Charlie Wilson's War (71 page)

“Well, shit. How about $25 million?” McCurdy asked, meaning $25 million per quarter, $100 million for the year.

“How about $50 million?” Wilson responded. And $50 million a quarter is what they ultimately agreed on. With the Saudi contribution, that meant another $400 million for the mujahideen.

It was only the beginning of the extraordinary maneuvers Wilson had to make to push this bill through a highly reluctant Congress. By then even his most reliable ally, John Murtha, the chairman of the Defense Appropriations subcommittee, wanted to end the CIA program. Murtha was appalled at reports of the mujahideen’s drug trafficking, but in the end he stood with Charlie, and his support guaranteed the bill’s passage in the House. It was passed in the Senate that fall. The secret appropriation was hidden in the $298 billion Defense bill for fiscal year 1992. When it was presented for a vote, no one but the interested few noticed the $200 million earmarked for the Afghans.

And so, as the mujahideen were poised for their thirteenth year of war, instead of being cut off, it turned out to be a banner year. They found themselves with not only a $400 million budget but also with a cornucopia of new weaponry sources that opened up when the United States decided to send the Iraqi weapons captured during the Gulf War to the mujahideen.

However disgraceful the mujahideen’s conduct was in the following months, in April 1992 they managed to stop fighting one another long enough to take Kabul. Once again Charlie felt vindicated. He had stayed the course and allowed the victory that belonged to the Afghans to occur. But then everything became ugly. By August, the interim foreign minister, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, was outside of the capital, with his artillery shelling the positions of his former comrade in arms, the interim defense minister Ahmad Shah Massoud. Kabul, which had survived the entire Afghan war relatively intact, was suddenly subjected to intense urban warfare. Before it was over, close to 40 percent of the housing was destroyed; the art museum was leveled; the palace ravaged.

Under normal circumstances, such misuse of American resources should have led to a scandal or at least entered the American consciousness as an issue of concern. But the anarchy in Kabul was completely overshadowed by the historic events sweeping the world. In December 1991, the Soviet Union ceased to exist. Everywhere across the twelve time zones of the former Soviet Union, statues of Lenin were coming down and freedom was breaking out in a Russia reborn. People everywhere were now referring to the United States as the world’s lone superpower.

For the men who ruled the CIA, Afghanistan was acknowledged as the main catalyst that helped trigger these historic changes. Flush with the glory of tumbling dominoes and convinced that the Afghan campaign had been the key to it all, the Directorate of Operations moved to recognize the man who had made it possible. Without Charlie Wilson, Director Woolsey said in his comments, “History might have been hugely different and sadly different.” It wasn’t the parade that Charlie had sought, but then no other member of Congress, indeed no outsider, had ever been singled out by the CIA for such an accomplishment. If that’s where it all had ended for Charlie Wilson—standing tall at Langley that day with the fear of nuclear war fast receding and America now the world’s only superpower—then it truly would have been a Cold War fairy tale come true.

But that’s not the way history works. Inevitably, great events have unintended consequences. What no one involved anticipated was that it might be dangerous to awaken the dormant dreams and visions of Islam. Which is, of course, exactly what happened.

There were many early warnings well before Charlie’s award at Langley. In January of that year, a young Pakistani, Mir Aimal Kasi, walked down the line of cars at the gates of the CIA and calmly murdered two officers before escaping to Pakistan where he was embraced as a folk hero. The month after Kasi’s shooting spree at the CIA in February 1993, the World Trade Center was bombed. What emerged from the smoke was a clear indication that some of the veterans of the Afghan campaign now identified America as their enemy.

As early as a year before at Khost, a haunting portrait of the future was already in place: battle-hardened Afghan mujahideen, armed to the teeth and broken down into rival factions—one of the largest being a collection of Arab and Muslim volunteers from around the world. Pakistan’s former intelligence chief, Hamid Gul, maintains that over the course of the jihad, up to thirty thousand volunteers from other countries had come into Pakistan to take part in the holy war. What now seems clear is that, under the umbrella of the CIA’s program, Afghanistan had become a gathering place for militant Muslims from around the world, a virtual Mecca for radical Islamists.

The man Charlie described as “goodness personified,” Jalaluddin Haqani, had long been a gateway for Saudi volunteers, and for years the CIA had no problem with such associations. Osama bin Laden was one of those volunteers who could frequently be found in the same area where Charlie had been Haqani’s honored guest. As the CIA’s favorite commander, Haqani had received bags of money each month from the station in Islamabad. In the aftermath of 9/11, he would emerge as the number three target of the U.S. forces in Afghanistan.

As early as the Gulf War, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, long the main recipient of CIA weaponry, had articulated his belief that the United States was seeking world domination and control of Muslim oil. After the events of 9/11, he too became a target of his old patron when the CIA attempted to assassinate him with a Hellfire missile launched from an Agency-controlled Predator drone. Like the attempts on Haqani and bin Laden, the lack of success only enhanced the aura of invincibility surrounding those seen as enjoying Allah’s protection.

The presumption at Langley had been that when the United States packed its bags and cut off the Afghans, the jihad would simply burn itself out. If the Afghans insisted on killing one another, it would be a shame but not America’s problem. Perhaps that policy would have worked out had it been only weapons that we left behind. But the more dangerous legacy of the Afghan war is found in the minds and convictions of Muslims around the world. To them the miracle victory over the Soviets was all the work of Allah—not the billions of dollars that America and Saudi Arabia poured into the battle, not the ten-year commitment of the CIA that turned an army of primitive tribesmen into techno–holy warriors. The consequence for America of having waged a secret war and never acknowledging or advertising its role was that we set in motion the
spirit
of jihad and the belief in our surrogate soldiers that, having brought down one superpower, they could just as easily take on another.

The question that has puzzled so many Americans, “Why do they hate us?” is not so difficult to understand if you put yourself in the shoes of the Afghan veterans in the aftermath of the Soviet departure. Within months, the U.S. government “discovered” what it had known for the past eight years—that Pakistan was hard at work on the Islamic bomb. But with the Russians gone, sanctions were imposed and all military and economic assistance was cut off. The fleet of F-16s that Pakistan had already purchased was withheld. Within a year, the Clinton Administration would move to place Pakistan on the list of state sponsors of terrorism for its support of Kashmiri freedom fighters. The Pakistan military had long been the surrogates for the CIA, and every Afghan and Arab mujahid came to believe that America had betrayed the Pakistanis. And when the United States kept its troops (including large numbers of women) in Saudi Arabia, not just bin Laden but most Islamists believed that America wanted to seize the Islamic oil fields and was seeking world domination.

By the end of 1993, the six-year-old Cross Border Humanitarian Aid Program—the one sustained U.S. effort to create an infrastructure and blueprint for the rebuilding of Afghanistan—was cut off. The University of Nebraska educators who ran part of the program had appealed to the Clinton Administration for funds to at least warehouse the large store of textbooks that had already been printed, but even this was denied. There were no roads, no schools, just a destroyed country—and the United States was washing its hands of any responsibility. It was in this vacuum that the Taliban and Osama bin Laden would emerge as the dominant players. It is ironic that a man who had had almost nothing to do with the victory over the Red Army, Osama bin Laden, would come to personify the power of the jihad. In 1998, when bin Laden survived $100 million worth of cruise missiles targeted at him, it reinforced the belief that Allah had chosen to protect him against the infidels. Ironically, one of those cruise missiles struck the very spot where Charlie had slept in Haqani’s camp.

It’s not what Charlie Wilson had in mind when he took up the cause of the Afghans. Nevertheless, in spite of 9/11 and all the horrors that have flowed from it, he steadfastly maintains that it was all worth it and that nothing can diminish what the Afghans accomplished for America and the world with their defeat of the Red Army: “I truly believe that this caused the Berlin Wall to come down a good five, maybe ten, years before it would have otherwise. Over a million Russian Jews got their freedom and left for Israel; God knows how many were freed from the gulags. At least a hundred million Eastern Europeans are breathing free today, to say nothing of the Russian people. It’s the truth, and all those people who are enjoying those freedoms have no idea of the part played by a million Afghan ghosts. To this day no one has ever thanked them.

“They removed the threat we all went to sleep with every night, of World War III breaking out. The countries that used to be in the Warsaw Pact are now in NATO. These were truly changes of biblical proportion, and the effect the jihad had in accelerating these events is nothing short of miraculous.

“These things happened. They were glorious and they changed the world. And the people who deserved the credit are the ones who made the sacrifice. And then we fucked up the endgame.”

The story of Charlie Wilson and the CIA’s secret war in Afghanistan is an important, missing chapter of our recent past. Ironically, neither the United States government nor the forces of Islam will want this history to be known. But the full story of America’s central role in the Afghan jihad needs to be told and understood for any number of reasons. Clearly it’s not helpful for the world of militant Islam to believe that its power is so great that nothing can stop it. But the danger exists for us as well. It may not be welcomed by a government that prefers to see the rising tide of Islamic militancy as having no connection to our policies or our actions. But the terrible truth is that the group of sleeping lions that the United States roused may well have inspired an entire generation of militant young Muslims to believe that the moment is theirs.

To call these final pages an epilogue is probably a misnomer. Epilogues indicate that the story has been wrapped up, the chapter finished. This one, sadly, is far from over.

The reporting for this book spans fifteen years. It included repeated trips to Afghanistan, Pakistan, the former Soviet Union, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and numerous locations in the United States where people who had figured prominently in the Afghan war could be found. Nearly all of the key figures responsible for running this secret enterprise were interviewed and were generous in their cooperation. However, this book tells the story of activities so concealed from the central authorities of the government itself that no complete account exists in any archive.

The extensive recollections of Charlie Wilson and Gust Avrakotos form the backbone of the greater part of this narrative. Equally important are the scores of other interviews with central figures involved in this operation who sometimes had conflicting opinions but were able to confirm crucial aspects of this most unlikely story.

It was my good fortune to accompany Wilson on a number of his trips—inside Afghanistan itself; into the new Russia; with the royal family in Saudi Arabia; at presidential headquarters in Pakistan; and, memorably, at Charlie’s awards ceremony at Langley. The prickly Avrakotos was also generous with access on his travels, and much time was spent with him in Rome, Aliquippa, the Middle East, and McLean, Virginia.

In any story of this nature, the issue of motives needs to be addressed. The first point to make is that the core interviews were conducted in the enchanted light of a Cold War fairy tale come true during the early 1990s. At the time, inside the CIA, the Afghan campaign was seen as an authentic miracle. The participants were deeply proud of their roles and felt that this was a story that should be told.

In the time I spent with Gust Avrakotos over these many years, I was always haunted by Bernal Díaz’s sad commentary in the preface to his classic book about the experiences he had shared with Cortes, as a conquistador, when they set off for the New World for God, for country, and for gold: “I am now an old man, over eighty-four years of age, and have lost both sight and hearing; and unfortunately I have gained no wealth to leave my children and descendants, except this true story, which is a most remarkable one, as my readers will presently see.”

The following is an extensive, but by no means complete, list of those whose cooperation has made this history possible. As might be expected, some sources cannot be divulged. Certain people whose names it would be repetitious to list in every instance where their recollections were drawn on have been omitted.

Charlie in Texas, from boyhood to Congress: this account draws heavily on Wilson’s own recollections. But also I drew on interviews with the late congresswoman Barbara Jordan; Charlie’s sister Sharon Allison; Charles Schnabel; Charles Simpson, Charlie’s close friend; Joe Murray of Cox Newspapers; Larry L. King of
Texas Monthly
and
Harper’s
magazine; Molly Ivins of
Texas Monthly
and much else; and Paul Begala.

The general accounts of what Wilson himself describes as “the longest midlife crisis in history” come primarily from his own recollections. Many others supplied memorable details and flavor: Stuart Pierson, Wilson’s lawyer; former governor Ann Richards; Charles Simpson; Charles Schnabel; Carol Shannon; Diane Sawyer; Lori White; Molly Hamilton; Agnes Bundy; Elaine Lang; and indeed many others.

With regard to Charlie as a visible and invisible power on the Hill, I drew upon the insights of former speakers Tip O’Neill, Jim Wright, and Tom Foley; former majority leader Tony Coelho; former whip Bill Gray; David Obey, lately chairman of Appropriations; and many others from the Appropriations world, notably Representative John Murtha, the late Clarence “Doc” Long, and Silvio Conte, the ranking Republican on Appropriations; Representatives Joe McDade, Louis Stokes, and Bob Livingston. I also drew on interviews with the Washington lobbyist Denis Neill; former representative Steve Solarz; Esther Kurtz of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC); Maurice Rosenblatt; Zvi Rafiah; Ed Koch; and Representatives Henry Hyde, Bob Mrazek, Tom Downey, Bob Dornan, Dave McCurdy, Lee Hamilton, Edward Boland, and Pat Schroeder.

Wilson’s misadventures in Nicaragua are described again by Wilson himself but also by the late Tacho Somoza; Ed Wilson, formerly with the CIA but now serving a life sentence; Pat Derian, Jimmy Carter’s assistant secretary of state for human rights; former Representative Jack Murphy; and Tina Simons, formerly of both Ed and Charlie Wilson’s staffs, who is now in the federal witness protection program.

Wilson’s entry into the Afghan arena in response to Dan Rather’s report (as well as others’) was described by Jim Van Wagenen of the Defense Appropriations subcommittee staff and was supplemented with Wilson’s own account. Dan Rather was also interviewed.

Charlie himself described his trip to Sabra and Shatilla and his extreme disappointment and sadness at discovering that the Israelis had permitted a massacre of innocents. Wilson himself described the poisoning of his dog and the revenge that he took. He also described his first meeting with Zia ul-Haq, which occurred on this trip; Joanne and Zia discussed this first encounter, too.

The overall account of Wilson’s struggles with the Agency to escalate the war, as well as afterward when he became their “station chief on the Hill,” started from Wilson’s own descriptions. In every instance, however, his version is accompanied by accounts of the same events from a broad range of CIA officers Wilson encountered, including Bob Gates, Tom Twetten, Clair George, Frank Anderson, Jack Devine, Milt Bearden, Howard Hart, Norm Gardner, Art Alper, Larry Penn, Mike Vickers, Charles (Chuck) Cogan, Ed Juchniewicz, John McMahon, and Gust Avrakotos.

Joanne Herring is the primary source for the account of her life in Texas, her global anti-Communist network, and her efforts to convince Charlie Wilson and President Zia to champion the Afghan cause. The account of Charles Fawcett’s life and his involvement with the Afghans comes from Fawcett himself, who was very generous with his time. Arnaud de Borchgrave, the Baron and Baroness di Portanova, and Hasan Nouri also contributed. The seduction of Doc Long and Wilson’s legislative maneuvers to push through the Oerlikon draw on lengthy interviews with Jeff Nelson, Norm Gardner, and Jim Van Wagenen, as well as on accounts from Wilson, Joanne Herring, and Zia.

Primary night, 1984, was resurrected by Charlie’s sister Sharon, Joanne Herring, Charles Fawcett, and Joe Murray.

Wilson’s own descriptions of his travels were richly supplemented by those of the various women who accompanied him, most notably Trish Wilson, Carol Shannon, Cynthia Gale Watson (Snowflake), and Annelise Ilschenko (Sweetums), as well as by Joe Christie and Colonel Jim Rooney.

Gust Avrakotos himself evoked his steel-town childhood and his recruitment into the CIA’s elite Clandestine Services. Readers will understand that several people who filled me in on Gust’s early career there can be thanked but not identified. The story of Avrakotos’s sessions with Nitsa, “the witch,” and his hidden days at the CIA “underground in the underground” come from Avrakotos himself and others who asked that they not be named (a notable exception being the recollections of Art Alper, the demolitions expert).

This entire history hinges on the first unauthorized encounter between Wilson and Avrakotos in the Rayburn building. Both men gave memorable versions of that incident and of the consequences flowing from it.

How Gust tried and failed to deflect the Agency from the Iran-Contra scandal comes directly from Avrakotos himself and was further amplified by a number of people so well-placed they preferred not to be identified. George Cave, although he did not address the issue of Avrakotos’s memo, provided useful context for understanding the concern of the profession.

The shadowy but indispensable Saudi connection was clarified by Gust Avrakotos, as well as by Prince Bandar (ambassador to the United States and son of the Saudi Defense Minister, Prince Sultan), and Adel el Jabar. The visit to Mohammed’s arms bazaar was reconstructed from the recollections of many participants: Field Marshal Mohammed Abu Ghazala, General Yahia, Denis Neill, Trish Wilson, Gust Avrakotos, Charlie Wilson, and Art Alper.

For the inner history of the new weapons mix and the transformation of America’s Afghan strategy, Wilson and Avrakotos were necessarily the prime sources, along with Mike Vickers and other more concealed participants. General Mohammad Yousaf provided an account from the Pakistani point of view.

The account of the birth and implementation of the McCollum flights and the Weapons Upgrade Program is drawn from interviews with Vaughn Forest, Charles Schnabel, Chuck Barnard, Edward Luttwak, General Richard Stillwell, Wilson, Avrakotos, and General Rahim Wardak.

Larry Crandall provided the most telling account of how the Cross Border Humanitarian Aid Program came into being and how it unexpectedly influenced the war; he made it impressively clear how much of the credit for massively increasing the program’s funding goes to Wilson. Senator Gordon Humphrey, the program’s principal patron in the upper house, also gave further valuable insight, as did Ambassador Dean Hinton and the late Ambassador Arnie Raphel, Professor Tom Gouttierre, Dr. Bob Simon, Ambassador Gerald Hellman, Hasan Nouri, Tajwar Kakar, and upwards of fifteen or twenty NGO and U.S. AID officials who worked in the program.

The intense conservative campaign to demonize the CIA as betraying the Afghans was richly evoked by Neil Blair, Andrew Eiva, Eli Krakowski, Michael Pillsbury, Vince Cannistraro, Karen McKay, Ludmilla Thorne, Senator Gordon Humphrey, Ed Juchniewicz, John McMahon, Gust Avrakotos, and Charles Schnabel.

Wilson’s near-death experience was described by the “Angels,” his sister Sharon, Charles Schnabel, Avrakotos, and numerous others.

For Charlie’s overall relationship to Pakistan and Afghanistan, the interviews with the following officials were of great value: Bob Oakley, Phyllis Oakley, Nick Platt, Richard Hoagland, Craig Carp, General Akhtar, Hamid Gul, Khalid Khawaja, General Raza, General Janjua, General Mohammad Yousaf, Colonel Mujahed, General Aslan Beg, Ambassador Jamsheed Marker, and Hamid Karzai (now president of Afghanistan).

How the hotly contested Stinger initiative came about in the first place and the extent to which its weapons transformed the war was pieced together from many sources, including President Zia, Mike Pillsbury, Andrew Eiva, Milt Bearden, Gust Avrakotos, and Wilson.

This book is indebted to Milt Bearden for his insightful descriptions of his experiences at the front line, especially his supervision of the initial deployment of Stingers. The account of the firing of the first Stinger came from an interview with Engineer Ghaffar, the mujahid who pulled the trigger.

For Charlie’s trip into the war zone, I am indebted to the late Abdul Haq, Rahim Wardak, Ibrahim Jaqani, General Mohammad Yousaf, Kurt Loebeck, President Zia, and Ambassador Arnie Raphel. The showdown over the DIA plane was fleshed out by Colonel Rooney, Gust Avrakotos, Annelise Ilschenko, and once more, by Wilson himself.

With the collapse of the Soviet regime, Russia opened up, and interviews with Generals Varennikov and Gromov were immensely helpful in presenting events from the Red Army perspective. I’m particularly indebted to the late Artyom Borovik, through whom scores of veterans from the Soviets’ Afghan campaign were interviewed.

The events that darkened the imminent victory—the arms depot catastrophe in Rawalpindi and the mysterious death of President Zia—were most tellingly portrayed by Milt Bearden, Richard Armitage, Ambassador Jamsheed Marker, Sahabzada Yaqub Khan, and Wilson.

For the first phase of the Afghan war, I interviewed Zbigniew Brzezinski, Vice President Walter Mondale, General William Odom, David Aaron, Gordon Stewart, and former CIA director Stansfield Turner.

Among the many mujahideen leaders whose cooperation is particularly appreciated: Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, Abdul Haq, Jalaluddin Haqani, Professor Mojadeddi, Massoud Khalili, Pir Gilani, General Safi, and Hamid Karzai.

I have not included all of the names of the Afghan mujahideen, the Pakistani soldiers and officials, as well as the many Russian officials and veterans of the Afghan war who were interviewed. There are simply too many to list. The same is true of the numerous U.S. congressional staffers, politicians, and others who were interviewed but whose interviews were not essential to my reporting.

Finally, I have not included the extensive list of interviews conducted in the months before and after 9/11. This research was essential to the thoughts conveyed in the epilogue, but a detailed accounting is perhaps best left for another day. However, I would like to thank the following for their cooperation: President Pervez Musharraf, Malik Shahid Ahmed Khan, and Khalid Khawaja, for serving as my guides into the world of Osama bin Laden and militant Islam.