Charlie Wilson's War: The Extraordinary Story of the Largest Covert Operation in History

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Last update: 09-17-2024


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This New York Times best-seller is the untold story behind the last battle of the Cold War, the rise of militant Islam, and of a colorful congressman from Texas who conspired with a rogue CIA operative to launch the most successful covert operation in CIA history.

Top reviews from the United States

Richard of Connecticut
5.0 out of 5 stars A Story that Reads Better than Fiction - that is COMPELLING - A PAGE TURNER without equal - Five Stars !!!!
Reviewed in the United States on December 17, 2010
However you make it happen, this is a book you must read. First of all it's the true story of one of the great events and periods of the 20th century. It is a page turner, it is history, it is gripping, and it's true. The Russians invade Afghanistan and believe that they will roll to victory very quickly. There is nothing but the will of the Afghan people to stand in their way. The Russians are modern, mechanized, strategic thinkers, determined and without morality as to how to deal with their enemies. As for rules of engagement - what rules? There are none.

The Afghans have been through this before, actually many times before, for over a thousand years, and nobody had ever been able to conquer them and hold the territory. The Afghans fight with obsolete weapons, on horseback and on foot. Slowly but surely unless stopped, the Russians will smother out the Afghan's will to fight. There must be an intrusion, something to upset the balance of balance between the tribes and the Russians.

That intrusion will come in the form of Congressman Charlie Wilson of Texas. He is Hollywood handsome, tough, smart, Annapolis trained, party lover, womanizer, patriot, and anti-communist. He is a Christian from Bible-Belt Texas who loves the Israelis. The key to his story is that he is a member of the House Appropriations Committee (HAC), the most powerful committee in the Congress because it dispenses more than $500 billion per year in spending. If you are on the right subcommittee of the HAC, you can cut the right deals and get things done, and that's what Wilson was born to do.

Enter Gust Avrakotos, CIA's man in control of Afghanistan. He is a renegade, abusive of authority, and anything but a company man. He calls the blue bloods who run the Agency "cake eaters". He is the man who can get things done, and he does not care who gets in the way, because you are either part of the problem or part of the solution. Together Charlie Wilson and Gust Avrakotos are going to make history. Their intention is nothing short of enabling the Afghan tribal warriors to win the war against the Russians, and in the next 523 mesmerizing pages they show you how they did it. Here are some highlights:

* It would start out small. Wilson would get Gust $5 million from the Congress. The Saudis would match the funds and it would be $10 million. It would grow to $25, $50, and $100 million. Before Wilson was done, the US was spending hundreds of millions of dollars funding the Afghan tribes. The Russians would have to spend 10 to 50 times as much to match the American spending because the CIA through Gust was getting a much bigger bang for the buck than the Russians.

* The Russians dominated the air with planes and helicopters, but soon America was supplying shoulder fired missiles that could take down those planes and helicopters. The Russians went from dominating the air, to being sitting ducks. A $70,000 portable weapon was bringing down a $20 million helicopter. The Russians were afraid to fly.

* The bureaucrats at CIA were fighting Wilson and Avrakotos all the way, until word came from CIA Director Casey to get on board or get left behind. President Reagan got behind the program as well.

* You will meet Houston heiress Joanne Herring who would introduce Wilson to all the right people, including the President of Pakistan whose people would act as the go between with the weapons coming from America and going to the Afghans.

* Even the Israelis would get involved as the largest repository of Russian weapons in the world, leftovers from two Arab-Israeli wars. The CIA had a policy of not introducing American made weapons into a theater of war because of the potential backlash.

* When it comes to Wilson, there are always the girls. Wilson surrounded himself with the most beautiful women, which included his entire all girl staff in the Congress. He is probably the only Congressman who could and did get away with it.

* Wilson was totally unique and was one of the few Congressmen that could be counted on in the clutch. When a man was down on his knees, Wilson was there to pick him up. He defended Congressman John Murtha during the ABSCAM scandal where various members of Congress were entrapped taking brides. He defended Congressman Carl Stokes who was arrested for drunken driving. His willingness to protect people endeared him to countless members of Congress who would later protect Wilson.

* Between Wilson and Gus Avrakotos they had virtually created their own defense contractor, that's how much war material they were buying. They actually for a while controlled the demand for AK 47's throughout the world, including the cost of ammunition.

* It was in negotiations where Wilson shined. He was able to raise untold hundreds of millions of dollars for the war, and bring enemies together like Israel and Pakistan's President Zia who on more than one occasion told Wilson, if I see one Star of David on the military supplies coming into this country I am going to go nuts.

CONCLUSION:

Although this book is TRUE, it reads like fiction through and through. You just can't put down Charlie Wilson's War once you have begun it. In light of our predicament in Afghanistan and Iraq today, it is even more compelling that you read this book now. The Afghans who are fighting us today are the remnants of the army we trained a generation ago to fight the Russians. Much of the weapons they currently use against us come from the caches that we supplied them during the Russian invasion.

After we helped them win the war against the Russians, we walked away, and left them on their own. They did not forget this, and in many ways we are paying a price for it now. Read Charlie Wilson's War and I promise you that you will not only love the book, but better understand our current state of affairs. Thank you for reading this review.

Richard C. Stoyeck
elizabeth
5.0 out of 5 stars Great book and fast delivery!
Reviewed in the United States on July 2, 2024
Fast delivery, Spot on description of book. Thank You!
M. A. ZAIDI
4.0 out of 5 stars Better than any spy novel - A true spy novel
Reviewed in the United States on June 20, 2007
Most of the Afghan war against the Soviet Union was fought by Mujahideen and Pakistani soldiers using Israeli arms supplied after General Zia ul Haq entered into secret deals with the Israelis, a book published here has revealed. Congressman Charles Wilson from Texas, a great pro-Pakistan activist, was the central figure to get these CIA-funded weapons for Pakistan and is credited in the book as the man who broke up the Soviet Union with the help of a 48-year old Texan socialite with whom General Zia ul Haq is rumored to have had an affair with.

Charlie Wilson's War: The Extraordinary Story of the Largest Covert Operation in History is written by journalist George Crile a producer at 60 Minutes. The book reveals that Wilson made the proposal to General Zia to deal with the Israelis during Zia's first visit to US after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. The proposal was made at a grand dinner hosted by the Houston lady, Joanne Herring, who was named later as Honorary Consul of Pakistan and became a critical player in the war.

It was thus Joanne's dinner in Houston which launched Zia in US and started the Pak-Israeli cooperation in arms. The book says of that event: "Zia had dangerous decisions to make in the coming months about the CIA's involvement in his inflamed North-West Frontier, and all of them centered on whether he could trust the United States. Joanne's startling toast was strangely therapeutic for the much-maligned leader, who remembered how quickly Jimmy Carter had turned on him. In Houston that night, Joanne Herring saw to it that a host of powerful Americans actually honored him. And that same night, Charlie Wilson provided yet another dimension to Zia's growing partnership with the United States when he took the general into a side room for a private talk. The congressman had a novel proposition for the Muslim dictator. Would Zia be willing to deal with the Israelis?".

"This was not the sort of proposal just anyone could have made. But by now, the Pakistanis believed that Charlie Wilson had been decisive in getting them the disputed F-16 radar systems. As he saw it, Wilson had pulled off the impossible. Now the congressman, in his tuxedo, began to take Zia into the forbidden world where the Israelis were prepared to make deals no one need hear about.""He told Zia about his experience the previous year when the Israelis had shown him the vast stores of Soviet weapons they had captured from the PLO in Lebanon. The weapons were perfect for the mujahideen, he told Zia. If Wilson could convince the CIA to buy them, would Zia have any problems passing them on to the Afghans? Zia, ever the pragmatist, smiled on the proposal, adding, "Just don't put any Stars of David on the boxes."
"With that encouragement, Wilson pushed on. Just the previous month, he had learned that the Israelis were secretly upgrading the Chinese army's Russian-designed T-55 tanks. In Islamabad, he had been startled to see that the Chinese were supplying Pakistan with T-55s. The congressman now proposed that Zia enter into a similar secret arrangement with the Israelis. "The congressman was acutely aware of the minefield he was walking through. Publicly, Pakistan and Israel would have to remain foes, he conceded. But as Zia well understood, Pakistan and Israel shared the same deadly foe in the Soviet Union. And the fact was that each could profit mightily by secretly cooperating with the other. If Zia would follow the lead of the Chinese, Wilson said, he could increase the striking power of his tanks, and there might be other areas of military and technological cooperation where both countries could mutually profit."

"Wilson's scheming was conducted outside the sight of the U.S. embassy, which ordinarily monitors congressional activities abroad. "They turned next to the T-55 upgrade proposal and to what their congressional friend could offer President Zia, on behalf of Israel, when he met with him in Pakistan at the end of the week. The Israelis were hoping this deal would serve as the beginning of a range of under-the-table understandings with Pakistan that the congressman would continue to quietly negotiate for them."

"But such was the stature of this old congressional patron of Israel that the IMI chief immediately set his weapons experts to work. By the time Wilson was ready to leave, they had presented him with an impressive-looking design, complete with detailed specifications. It was a mule-portable, multi-rocketed device named, to the congressman's delight, the Charlie Horse."The congressman began showed Zia the design for the Charlie Horse and describing the Israelis' T-55 proposal at a dinner in Rawalpindi. After establishing what Zia wanted him to convey back to the Israelis, Wilson came right to point they both wanted the same thing--to expand the Afghan war-- and Charlie had a plan to make it possible.

Charlie Wilson himself ended up overseeing much of this eccentric weapons program for Pakistan out of his own congressional office, and it turned out to be a wild and remarkable success story. "There were all these little scientists in the Pentagon--bureaucratic misfits who just needed to be freed," Wilson recalled years later. "We gave them a little money and made them immune to procurement laws. They're mad-scientist types. They love to tinker with things that blow up but hate to fill out forms. Hate to follow the chain of command. Hate to wait."

"Within weeks, they began developing an astonishing collection of weapons. The Spanish mortar, for example, was designed to make it possible for the mujahideen to communicate directly with American navigation satellites to deliver repeated rounds within inches of their designated targets. Just the thought of Afghan tribesmen who had never seen a flush toilet signaling an American satellite to fire precision rounds at a Red Army stronghold was almost too much to believe.

"The weapon's name was purposefully misleading, chosen to conceal the fact that major portions of this "Spanish mortar" were being built by the Israelis. Milt Bearden, the station chief who would dominate the war's later years, actually came to rely on the steady stream of crazy new weapons that kept coming on-line from this offbeat program. His strategy called for introducing a new weapon into the battle every three months or so, in order to bluff the Red Army into thinking their enemy was better armed and supported than it was.

"The Spanish mortar, for example, with its satellite-guided charge, was rarely deployed and may only have succeeded because the Pakistani ISI advisers were along to direct the fire. But the Soviets didn't know that. When the weapon was first used it wiped out an entire Spetsnaz outpost with a volley of perfect strikes. And as soon as Bearden learned from the CIA's intercepts that the commander of the 40th Army had helicoptered to the scene, he knew that from that day on, the Soviets would have to factor in the possibility that the mujahideen had acquired some deadly targeting capability.

"For that reason alone, the weapon was a success even if never fired again. Bearden became so intoxicated with this kind of psychological warfare that he later developed plans to have a group of mujahideen shoot dead Russian soldiers with crossbows. To him, the vision of men who might kill you with a bow and arrow one day or with a satellite-guided mortar the next would be unnerving to any army."

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