I had been told that I needed to get a Democrat if I wanted to make headway helping the Afghans fight the Russians. My Republican friends said they hadn’t even been able to get three million dollars for Nicaragua to fight the Sandinista communists in our own hemisphere. “You’ve got to get a Democrat,” they said. “What about Charlie?” He was on the two committees I needed, including the all-powerful House Appropriations Committee. The committees had the money—and after I gave him a call, I had Charlie.
If you didn’t read the book or see the movie Charlie Wilson’s War, maybe I should explain how it fits into this story. These are the bare facts (“bare” being the key word because that’s how Charlie liked to play—bare, in the hot tub):
While I was toodling around the world collecting kings and fighting communists, Charlie was busy with Miss Universe, Willie Nelson, and his gang of guys who threw beer parties and salivated over stories of his conquests with Playboy pullouts. Charlie collected women like baseball cards. But Charlie was not just a playboy. He was a very serious and successful congressman. He had done significant things for Texas and was very admired by the top executives in the state for his acumen and his business accomplishments for free enterprise.
Charlie and I started spending time together regularly. He told me, as if it had happened years ago, about a ballerina whom he’d been dating. I thought it was a very romantic story, not dreaming it had just happened. She had said to him, “Pass or play.” He passed to date me, a decision I wouldn’t know about for some time, with consequences that played out at Charlie’s funeral.
In the beginning I had several different people escorting me to parties. But suddenly it was always Charlie because he was always around. He was so around, there was no room for anyone else. He did not seem to mind staying in the back of the house. In fact, he did not seem to mind anything. My heart began to heal.
Charlie was in a lot of trouble over his lifestyle, which I did not understand because I never saw the troublesome parts of it. Some of the more questionable elements shown in the movie came before me, however, such as the belly dancer, who predated my arrival in Charlie’s life by a year. I met the belly dancer during the filming of the movie, and I liked her. She was a sweet girl and deeply appreciative of Charlie. She hadn’t seen the world before Charlie took her on that trip to the Middle East, and now she’s an airline hostess and seeing lots of it.
There was one questionable element that came up early on. On our first date, Charlie and I joined friends at the Kennedy Center for an event. We had such a marvelous time, Charlie said, “It’s too early [it was eleven o’clock] to go home. Let’s go to my apartment. I have the record from Cats [the newest hit on Broadway], the best view of Washington, and champagne.”
My friends and I accepted.
Charlie was very proud of his apartment. He had good taste, and even though it spelled s-t-u-d, it did have a spectacular view. There was just one discordant note: the hot tub. I shall never forget my dismay when my friends, some outstanding blue bloods who did not know Charlie, walked in to see the king-sized hot tub, significantly close to the king-sized bed. What would they think of me as they envisioned his hot-tub habitués? I wished myself on a deserted, unnamed island in the Bahamas. Charlie had no idea we were shocked, however; he was called “Good Time Charlie” for a good reason. I hurriedly explained to our friends that this was my first date with Charlie and I was ready for it to be my last.
But it wasn’t. Charlie taught me to laugh again when I never thought I could.
Naturally, my interests in communism and the Afghans came up in our conversations. If Charlie wanted to be with me, he had to care too. He listened attentively… then gave me the same glazed look that I’m getting everywhere today. Still, he was around all the time, so he had to listen. The movie indicated that it was Dan Rather’s newscast that introduced him to the issues in Afghanistan, but what really happened was that Charlie watched my son Robin King’s documentary at my house in Houston and was shocked, saddened, and horrified along with the more than five hundred thousand people around the world whom Charles Fawcett showed it to privately.
The film had a great impact on him, but he had limited interest in Arab affairs. He supported Israel. Otherwise his world was the United States, his Texas constituents, and the good old boys with whom he played. Afghanistan was half a world away. Finally, however, thanks to Robin’s documentary and my talking, he began to really listen. The facts that I presented made sense to him because he was smart. He began to see communism as the threat it was. This insignificant country began to seem real to him. As a Texan, he identified with the fighting spirit and bravery of these men railing for independence against tremendous odds, fighting for freedom, no matter what the cost. Soon Charlie became their greatest advocate. He wanted the good guys to win and was determined to help them.
But many things were evolving simultaneously. One night at dinner, Charlie got up, excused himself, and found a florist at eight in the evening. He bought every flower in the shop and came marching back with an arm full of flowers, followed by more in the arms of the waiters. He put them, three-deep, around the table. (While Charlie was surrounding me with flowers, labor leader Vernon Jordan was trying to play footsie with my friend Lorraine under the table! Lorraine, who became Lady Palmer, now lives in a one-hundred-room palace with a sterling silver staircase and dashing husband Lord Adrian.)
Maybe I fell in love with Charlie that night. In any case, from then on we were a team.
Around this time, in 1983, my cast, at last, came off. The doctors said they hoped it would be straight and strong. No one had seen this leg for eight months—the break had been a bad one. When my cast came off, Beau asked, “Which leg did you break? They look exactly the same.” And they did! Talk about somebody up there…
New again, I could walk, dance, and ski, and I did, by the grace of God.
Charlie and I could now take walks together. We danced all night every night. One night Charlie kissed me, and I liked it. I liked it a lot!
“Go to the French air show with me. It’s wonderful fun. We’ll have a ball,” he said.
British Aerospace had already invited me to the show, at which aircraft from all over the world are showcased and demonstrated, to discuss accepting a job as consultant, as I now had something to offer companies they were willing to pay for. My access to leaders in the Middle Eastern world was almost unmatched. Businessmen would pay me to make appointments for them, which I could get and they could not. I did not have to sell their companies, deals, or products, but simply open the doors. I did not have to use my friends. I only had to ask if they would give an appointment to a company interested in doing business with their country. I was always careful to tell my friends that I was being paid. This made them laugh, as this was expected in their world. People were paid for everything. Even the gatekeeper in the Middle East expects and needs a tip. I began to make real money on my own. The lessons I had spent my whole life learning were about to pay off when I was alone and needed them most. My toolbox was full of valuable tools.
“Yes!” I said to him. “Let’s go to the air show.”
Charlie asked for my passport. It stated that I was five years older than he. (I hadn’t learned, as my friend Eva Gabor did, to have the date changed.) Ouch! This guy who liked really young chicks now had an older one. I sent the passport, noting, “I’m sorry about the stork,” referring of course to the birthday stork, which had so rudely brought me home five years before Charlie. He wrote me the sweetest letter, saying that he was mad that I thought the stork mattered at all.
“I have adored you from the first moment we met and maybe before,” he wrote. “My crush has been an ill-kept secret. I miss you every moment we are apart. You are the light that dims all else.”
We went to the show and it was perfect. We danced into the morning, slept for a few hours, then got up to see the dawn. We went to everything in Paris, and I did not see or miss any of my fancy friends. I live
d in Charlie’s world just as I had in Bob’s. I did not know it, but I was looking for a shared life in which we would work as partners. But this was not God’s plan, as I was to learn later.
Charlie and I were good together. People loved to have us at their parties in Paris—our photos appeared everywhere. My picture was taken even more than the young starlets’. Charlie was happy. I was happy.
When I flew to England on the Concorde, with all expenses paid by a London banker who wanted to discuss my being his consultant, Charlie and I called each other every few hours—we were now really involved, but not intimately.
People who knew Charlie couldn’t believe it. This was a new Charlie, at least for the moment. He flew into Houston every weekend from Washington or I flew there. We talked at least six or seven times a day. The romance got so intense that we couldn’t bear not talking—we spoke every fifteen minutes, like a couple of teenagers. At this point, our relationship still hadn’t progressed past a kiss. (It did later—after he asked me to marry him.) We were having a glorious platonic time, laughing and playing like kids.
In the movie, they made so much of Charlie’s shenanigans, they forgot to show how smart he was and how good he was at what he did. It saddened me that the smokescreen of his playboy antics obscured his serious legislative skills. When he was with me, the brilliant, competent Charlie came out and totally eclipsed the handsome, dashing clown. Still, every minute with Charlie was a riot of fun.
Being a Democrat, Charlie had previously accepted President Jimmy Carter’s assertion that the Afghanistan situation was merely a “tribal” war. But at this point, Charlie had listened and understood all I had been saying about communism and its spread and its imminent danger to our country. He began to see that the world as we knew it was threatened by the Soviets’ march into Afghanistan. What if Hitler had been stopped in Poland, or MacArthur had been allowed to win in Korea? Think how many lives would have been saved and we would not be facing nuclear bombs in North Korea today. The Soviet Union would never have become a superpower without the treasuries and slave labor of the millions in Eastern Europe. The Soviets had taken Cuba and Angola, and now they were in Chile and Nicaragua and El Salvador, as well.
We knew we must stop them in Afghanistan now, before they got the Strait of Hormuz and cut off our lifeline to Middle Eastern oil. Soviet control of the strait would have ended American life (and luxury) as we’d come to know it, so Charlie and I decided to stop the Soviet communists in Afghanistan.
We were now seriously working together to open doors to save Afghanistan (and Pakistan). We knew we had to get arms to the mujahideen immediately before it was too late for them to save themselves. This was crucial because Afghans would fight when others would surrender. The Soviets were killing Afghans by the hundreds daily, the Russian pilots strafing women, children, everything that moved. We visited as many experts as Charlie could garner meetings with, and he had the power to get to anyone. It was agreed that a World War II antiaircraft gun, last made in Germany, was the only gun available to shoot down the murderous Hind helicopters. We hoped some could be found in a warehouse somewhere, but we didn’t know where.
“We must find that gun,” said Charlie. “Do you know any Germans?”
I did. I knew exactly the right German—Baron Bertrand Von Stohrer, an executive at Oerlikon-Bührle. He was a social giant, as handsome as a movie star, and president of Oerlikon, one of the largest arms producers in the world. He lived in Rome, and he was our man.
See how interestingly God works? The aristocratic contacts I made at parties provided exactly the right person at exactly the right time and place to provide exactly the right tools to begin to end global communism.
The smaller arms we needed had to come from an outside source as well. To protect Zia from invasion and to not involve the United States in a potential World War III, none of the arms could be marked “Made in the USA.” We found what we needed in Egypt. Charlie knew the minister of defense, so we flew out to meet him.
The scene in the movie is a scream, but it’s wrong (Hollywood used a bit of poetic license). In it, Charlie has a belly dancer seducing the Egyptian minister so that Egypt will buy Soviet-made arms from the Israeli patriot Zvi Rafiah to ship to the mujahideen in Afghanistan.
In actuality, I was the one who was there with Charlie, Zvi, and Egyptian defense minister Abu Ghazala—not the seductive belly dancer (she went the year before), or CIA agent Gust Avrakotos, for that matter. Zvi did sell the arms to the Egyptians, and the Saudi Arabians did pay for them and half the war. Did you know that the Saudis matched the United States dollar for dollar in that war and in Desert Storm? They have supported the United States over and over. It is not the Saudi government that causes trouble—it is terrorists like the late Osama bin Laden and his hoods. For helping us, the Saudi king has a price of millions on his head from some of his own countrymen (members of Al-Qaeda).
One morning my father stormed into the room and announced, “My daughter is an arms dealer!!”
“No, I’m not, Daddy,” I replied. “Someone else is buying, someone else is selling, and someone else is paying. I’m just putting them together.” He shook his head and sighed.
After the meeting with the Egyptians, we traveled to Rome to meet with Von Stohrer, but en route we stopped in Paris for a night. We couldn’t help ourselves—we thought we were in love. It was Charlie’s birthday or near it. One of my French buddies, Count Pierre-Alain de Malleray, took us to a famous Russian restaurant where they played violins. We had the best table in the house. The musicians came to our table and played just for us…
We went to a disco, and right in the middle of the dance floor, Charlie stopped, looked at me, and said, “I love you. Marry me. We can do anything together.” Once again a man was telling me that the sky was the limit. The sky still seemed the limit the next morning as we boarded a plane for Rome to meet Von Stohrer and arrange the sale. It was adventure, unending adventure.
Finally, everything was signed, sealed, and hopefully on its way to being delivered by Von Stohrer.
Oerlikon had the guns, and Von Stohrer arranged everything. Now we had to get the weapons into the mountains of Afghanistan. They were heavy, though, and trucks could not carry them because there were no roads. We cornered the world market on mules, and the weapons were quickly en route.
In Egypt, we arranged for the machine guns and other arms to be available in Israel and Egypt, arranged for the Saudi payments, and convinced the Israelis and Egyptians that they could trust each other enough to complete this covert action. This was really something special, as it was against the law in both countries to even fly from one country to the other. The only way to travel from one to the other was by private plane because each country still considered the other an enemy, despite President Carter’s Camp David accords. Our passports had to leave Israel unmarked for us to enter Egypt.
In Israel we visited Zvi, whose lovely Jewish wife, at Charlie’s request, took me to many of the Christian shrines. Charlie had such a sweet side. He thought of things like this even in the midst of such turmoil.
We had the guns. Now we had to get the votes for the U.S. share of the funding.
It was a covert operation… but it wasn’t that covert. This initiative involved millions of dollars, and Congress had to know about it and vote for it. Thank God that’s the American way. So many people played a significant role. For instance, when the vote came up at the crucial moment in the Senate, there were two Republican senators who were undecided: Pete Wilson of California and Ted Stevens of Alaska.
John Tower, who was chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, was working feverishly to help, but he had not been able to get these two significant senators to commit. Charlie and I decided to give them the dinner of their lives in Washington, D.C.
I called a friend in London the day before. I knew I had to have a man of enormous stature and integrity to make our case, someone the senators would respect enough to really
listen to and who could earn their vote.
“You’ve got to come to this dinner,” I said to Lord Robert Cranborne, junior minister of defense. He was the heir to the Marquess of Salisbury, a portentous position in the English monarchy. The marquess precedes the queen at the opening of Parliament or during a coronation.
“Joanne, I can’t come. I have appointments,” he protested.
“Robert,” I said, “you’ve got to! Take the Concorde and fly back the next day. You can do it. You have to do it. Everything depends on you. They will listen to you.”
He came at his own (great) expense.
The fact that this great man would come on the Concorde for an overnight visit to talk to these two key senators made a difference. He really cared about stopping Soviet world domination. His brother had been killed in Afghanistan by the Soviets for photographing their atrocities. Robert thought supporting the Afghans was essential not just for the United States, but for the world, and his lucid argument turned the tide with these essential senators. They were great patriots, but they just weren’t sure about our getting involved in Afghanistan. Robert was a huge asset in gaining their understanding—and their votes.
It didn’t hurt a bit at this dinner that I served Cristal rosé, the world’s finest champagne. Cristal was known of, but Cristal rosé was little known and impossible to buy. I called the Cristal vineyards in France and cornered the market. I would buy the world’s supply to use for moments like these. It was created in 1876 for Czar Alexander II of Russia, who ruled that the bottles had to be clear instead of the typical green to prevent a bomb being placed inside. It was the most prized item in the world at the time, something most people had just read about. It was supposed to be as delicate on the tongue as nectar of the gods and cost a fortune because it was so rare. I kept it under my bed. Toasting the end of Soviet communism with the champagne of Russian czars was an ironic bit of history that made each sip more sweet.
Diplomacy and Diamonds Page 18