Charlie Wilson's War

by George Crile

  Everyone on Appropriations understood that this was a petty, if not reckless, act of revenge that Wilson was calling for. But they also knew that it was something they had to do for their colleague. It was a professional courtesy, in effect. And lurking behind their vote to support their colleague was the recognition that it was not healthy to allow a lowly colonel to insult a member of Defense Appropriations.

  For all these reasons the subcommittee moved to remind the Pentagon once and for all how to regard a member of Defense Appropriations: “Them that has the gold makes the rules.” Ultimately, the whole sorry story surfaced in a front-page exposé in the New York Times. It turns out that by order of Congress, the offending DIA plane, along with one more for good measure, was permanently removed from the military spy agency’s fleet. And, just to make sure the Pentagon got the message loud and clear, the two planes were reassigned to duty with the Texas Air National Guard.

  Typically, Wilson seemed not in the least concerned about the resulting scandal and controversy. For a time, it seemed to overshadow all of the positive things Wilson had achieved in the region. In spite of that he wore the attention almost proudly. For over three years Wilson had been the real magic bullet of the Afghan War, all but invisibly hurtling through the entrails of the U.S. government. For the first time he had publicly demonstrated his willingness to bite, and he knew the story would only add to the legend that it was suicidal for any American bureaucrat to get in the way of Congressman Charlie Wilson and his Afghan obsession. For Pakistan’s President Zia it had been a pleasure to be able to help his friend and the great patron of the jihad. But on Wilson’s next trip to Pakistan, when once again he became troublesome to another military man, Zia found himself in a very different frame of mind, determined to do everything in his power to prevent his all-important ally from getting his way.

  Brigadier Mohammad Yousaf went to bed on the night of November 15, 1986, with the certain belief that his work would earn him a place in Paradise. The big, barrel-chested, bug-eyed fundamentalist was then in his second year directing the ISI’s supersecret Afghan cell. The excitement that swept over the CIA’s Afghan task force once the tide began to turn that year was nothing compared to how this Muslim warrior felt. He was in operational command of the biggest and greatest of all modern jihads, and for the first time, he was convinced the mujahideen were going to win.

  Brigadier Yousaf distributed the weapons, ruled on special operations, coordinated training, controlled the C-4 explosives and the Stingers, and passed on the satellite targeting studies. His officers were in radio contact with mujahideen commanders throughout the war zone. He even had teams of ISI soldiers, dressed as Afghans, operating alongside the mujahideen or conducting their own special operations.

  Yousaf was at the very heart of everything, and more often than not he had been a royal pain in the ass for the Americans. The brigadier had not forgotten the insult of being taken blindfolded to the Agency sabotage school. He had responded with his own petty revenge: only occasionally allowing the CIA to visit the training camps. It was a great concession when he let in the Near East Division deputy chief, Tom Twetten—but only at night and in the clothes of the mujahideen. Yousaf even found it a badge of honor that after twenty-two requests he still had not given his home phone number to the two station chiefs who had asked for it. The CIA was a necessary evil, but he was quite determined to keep it at arm’s length.

  Yousaf was certain that the Americans had recruited spies in his own intelligence service. Many of his men trained in the United States, and he wondered what kind of bribes they’d been offered. His sense of the CIA’s power was no doubt so exaggerated as to be detached from reality, but it was a perception shared by many of his countrymen. He was quite convinced that the Americans hated and feared his religion and that the Agency was helping Pakistan only because of its Cold War with the Communists. He was sure that the same CIA spies helping him with the mujahideen were at the same time trying to halt his country’s efforts to build an Islamic bomb. He knew that they feared such Afghan fundamentalists as Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, his favorite commander, whom the ISI had had on its payroll for more than a decade. The fundamentalist mujahideen were the ones he and his intelligence chief had always favored, and he was offended when the U.S. embassy and the press corps called on the ISI to cut off these true warriors of Allah and turn the jihad over to the washed-out Muslims. This he refused to do.

  It was an awesome responsibility that had been placed on his shoulders, and in the 1407th year of the Islamic calendar, Brigadier Yousaf considered it a unique privilege as a Pakistan army officer to stand astride this greatest of all modern jihads. So he went to sleep on November 15 filled with pride, a man who bowed only to Allah. In truth, his loyalties ran almost as deeply to his imperial ISI chief, General Akhtar Abdul Rahman, who woke him up in the middle of that night with an urgent directive from the president himself, General Zia ul-Haq.

  An American official with a woman is trying to enter Afghanistan from Pakistan, Akhtar said. The brigadier must locate this man and stop him; it was of the utmost importance. Akhtar sternly added a proviso: Yousaf must not reveal that the ISI or the Pakistani government was involved.

  The American official headed to Afghanistan, was of course, Charlie Wilson, but Zia had it wrong about the woman’s destination. Sweetums had no intention of going into the war zone. It was not her idea of a good time. In fact, she was quite put out about having to sit around Peshawar while her man went off on his rite of passage. But Wilson had sweet-talked her into another one of those junkets that she would never forget, and Annelise had somehow allowed her hopes to rise again.

  Though the incident with the DIA plane was still fresh in his mind, Wilson was truly pushing the envelope with this latest junket. He envisioned the trip as the ultimate romantic vacation: the Amalfi Coast; the baby elephant orphanage in Sri Lanka; the shopping wonders of Hong Kong; the exotic, teeming streets of Shanghai; and the Great Wall of China—all of this leading up to Sweetums’s lifelong fantasy, a week in Tahiti. The monthlong trip began in Rome, where Bertie van Storer, the Oerlikon representative, would entertain them; there was a stopover in London; and then on to Pakistan for a closer look at the war. He had arranged for his favorite Pentagon traveling aide, Colonel Rooney, to come along to handle logistics, including him even in the nonbusiness-related legs of the trip that Wilson was paying for out of his own pocket. It was not only pleasant having the personable colonel along to share the sights; it was necessary in order to justify having the main portions of the junket picked up by Defense Appropriations. When they reached Pakistan, Sweetums was perplexed to learn that Charlie intended to leave her alone in the hotel while he disappeared into Afghanistan. He explained that he had developed a deep need to experience combat with the mujahideen.

  Given Charlie’s relationship to the program, you might think he would have tried to keep this CIA covert operation a secret. But he was now becoming just a bit flaky, and he had brought along a Texas reporter to chronicle his trip into the war zone.

  He was offering the young man the experience of his life. But the morning before they were scheduled to go in, they went to the Khyber Pass, where the journalist looked down with horror at the sight of a Red Army tank brigade in ferocious action.

  Wilson experienced some butterflies himself, but the reporter had a wife and two children at home; he didn’t want to be a war correspondent. Ever the gentleman, Charlie gracefully let him bow out. Actually, it only made him feel all the more heroic when he embraced Sweetums in his Afghan robes and strode out onto the street to meet the mujahideen who had come to take him off to fight the Russians. She said she would be waiting for him at the American consulate when he returned.

  In a four-wheel-drive, surrounded by bearded Afghans carrying AK-47s, with an extra one set aside for him, Charlie felt that he had now crossed the Rubicon. He had, however, made one major mistake. Over dinner the night before in Islamabad, he had told Zia of his plans. The
Pakistani president, famous for his perpetual smile, had kept his poker face. He had even told Charlie that he envied him. Inshallah, God willing, they would meet soon to discuss Wilson’s great adventure. But even as Wilson was passing through the gate of Zia’s residence, the president, who ruled his country by martial law, had ordered his intelligence chief, General Akhtar, to stop Wilson. They couldn’t afford to lose this man. He was too important to Pakistan.

  This was not the kind of mission Brigadier Yousaf relished, but he set off for Peshawar at 4:30 in the morning, and by 6:30 he had mobilized all of the ISI assets throughout the frontier city. Yousaf had spies everywhere in Peshawar. The ISI had bugged Dean’s Hotel, where Crandall had held his Cross Border meetings; they had waiters, hotel managers, and telephone operators throughout the city. Most important, the ISI had eyes and ears everywhere in the vast Afghan population—particularly in the headquarters and in compounds where the commanders and leaders of the different political parties lived with their armed followers.

  It was only a matter of hours before Yousaf’s men spotted a tall foreigner entering Abdul Haq’s walled compound. Haq was the natural choice for Wilson’s guide to the jihad. He was probably the U.S. reporters’ favorite mujahideen commander, a brave, young fundamentalist with enormous charm.

  Yousaf controlled Haq’s right to be in Peshawar, not to mention his access to CIA weapons; nevertheless, Haq refused to consider his directive. The Afghan said he had no choice but to take the congressman in, no matter what Zia or the brigadier or anyone else said. Yousaf had just run head-on into the Pashtun’s ancient code of honor, hospitality, and revenge. Haq explained that he had already given his word; Wilson was now under his protection, and by his code he must fulfill his commitment to take the American into the war zone and return him safely.

  So in spite of Brigadier Yousaf and the iron control of the ISI, later that day the congressman was speeding through the tribal zone in Haq’s four-wheel-drive, one of those vehicles that Larry Crandall’s Cross Border program had given to the commander to spread goodwill. Dressed like a holy warrior, Wilson was preparing himself emotionally for whatever they might run into, when a jeep coming from the border signaled them to pull over. The driver reported heavy fighting between two tribes up ahead. Wilson’s driver got a very worried look on his long Afghan face when a Pakistani tribal guard ran up to them with news that the entire road was caught up in the fighting.

  With the sound of intense gunfire and explosions close by, the driver turned the vehicle around and headed back to Peshawar. Apologizing profusely, he explained that his orders had been to take Wilson into Afghanistan, to protect him there, and to bring him back safely. He would not be forgiven if he led Commander Haq’s guest to his death before they had even crossed the border.

  It didn’t take Wilson long to figure out what had happened, and by the time he burst into the Peshawar house of Kurt Loebeck, the CBS stringer who had introduced him to Abdul Haq, Wilson was beside himself with rage. He knew he had been taken. Loebeck listened with amazement as the congressman got General Akhtar on the phone and lit into the intelligence chief: “It’s my war, goddamn it. I’m paying for it, and I’m damn well going to see it.”

  Under normal circumstances, Akhtar did not take well to outsiders lecturing him. In his shadowy ISI empire, his word was law. But Akhtar had absolutely no interest in provoking Wilson’s fury. Nor did Foreign Minister Yaqub Khan, who remembers this confrontation as a matter of the gravest national concern. “We had to ask, What if he were killed on such a trip…. For Charlie it was a romantic adventure. For us it was a horrible position without any possible benefit.”

  Ultimately it was Zia’s dilemma, so the call was passed on to him. Zia had many reasons for not wanting Charlie to go into Afghanistan, not the least of which was that it violated his strict rule against any U.S. government officials entering the war from his country. He did not even acknowledge that Pakistan was helping the mujahideen, much less that it was working with the CIA, and here Wilson had been planning to take a reporter in with him. But the real reason went far deeper than that, and Zia could not spell it out.

  Pakistan was then facing a historic threat to its own survival, and strange as it may seem, Zia saw Charlie Wilson as an indispensable part of the country’s national defense. That year that India had mobilized again, and Zia and his staff had been forced to contemplate Pakistan’s chances if war should break out. The picture was incredibly grim. For one thing, India had the bomb. It had exploded a nuclear device back in 1974, and no one doubted that it had the ability to wipe out Pakistan. Beyond that, India’s huge army had already defeated Pakistan in three wars. To add to Zia’s paranoia, he considered India a virtual client state of the Soviet Union. With Hinds now being shot out of the sky by ISI-delivered Stingers, and Black Tulips flying even more dead soldiers back to Russia, no one needed to point out to Zia that this was a moment when Moscow might well encourage India to go for broke.

  The great unpredictable element in this entire mix, the unknown that threatened to unravel absolutely everything for Zia, was the matter of the bomb—or, rather, the intense national effort then being mounted in Pakistan to build an Islamic bomb. If the American Congress were confronted with evidence that Pakistan was on the verge of having a bomb, there was no question it would trigger an immediate move to cut off all foreign aid.

  It was all quite unfair from Zia’s point of view. No one in the Reagan administration had any illusions about Pakistan’s bomb-building program. Even Zia’s democratic predecessor, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, had been working on the bomb. Nor would it have escaped any of the Reaganites that once Pakistan had a bomb, it would use American F-16s if it ever wanted to drop one on India.

  The dirty little secret of the Afghan war was that Zia had extracted a concession early on from Reagan: Pakistan would work with the CIA against the Soviets in Afghanistan, and in return the United States would not only provide massive aid but would agree to look the other way on the question of the bomb.

  Zia understood, however, that if he were ever caught red-handed, the White House could not protect him from the wrath of Congress. That was where Wilson, with his seat on the Appropriations subcommittee, came in. By now Zia knew how critical this committee was to Pakistan’s fate. There had already been one close call in 1985, when a Pakistani agent had been caught in the United States trying to buy Kryton high-speed triggers, the switching devices used to fire nuclear weapons. Steve Solarz, the powerful chairman of the South Asia subcommittee, had immediately called for hearings and it looked as if he were going to lead a battle to cut off the dictator. The CIA’s seventh floor was alarmed at what might happen to the Afghan program in the event of a cutoff. Ironically, the CIA had helped to bring on the crisis; part of its job was to expose Zia’s bomb-building efforts,* and every station chief in Islamabad had given this a high priority.

  At one point, Vernon Walters, a former CIA deputy director and Reagan’s U.N. ambassador, flew to Pakistan to warn Zia of the dangers for everyone if he persisted in this effort. Zia had looked him straight in the eye and told him the reports were not accurate. Pakistan was not building the bomb. It was as clear and sincere a statement as any head of state could make. When later asked about another outright misrepresentation he had once made, Zia explained to two high-level State Department officials, “It is permissible to lie for Islam.”

  But in 1985 there was no way for Zia to explain away the Kryton triggers. Nor was it possible to imagine a more perfect issue for Steve Solarz to pursue than the bashing of Zia ul-Haq. What could be more popular for a leading Jewish congressman from New York than to kill an Islamic bomb?

  The White House had done what it could to convince Congress not to cut off Pakistan. Wilson understood that this was a battle that could not be won with debating points; reportedly, he went to Solarz armed with certain classified intelligence about India’s nuclear program. He is said to have suggested that India might be more exposed than Pakistan when it ca
me to the issue of the bomb.

  The crisis passed, but Pakistan didn’t halt work on the nuclear program. Zia was no less committed to this objective than Roosevelt had been during World War II when he’d commissioned the Manhattan Project. The acquisition of essential devices like Kryton triggers, which could be acquired only in the United States, would have to be pursued. With the Indian threat looming, the Pakistanis were not about to stop taking risks, and Zia had every reason to believe that somewhere, sometime, another of his agents might well be caught. If that happened, he would need Charlie as his last line of defense on the nuclear issue.*

  These were some of the thoughts that weighed heavily on the president of Pakistan when he found himself on the phone with an enraged Charlie Wilson. Zia had always gone the extra mile to be flexible with Charlie. The strict Muslim, so vilified for reimposing fundamentalist Islamic codes, had never complained about the congressman bringing his beauty queens and belly dancers to his strict Islamic state. But now Charlie was demanding the right to experience combat with the mujahideen. He wanted the dictator to help him risk his life in Afghanistan.

  As a true believer, Zia was ultimately a fatalist. It was either written in the Great Book that Charlie Wilson should die at this time or it was not. On the phone he told his very difficult American friend that he would send his helicopter to Peshawar the next morning to pick him up. In Islamabad they would make plans for the trip inside. But Charlie would have to give Akhtar time to set it up properly. There would be no reporters, no loose talk to alert the Soviets to his intentions. The trip would be everything Charlie wanted, but he would have to do it on Zia’s terms.

  Once Zia had given his word, Charlie was mollified. And so with Colonel Rooney running interference, the congressman and his true love headed off for the exotic leg of their junket. In Hong Kong, Charlie bought clothes for Sweetums and several suits and shirts for himself. The Red Chinese were circumspect. There were no brass bands and no entry to their secret weapons factories. At Wilson’s request they did arrange to have several survivors of the great Long March brief this important congressman on how Mao, Chou En-lai, and the Communists had made their way to victory in the 1948 revolution and how they had later trained and armed the North Vietnamese.