Charlie Wilson's War (43 page)

On this occasion, Wilson assumed that the young man with glasses who talked with so little charisma was a brilliant technician, but certainly not the author of a plan to give the mujahideen a chance to win. Vickers had been his normal impressive self, talking about how a new weapons mix would radically change things for the mujahideen on the ground. But it was the part about the helicopters that finally broke through for Wilson.

Vickers explained that it was not necessary to look for a single new weapon to serve as a “silver bullet.” The way to defeat Soviet air power was by introducing a symphony of different weapons that, when put together, would change the balance in favor of the mujahideen. He then painted a verbal portrait of the mélange of weapons he was urging Gust to deploy to bring down the Hind.

Avrakotos watched silently from the sidelines as Vickers worked his spell on Wilson. Instead of just the 12.7mm machine gun—the Dashika—with its one-thousand-meter range, the Afghans needed far more 14.5mm heavy machine guns, with twice the range and greater penetrating power. And while Oerlikons were expensive and static, their shells, which explode on impact, could fell an aircraft from thousands of meters away. The final element in this mix, Vickers suggested, should be an increase in the number of surface-to-air missiles purchased by the Agency, by twenty to thirty fold, in order to take the air war to the Soviets. The heat-seeking Soviet-designed SA-7 was able to fly five thousand meters up into the tail of a MiG while the British Blowpipe was operator-controlled and could not be thwarted by flares.

It was like having his own intellectual hit man, and Gust could feel Charlie’s excitement as Vickers concluded by conceding that none of these weapons individually would be that effective, but the whole would be greater than the sum of the parts. It was their collective impact that must be considered, because all they needed to do was convince the Soviet pilots that this mix of diverse anti-aircraft weaponry existed and was in the hands of the guerrillas. Every Soviet pilot would then know that there was no one diversionary tactic they could rely on. As it stood, the Hind could stay well out of range of the Dashikas and blast the mujahideen with impunity. And by dropping a few flares they could throw off any heat-seeking SA-7. But once the weapons mix was in place, they simply wouldn’t know what the mujahideen might have coming up at them. “The idea is to make their assholes pucker up,” Avrakotos threw in.

More important, Vickers concluded, once this mix of anti-air was employed, it would force the pilots to fly higher; and once they did, they’d be far less effective and wouldn’t be able to terrorize the mujahideen on the ground.

The day after Vickers’s virtuoso performance, Avrakotos returned to Wilson’s office and the two men talked money. With Wilson’s help, the Afghan program was now being funded at $500 million, half of which was from Congress and half from Saudi matching funds. Avrakotos informed Wilson that they might need more money.

Avrakotos was now moving deeper into his embrace with this potentially dangerous congressman. The Agency still suspected that Wilson might have some financial interest in the Oerlikons, and while these suspicions were still running strong, Charlie announced that his great friend Mohammed Abu Ghazala, the defense minister of Egypt, would be willing to sell the CIA the weapons the Afghans needed to bring down the Soviet helicopter.

Avrakotos, of course, knew that the Soviets had previously equipped the Egyptian army. The Agency was already doing some business with the Egyptians, but it was never easy to organize anything with them. Abu Ghazala’s message was that he had eight hundred SA-7s and a mule-portable Soviet anti-aircraft gun called the ZSU-23 that he was willing to sell. He had already invited Wilson to inspect them, and Charlie wanted Gust to go to Cairo with him to check them out.

For Gust, this was a truly nerve-racking proposition, both tempting and menacing. Mohammed Abu Ghazala was widely considered to be the second most powerful man in Egypt as well as a friend of the United States. But the Justice Department was reportedly investigating a shipping company that Abu Gazalla and a former Agency case officer had set up to transport goods provided by U.S. foreign assistance to Egypt. There were allegations of corruption. It was doubly awkward because the ex-CIA man, Tom Clines, was an old friend and shady business partner of that greatest of all outlaw ex-CIA men, Ed Wilson. As chance would have it, it was Clines who had drafted the multimillion dollar plan for Ed Wilson that Charlie had presented to Somoza so many years before. This complicated tangle was hardly worth unraveling except for the stark question that sprang out in Avrakotos’s mind: was he going to get to Egypt only to discover that Charlie Wilson, the congressman he had now entered into a noble conspiracy with, was corrupt?

I
n the fall of 1984, Charlie Wilson defeated his Republican opponent in the general election easily. Back in official Washington, and particularly on the seventh floor of Langley, Wilson was now perceived as a permanent fact of life in the capital—an unpredictable, rule-breaking maverick who was dangerous to cross.

His most important House ally in the Afghan struggle hadn’t been so lucky. Doc Long was defeated that year in spite of a $600,000 war chest—a major setback for Israel, which lost its most well-positioned and fanatically supportive congressional patron. For Wilson, it meant he would have to champion Zia’s aid package on the Foreign Operations subcommittee all by himself.

It was a time of many transitions for Charlie. Joanne Herring had accepted a marriage proposal from a Houston millionaire, Lloyd Davis, a particularly suspicious Texan who didn’t approve of Wilson and insisted that his fiancée stop seeing him. Charlie wasn’t invited to the wedding Joanne organized in Lyford Cay, in the Bahamas. It was typically grand. She had everyone dress in white, and then she and her new husband left on safari for their honeymoon.

All of a sudden, Charlie’s muse was gone. But by then he was already swept up by the momentous forces that she had set into motion. She had pulled him out of his midlife crisis, taught him once again to believe in the special destiny that awaited him, inspired him, and then selected roles for him and Zia ul-Haq to play as champions of her freedom fighters. It wasn’t easy for her to turn away from this shared crusade to rid the world of Communist tyranny. Wilson, however, faced a new set of challenges for the game, which now had to be played against the Red Army. For that battle, his newfound friend from the CIA was a far more suitable companion.

The two men had agreed to meet in Cairo the week before Thanksgiving to buy, or at least consider buying, anti-aircraft weapons that Field Marshal Mohammed Abu Ghazala had told Wilson would be perfect against the Russian gunships. The entire American entourage was to be received as the official guests of the defense minister, who'd promised to let them review the Egyptian military’s entire arsenal.

True to his vow never to move in a Muslim land again without a good Christian girl by his side, Wilson had invited along Trish Wilson, the pretty blond congressional secretary he’d had dinner with the night of his hit-and-run accident. The coincidence of their shared last names would be helpful when booking rooms in the stricter Muslim states. As usual, Charlie’s traveling companion was not brought along for romance alone. Her principal role was to serve as the wide-eyed innocent witnessing and appreciating the astonishing status Wilson enjoyed in the worlds he was about to take her through.

Traveling out of the United States for the first time in her life, Trish was in awe as they flew first-class, then checked into a lavish suite at the Marriott—a colonial extravaganza built for Empress Eugénie in 1869, when she came to open the Suez Canal. The hotel was close to the pyramids and, as the days unfolded, Charlie’s girl played her role perfectly—she saved every napkin, menu, bar of soap, and postcard, and even took photographs of their seats on the plane.

Gust’s trip was a bit more mundane. Unlike Charlie, he flew tourist class and checked in at the decidedly more pedestrian Ramses Hilton across town. Accompanying him were three tough and deeply skeptical paramilitary experts: Art Alper, the demolition and sabotage man from Technical Services; Nick Pratt, a marine major on temporary duty with the PM branch; and his new military adviser, Mike Vickers. All three had warned Gust on the flight across the ocean that the gun Abu Ghazala was hawking, the ZSU-23, was even less suitable than the Oerlikon. But Gust had explained that part of their mission was diplomatic. They had to give the weapon a chance, and if it didn’t work he needed them to back him up with explanations.

The three military pros were all a bit tense since they knew full well that it was highly unusual to have a congressman pushing specific weapons for a covert program. The general assumption among them was that Wilson had a piece of the action. The marine, Nick Pratt, who had just come back from test-firing the Oerlikons in Switzerland, was a particularly straitlaced fellow who viewed Wilson with such distaste that he used an alias when introducing himself to the congressman, steadfastly refusing to reveal his real name. Avrakotos, meanwhile, was simply hoping against hope that Charlie would not fail the ethics tests that lay ahead. But for now the congressman, because of his relationship with the defense minister, was calling the shots. So Gust checked in with the station and set off across town to find Charlie.

Avrakotos is an extreme type-A personality. He can’t bear to be trapped in traffic and actually drives on sidewalks to circumvent traffic jams. But that’s not possible in Cairo, a city so overcrowded that an estimated two million people sleep in cemeteries. Stopped in hopeless gridlock, he cursed Wilson and the fates for causing him to be stuck in a seamy hotel all the way across town.

By the time he arrived at Charlie’s door he was sweaty and stressed, which made Wilson’s appearance even more startling. The congressman acted as if he were on the second week of a Riviera holiday. Gust reacalls, “Charlie was in an open white shirt. Next to him was Trish in a white jumpsuit and I said to myself, ‘Motherfucker, look at this piece of ass.’ Some women can wear panties that show through their clothes in a way that drives you crazy. This one brought out the Greek in me and Charlie, of course, knew it.”

A more unsettling sight for Avrakotos was Denis Neill, a lobbyist for the Egyptian Defense Ministry, standing behind Trish. It was more than Gust could believe. Neill might have been Wilson’s good friend, but it was hard not to conclude that he was walking into a corrupt bit of wheeling and dealing. How was he going to explain the presence of this particular American lobbyist, who seemed to be traveling with Wilson, to his three already suspicious colleagues?

Gust tried to be diplomatic, explaining that there were rules he had to follow and he could not talk business with Neill in the room. When Charlie asked if Trish could stay, Gust responded, “I don’t mind. I’ll stare at her all night. But I won’t be able to talk very much.” So Neill was dismissed and Trish sent into the adjoining bedroom, where she immediately put her ear to the door.

Once they were alone, Charlie told Gust that he had dined with the field marshal the night before and that everything was set up for the CIA’s purchases. At that dinner, Mohammed and Charlie had placed rival fifths of Cutty Sark in front of each other and begun swapping jokes and matching drinks. It was a particularly exquisite exchange because the two had delightful business to transact. There was money to be made for Egypt but, more important, a noble crusade to save the Afghans. To every weapon Charlie reported the Agency was seeking, Mohammed responded, “No problem. We have exactly what you want.” As Wilson recalls the dinner, “After the first fifth of Scotch I started telling Mohammed what we were going to do for him: we were going to save the Egyptian economy, modernize their ammunition factories, and together destroy the godless Communists.”

Charlie Wilson’s amazingly intimate relationship with Abu Ghazala was another remarkable coincidence that seemed to shape the buildup of the Afghan war. As defense minister, Abu Ghazala was one of America’s most important partisans in the Middle East, decidedly pro–United States, and, above all, not fundamentalist. In an economy and society so overloaded with corruption and bureaucracy that nothing worked, he had managed to create a separate world for the military—their own schools and housing, even their own farms. In its own way, Abu Ghazala’s army, with its opportunity for advancement based on merit, was far more democratic than any other institution in Egyptian life. And from the standpoint of U.S. interests, it was his military alone that made it possible for Egypt to remain stubbornly pro–United States, in marked contrast to most other Arab countries, which tended to side with the Soviets.
*
Mohammed was easily one of the most important men in Egypt, but no one in the U.S. government other than Charlie Wilson had such a raucous, intensely personal relationship with him. “We were soul brothers in every way,” explains Wilson. “Pussy, whiskey, and conversation.”

They had met in Washington during the Camp David negotiations when Abu Ghazala, now a two-star general, was a military attaché. Wilson had been moved by Egypt’s willingness to establish relations with Israel, and Mohammed was the man through whom he personalized it all. Beyond that, Abu Ghazala was a big drinker with a robust personality. Charlie invited the dashing young general to all his Washington parties. “He liked my women and wanted to know their friends,” Charlies says.

After Mohammed returned from Washington, Anwar Sadat gave him his third star and appointed him defense minister. Abu Ghazala had been on the parade-reviewing stand when the Muslim Brotherhood gunned down Sadat in 1981. Mohammed was hit in the ear, and the television clips from the event show him taking charge of the counterattack, ordering the bodyguards into action against the assassins. By that time, Wilson had become a passionate congressional champion of Egyptian military and economic assistance, so important to Egypt that he had been invited as a guest of honor to that very parade—indeed, to sit between Sadat and Abu Ghazala. Only a last-minute cancellation had spared Charlie this brush with death.

Since then Wilson had become perhaps Egypt’s most valuable congressional champion. Denis Neill had skillfully lobbied his old friend, but as always, it was the personal connection that energized the congressman. “I liked Egypt, I liked Sadat, and I love Mohammed,” he explains. “Helping my friends, what the fuck?”

With Trish exiled to the bedroom, Charlie had fleshed in all of this history, culminating with the unusual commitment that his friend the defense minister had made: the field marshal was prepared to waive all rules and regulations in selling Egyptian equipment to the CIA. No paperwork would be necessary, no governmental approvals. Not even President Mubarak need be consulted. It could all be done with a handshake because of Abu Ghazala’s confidence in Wilson.

Abu Ghazala arranged for a demonstration the following morning of the weapon he insisted would be perfect for the Afghans, the mule-portable ZSU-23. The field marshal didn’t attend; it was below his dignity. He left the fieldwork to his generals, who were all waiting anxiously as the Americans gathered in the desert. Gust noted with dismay that Denis Neill was once again with Charlie, all dressed up in his “Alan Ladd desert suit.’” Avrakotos was still offended at the idea of a lobbyist for the Egyptian defense minister glomming onto a CIA mission, so he perversely enjoyed watching Denis “sweating his balls off in his suit.”

A surreal sight awaited the odd delegation of Americans as they drove through the desert to the spot the Egyptians had chosen for the demonstration. Abu Ghazala’s generals had not only brought the ZSU-23s into the desert but also a collection of round white tables with umbrellas and red-and-white-checked tablecloths, so that the honored guests could sit in comfort. Each table sported a lunch box filled with Kentucky Fried Chicken.

The conditions couldn’t have been less pleasant, however. Wanting to simulate the mountainous terrain of Afghanistan, the Egyptians had chosen the sloping incline of a landfill over a sprawling desert garbage dump. Furthermore, no parasol could tame the desert heat that day. It was at least 110 degrees in the shade, everyone was soaking, and the hot wind made Avrakotos feel like he was in a sauna with a fan running. There were pitchers of Pepsi-Cola, which the Americans drank incessantly, but no one could think much about eating the fried chicken.

Then things began to take on a comedic dimension, so much so that it was hard for Alper, Pratt, and Vickers not to smirk at one another. The Egyptian gunners were standing at attention as a three-star general who talked as if he had been educated at Oxford gave a rousing description of the ZSU-23’s attributes. The key point he made—at the urging of his advisers, Gust had insisted on this demonstration—was that after his men fired at a target across the desert, the Americans would see how easily the gun could be broken down and moved by mule up the incline.

Even the doubting weapons experts were suitably impressed with the first part of the exercise. They could see through their binoculars how smoothly and accurately the guns fired. The Egyptians then began to strip the gun down to move it up the hill. The object, after all, was to have a gun that the mujahideen could actually transport among the mountains of Afghanistan.

Charlie was still sitting tall in his seat, not at all bothered by Vickers’s tactful effort to explain why this gun simply would not work. By this time, the Egyptians had put the six-hundred-pound base of the gun on wheels, and several mules had been harnessed to haul the dead weight up the long, steep incline.

“Commence the exercise,” shouted the general, whereupon a squad of soldiers pulled the blocks out from behind the ZSU’s wheels and began urging the mules forward. Gust is charitable in his memory of this moment: “Egyptians win my heart because no matter how bad they fuck up, they always smile. Those fucking mules started going backward. They were in danger of going ass over head backward, whereupon twenty Egyptians appeared from nowhere trying to hold the mules and push them back. They almost lost all the Egyptians as well.”

Vickers watched with astonishment as the soldiers desperately jammed rocks behind the wheels to keep the gun cart from racing backward down the landfill. Once it was stabilized, they would bravely began again, each time with even more desperate efforts to stop the inevitable movement in the wrong direction. “If there had been a way to will it up the mountain, they would have,” recalled Avrakotos. Finally, after repeated Egyptian tries and failures, Wilson himself ordered an end to the exercise. In an effort to spare the Egyptians further embarrassment, Gust said with enthusiasm, “This chicken is great. Thanks for the demonstration.”