CIA had always done it.

  If these two men had met when Cogan was starting off at the Agency, Wilson might have found much to admire. Certainly back in the early 1960s he wouldn’t have branded the handsome young case officer a wimp. At twenty-eight, Cogan was the deputy station chief in the Congo; there he ran South African mercenaries, sent Bay of Pigs veteran pilots on interdiction missions against Soviet-backed troops, and rescued nuns from savagery. During this time, headquarters was even bold enough to send assassins down to murder Patrice Lumumba. In the Congo, Chuck Cogan was no pantywaist, nor had he been while serving in the Sudan. But gradually, it is said, he developed airs. Perhaps it began in India, where he learned to ride horses and play polo, or perhaps when he won the patronage of Archie Roosevelt and, later, the friendship of Morocco’s King Hassan and Jordan’s King Hussein. After thirty years in the Agency, Cogan was the perfect choice for royals but the wrong man for Charlie Wilson.

  “So, how many reasons have you come up with this week not to do anything, Mr. Coburn?” Wilson asked Cogan. A week after their unpleasant last encounter, Wilson did not yet understand that the Agency’s leadership was united in its opposition to the Oerlikon. He proceeded to heap abuse on Cogan: “You just don’t give a shit about the mujahideen, do you? The Vietcong shot down two thousand of our helicopters in Vietnam. How many have you shot down?”

  Cogan had initiated this meeting. The Agency was obligated to spell out how it wanted to spend the non-Oerlikon portion of the appropriation, and Cogan wanted to know how much flexibility it had.

  Wilson says, “He came in to talk to me about the boots and blankets and shit. And I said, ‘Fuck this, Coburn! What about the fucking guns?’” Cogan said they were initiating several steps. “Yes,” Wilson yelled back, “and the fucking helicopters are killing people right this second while you are studying. As best as I can tell, you ain’t got but two things to study because that language says ‘a cannon.’” Wilson then spelled out the choices to him: “Either buy the Oerlikon or the ZSU twenty-three-millimeter Soviet gun.” (It was the only other applicable cannon.)

  Only at one point did Avrakotos intervene, suggesting that the Oerlikon would force the Afghans to defend fixed positions instead of relying on more effective hit-and-run guerrilla tactics. “We’d just end up losing the Oerlikons, which cost a hundred thousand dollars each, or the Afghans would all die trying to defend them.”

  Wilson was completely unimpressed with Avrakotos and his argument. “I don’t care if you lose them all, just so long as one Soviet helicopter is shot down. If it takes ten million dollars’ worth of Oerlikons to shoot down one ten-million-dollar Hind, that’s a good investment. And if you shoot down two, you’re way ahead,” he said.

  Gust found himself agreeing with the argument. In fact, he found himself secretly agreeing with almost everything Wilson was saying. At one point, Cogan slipped and told Wilson that the Oerlikon just cost too much and he wanted to use the money for other things. “You either buy these cannons or you take that money and stick it up your ass,” Wilson said. But Cogan wouldn’t back off.

  It became clear to Wilson that he was up against something far bigger than Chuck Cogan. In any other year he would have gone to the mats immediately, but an old politician’s instinct told him that Cogan, the Agency, Stillwell, and all the others were just waiting him out. They read the papers, and the headlines about his upcoming primary said it all: “Good-Time Charlie in Trouble,” “Wilson’s Lifestyle Tests Supporters,” “Shenan
igans Could Cost Representative Wilson.”

  For the first time since he had come to Congress in 1973 he was in trouble at home. His all-forgiving constituents were reconsidering the blind support they had always offered their playboy congressman. A collection of Democratic challengers smelled blood, and so, Wilson suspected, did the CIA.

  Charlie Wilson—The Texas Congressman was obsessed with finding a weapon to bring down the lethal Soviet Hind helicopter.

  Joanne Herring, the woman who inspired Charlie to champion the Afghans.

  Charles Fawcett in Afghanistan—the man who enlisted Joanne to the jihad.

  Joanne using her wiles to convert powerful congressman Clarence “Doc” Long to the cause. “Them that has the gold, makes the rules.”—Doc Long

  Gust and Charlie in Egypt, buying weapons for the jihad “What brought us together was chasing pussy and killing Communists.”—Gust Avrakotos, explaining his relationship with Charlie

  Field Marshal Mohammed Abu Ghazala, Egypt’s minister of defense, admiring Charlie’s belly dancer, Carol Shannon

  Gust with Charlie and his belly dancers

  Milt Bearden, the CIA station chief who presided over the final victory

  Mike Vickers, the CIA’s brilliant young strategist, and Art Alper, the grandfatherly demolitions expert

  thousands of Tennessee mules carried the CIA’s weapons to the jihad.

  Liz Wickersham, Charlie’s companion on his Las Vegas hot tub weekend.

  Annelise “Sweetums” Ilschenko, former Miss World contestant at the heart of the DIA plane scandal.

  Bush, Reagan, and O’Neill. Charlie, Liz, and President Carter. Barbara and George Bush joking with fellow Texans Charlie Wilson and former governor Ann Richards.

  Charlie and Cynthia Gale Watson, a.k.a. Snowflake, in front of the notorious DIA plane.

  “The greatest foreign policy crisis since World War II.”—Jimmy Carter on the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan

  “I used to tell him: ‘I don’t want to know what you are doing [with the CIA]; you just go ahead.’”—Speaker Tip O’Neill

  Carol Shannon, Charlie’s personal belly dancer

  Charlie’s money transformed a rabble of shepherds and tribsmen into an army of techno holy warriors.

  Charlie with Jalaluddin Haqani. Once the CIA’s favorite commander, after 9/11 he became a prime target of U.S. military forces who believed that he was harboring Osama bin Laden.

  Charlie greeting Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, the Pakistanis’ favorite commander who received the greatest amount of U.S. support. Branded as a terrorist after 9/11, he was the target of a failed assassination attempt from a CIA-launched Hellfire missile.

  Gust Avrakotos, the CIA’s blue-collar James Bond. It was Charlie Wilson’s war but it never would have happened without Gust Avrakotos.

  Charlie Wilson, patron of the greatest modern jihad and architect of the CIA’s victory in the last campaign of the Cold War

  CHAPTER 18

  Gust and Charlie

  THE BIRTH OF A CONSPIRACY

  There are thirty-three churches in Trinity, Texas, population 2,648. The Second Congressional District, which Charlie Wilson represented in 1984, lies in the very heart of the Bible Belt, as attested to by the JESUS IS THE LORD OF LUFKIN billboard. Just down the road are the huge Pentecostal summer revival camps. A kind of fundamentalism flourishes in the religious practices of its citizens, not all that dissimilar from the intensity of feeling the Afghans have for their god. Religion is a way of life in East Texas, and at the heart of that experience is a belief in the presence of Satan.

  Almost everyone in Wilson’s district is an authority on sin. In a curious way, the God-fearing people of East Texas are far more familiar with sin than people in more sophisticated parts of the country, even those without religion. The ministers here rail constantly against the Devil’s handiwork. They talk about the temptations, always present, that every man and woman succumb to at some point in their lives. The ministers look out over a flock of sinners and preach the need, indeed the responsibility, for all to come to the altar and cast Satan out. Many find Jesus again and again.

  It is in this rhythm of sin and redemption that the key to Charlie Wilson’s political survival can be found. Charlie was in a curious way the Second Congressional District’s designated sinner, a highly visible presence whom they could live through vicariously. And because he was forever getting caught and forever coming home and owning up to his backsliding, entreating forgiveness, the generous-hearted faithful regularly took him back into their hearts.

  Beyond this, Wilson had also been a remarkably effective and accessible congressman. That spring, as the primary campaign got under way, he was on the road every day, zigzagging about his New Jersey–sized district in an elaborate mobile office, complete with three workstations to receive constitutents seeking help in dealing with the government. Since 1980, this ingenious motorized command post had doubled Charlie’s effectiveness, permitting him to increase his constituent services while chalking up an enormous amount of campaigning at government expense.

  Ordinarily a congressman will buy or rent a branch office in addition to his or her main office in the district’s largest city. Instead, Charlie had used his government allowance to buy this $70,000 custom-made van, which served to project his presence everywhere at once. Throughout the year, notices would go out announcing the arrival the following week of Congressman Charles Wilson. Charlie himself would rarely appear, but the van, filled with competent staffers and volunteers, would zoom up to the designated neighborhood and help constituents with Social Security, Medicare, veterans issues, or any other problems they had getting the federal government to work for them.

  The people Wilson did the most for, the very poor, rarely voted. But ever since his father had avoided the stigma of unemployment through FDR’s Civilian Conservation Corps, Charlie had been a true believer in the positive role of government. The district boasted a vast civic center and a veterans’ hospital, solely due to him. And everywhere, from the shipyards in Orange to Lufkin Industries, constituents were working thanks to Charlie’s way with defense contractors.

  A surprising number of people in the Second Congressional District adored him, particularly its senior citizens. Every fall Charlie hosted a dominoes tournament in the Lufkin Civic Center that set his campaign back $25,000, because every player got a set of dominoes with VOTE FOR CHARLES WILSON engraved on the back. More than a thousand gray-haired people showed up each year, and Charlie was there to bestow on the lucky winner a trip to Washington for the Cherry Blossom Festival.

  Lufkin’s black citizens voted for him almost en masse. Reverend Nordstron, their spiritual leader, would explain that Charlie was a courageous champion of their interests but that he and other black leaders would never allow him to stick his neck out too far. In this district, where pockets still held that the Klan was king, the black vote belonged to Charlie. Despite this goodwill, as the 1984 primary unfolded, it became clear that there was only one thing that could save Charlie Wilson: money—enormous quantities of campaign contributions.

  The four candidates who had filed against him were convinced that Wilson had finally crossed the line. The business about the hot tub was bad enough. But even those who forgave the drug investigation had a hard time explaining the hit-and-run incident; it just made Wilson look like a bad person.

  It is said that even if a yellow dog ran for Congress in East Texas, as long as the dog was a Democrat he could win. The only race that counted was the primary, and Wilson knew that the only antidote to his scandal-stained image was television and radio. He had to overwhelm his rivals with carefully packaged campaign ads, a strategy that doesn’t come cheap.

  In moments of need, politicians turn to those who owe them favors, and no group was more beholden to him than the defense contractors. Wilson had a reputation for never having met a weapons system he didn’t like, and they anted up $100,000 for their benefactor. They were not alone. All the sp
ecial interests beholden to Wilson came through that year, and he ended up taking in the second largest amount of PAC money in Congress. But it was the friends of Israel who rallied most impressively. Ed Koch organized a fund-raiser in New York and made an emotional pitch for generosity: “This is a man who has less than ten Jewish constituents, but he helps Israel because he believes in it.” By Election Day, Wilson’s Jewish friends had come up with another $100,000 for his campaign.

  Unquestionably the greatest individual stalwart turned out to be the ever loyal Joanne Herring, who set about corralling all of her rich, archconservative friends and business contacts. Her efforts were typically spiced with glamorous enticements, including a weekend retreat at a friend’s exotic wild-game ranch. She would reflect afterward, “It was the most difficult thing I’ve ever done. I told my friends that the things they had heard about Charlie weren’t true, that he was so bright and that he was doing something that would change the world. And then he arrived for dinner and fell asleep right at the table. It was terrible,” she recalled with an all-forgiving laugh. “The heads of everything were there and Charlie couldn’t even answer questions. But some of them gave money anyway. They did it for me.”