Charlie Wilson, Mossad's Whore

[CrackSmokeRepublican]

Charlie Wilson, Mossad's Whore

Charlie Wilson's War?

Those who were involved in actually helping the Afghans say that a more accurate title would be

Charlie Wilson, Mossad's Whore: How a corrupt US congressman was manipulated into selling out the Afghan mujahideen and betraying American interests for Israeli money, ultimately resulting in the Taliban's rise to power in Afghanistan

 

 Contents

Introduction


-"Neocons" in Charlie Wilson's family woodpile?
-Strange things happen on Christmas in Washington
-Did Stinger missiles defeat the Soviets in Afghanistan? The stories and numbers don't add up
-"Getting even" with the USSR for Vietnam? Apparently the CIA couldn't count
-Why the war placed almost no extra burden on the Soviet economy
-How "Wilson's Warriors" conducted a bold and bloody raid...in Arlington, VA
-Wilson's supposed change of heart
-Chronology of the war and US aid to the mujahideen
-If $2 billion in aid could defeat the USSR, the US is getting ripped off every year
-Did women fawn over, or flee from, Wilson?
-Herring and Fawcett
-Avrakotos and his predecessors at the CIA
-Did Charlie Do it? The Assassination of Pakistan's President Zia ul-Haq
-The first neocon job
-Why the CIA shunned its own like Avrakotos, while lionizing Wilson
-The neocons and the rise of the Taliban

 ****

 

In a last bizarre twist to one of the most sordid and obscure chapters of American political history, a Hollywood film was made inaccurately portraying and glorifying the exploits of a not-too-bright, alcoholic US Congressman who later left office in disgrace after being found guilty of illegal campaign fundraising and went to work as a lobbyist for the Israelis.

Information compiled from a variety of sources, including those individuals who were working directly with the Afghans, contradicts most of the film's story, as well as what has come to be believed about that war in general.

 The highly fictionalized portrayal of Charles Wilson in this film as the architect and hero of the Afghans' resistance efforts, as in the factually inaccurate book, Charlie Wilson's War, on which it was based, has to be assumed to be part of his payment for services rendered, arranged with the US publishing and film industries by his Israeli employers. The historical reality, according to those who were on the ground helping the Afghans continuously during the time period depicted was, in many aspects, totally opposite of that which was portrayed. Indeed, both the book and the movie seemed intended to divert the readers'/viewers' thinking from the logical conclusion that Wilson was deliberately promoting the interests of himself and a foreign government instead of the interests of the US and the American people. See:

http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/enti ... zvi_rafiah

Some additional excerpts from the book on this matter, and commentary which puts them into perspective can be found at the following site. (The extent, if any, of Pakistani ISI involvement in later events is highly speculative and needs to be taken with a grain of salt, but that speculation does not change the other connections that are shown to be openly discussed in the book)

http://www.apfn.net/messageboard/01-05- ... gi.71.html

George Crile, the author of the book, seems to have wanted the reader to believe it was perfectly acceptable, for example, for a US congressman to allow someone he suspected (knew?) was a Mossad agent to have free run of his office in the mid-1980s. (Not unusual in Washington perhaps, but most Americans would be outraged if they knew that an intelligence agent of a country which has conducted numerous hostile actions and acts of espionage against the US was even being allowed into the Congressional office buildings where highly sensitive and often classified information is handled.) This may have been an attempt to make it seem as if the involvement of the Israelis in the Afghanistan operation was open and accepted at the time. In fact, although as early as 1985 some of those who were actually helping the Afghan mujahideen had been aware of, and trying to draw attention to, the true nature of Israeli involvement, even a decade after the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan any connection other than minor arms purchases from Israel was being denied by those in the media and the US government. However, after September 11, 2001 there began a campaign to falsely paint the Israelis as major benefactors of the anti-Soviet resistance, even to the point of trying to claim those such as President Zia ul-Haq of Pakistan were fully aware and supportive of such alleged involvement.

Even before examining the historical facts, there seem to be some very curious connections between the book/film and Charles Wilson's life and political career that may shed some light on how this rather bizarre film came about.

George Crile tried to create the image of Charles Wilson having independently developed his interest in, and slavish devotion to, Israel, while having no personal, political, or financial connections to Israelis, or even the American Jewish community. On page 32 of his book, discussing Wilson's supposed lack of Jewish background/connections and constituency in his hometown of Lufkin, TX, Crile admonishes the reader, "But believe me, there are no Jews in Lufkin". Since Crile had a reputation as an investigative reporter, we have to assume he would have made at least some minimal effort to find out the facts about Wilson's early life and hometown, even if only to ask Wilson about them. There are no synagogues in Lufkin. Thus, surveys that calculate the percentage of particular religious groups in various cities by the number of members in the congregations at the various houses of worship in those cities, do show 0% Jews in Lufkin. However, Nacogdoches just a few miles to the north is well known as an early center of immigration for Jewish settlers in Texas, and the Unitarian church in Lufkin is frequently a venue for Jewish speakers and cultural activities. Those facts alone indicate that some portion of the population of Lufkin almost certainly is Jewish in origin, whether or not devout in current practice. With that background knowledge, it then took someone skeptical of Crile's statement about there being no Jews in Lufkin less than 3 minutes of research to find the following.

Lufkin Industries is one of the town's major businesses, and publicity concerning its history includes:

Lufkin Industries was founded in the East Texas town of Lufkin, which itself was founded in 1882 as a stop on the Texas Railway that ran from Houston to Shreveport, Louisiana. It was named after Abraham P. Lufkin, a prominent Galveston merchant, politician, and friend of the railroad's president. As a railroad stop, the town quickly became a commercial center, and lumber became its main trade. Three men came to dominate the business: German immigrant Joseph H. Kurth, Sr.; Sam Weiner, of German Jewish ancestry and raised in Mississippi; and Georgia-born Simon Wood Henderson, Sr. In 1890 they joined forces to form Angelina County Lumber Company...[that evolved into Lufkin Foundry & Machine Company, and ultimately into Lufkin Industries]

Weiner's descendants are still involved in the business in Lufkin.  The surname of Abraham Lufkin also indicates Jewish origns, whatever religion the founder of the company my have professed at the time, and several other individuals with names that are undoubtedly of Jewish origin appear among the directors and managers of the company. Evidence that Lufkin industries has some unusually strong ties to the international Jewish community was uncovered by just a few more moments of research, which found that Lufkin Industries was the only advertiser in the industrial equipment category to currently (December 2007) have "Platinum member" status on a rather interesting web site called JewishMillionaire.com.

http://www.jewishmillionaire.com/script ... tegory=335

Elsewhere on that site is an explanation of its function and purpose:

Jewish Millionaire.com is the leading provider of online marketing services for importers, exporters, and service providers of million dollar companies. Bringing together carefully screened companies locally and from around the globe, we provide the tools needed to efficiently maximize business to business online.

What makes Jewish Millionaire.com different from any other website? We realize that some individuals prefer to do business with others of the same religion and culture, making it easier to relate to one another. Therefore, this is the first online marketing service in which businesses have the option of being identified by their religion and/or culture. [emphasis added]

A reader of this web page recently provided some additional information, on Jews in Lufkin. The Jewish Hearld of Houston, in its November 19, 1908 edition, identified "Mr. C. L. Schloss, editor of Lufkin Daily News", as a member of the Texas Jewish community who was visiting Houston at that time. And, a well known Jewish sports writer in Houston, Morris Frank, who died in the 1970s had gotten his start in the 1930s at the Lufkin Daily News. Born in New Jersey, he was the son of a Jewish merchant who had moved his family to Lufkin. It seems realtively certain that these were not the only Jewish journalists to have worked at the Lufkin Daily News, much less to have lived in Lufkin, and unless Wilson's neighbors carried out a pogrom that drove them all out, they or their descendants are obviously still there.

It must be concluded that there was an attempt on the part of Crile and/or Wilson to conceal the fact that there has long been a rich, influential (dominating both the local economy and news media) Jewish community in Wilson's East Texas environs of Lufkin, even though its members may now commute there from estates outside the city limits. Thus, Crile's admonition to "...believe me...." on the matter of the supposed total absence of Jews in Lufkin, Texas, which could be so easily checked, should be remembered when judging the veracity of the book and subsequent movie in relation to conversations and events that took place in private meetings or in remote places that can not be independently corroborated, but which the readers of his book,  and the movie viewers, are expected to believe. (See also the comments elsewhere on this web page by a Pakistani concerning Crile's not only false, but nonsensical, claims about statements supposedly made by Pakistani officials)

A very strange resemblance

Some observers believe they know the motive behind that attempt to distance Wilson from any Jewish connection or influence before he came to Washington.

The fact that Aaron Sorkin, the Hollywood screen writer of Charlie Wilson's War, seen in this first photo, is of New York Jewish origins is no surprise.

What is surprising, is the very close physical resemblance to the former congressman from Texas, Charles Wilson, seen here in his younger days.

Given that Wilson is old enough to be Sorkin's father, there has naturally been speculation that is the case, and that is the reason/relationship that led to Sorkin writing the screenplay about Wilson. However, some observers contend that the activities of Wilson's mother in the years just before his birth are the key to the connection, and that, despite the age gap, Wilson and Sorkin were actually fathered by the same individual, with it being his influence and money that bought Wilson's otherwise difficult to explain early success in politics. This would also provide a reason beyond the purely financial for Wilson's extraordinary attachment to Israel.

In any event, the two men do certainly also seem related in their willingness to accept undeserved honors, their use of intoxicants to excess, their reckless violation of laws, and their similar intellectual levels which might best be described by a famous a line uttered by one of the previous characters Tom Hanks portrayed: "Stupid is, as....." For example, in 2001, shortly after having received an award for supposedly overcoming his drug problems, Sorkin was arrested in a California airport for possession of cocaine, marijuana, and hallucinogenic mushrooms. His varied stash was discovered by the authorities when Sorkin set off the airport metal detector by attempting to pass through it while carrying a metal "crack" pipe in his pocket. Wilson's similarly stupid and reckless actions are legend, and some are even depicted in the movie.

 

Every day is Christmas in Washington, DC

In Washington, if someone has embarrassing information which has to be made public sooner or later, they usually wait until a Friday afternoon to release it. That way it goes into the Saturday newspapers, which are the lowest circulation and least read papers of the week. Similarly the Saturday TV news has a small audience, and usually gives minimal coverage to news so as to be able to devote more time to sports. By extension, if there is news that needs to be dropped as far down the "memory hole" as possible, and which can be delayed in its release, the best day of the year to have it appear in the newspapers is Christmas Day. Not only is reading the morning paper a low priority for most people on Christmas, even the people working for the newspapers on Christmas Eve aren't paying much attention to what is being reported in them. It is also an excellent day for releasing news that is likely to be poorly received by most of the population but well received by the small portion not opening Christmas presents or going to church services, and instead reading the paper on Christmas as on any other day.

When Charles Wilson departed Congress in 1996 in disgrace after being found guilty of illegal fundraising, he was prevented by law from actively lobbying on behalf of clients for one year. When his waiting period was up in November 1997, one of his first major clients was Israeli Military Industries Ltd. (and specifically their US sales arm, the innocuous sounding, IMI Services USA) - something that came as no surprise to those who understood who had benefited from Wilson's weapons dealings during the war in Afghanistan. It was also no great surprise that the news of the now open political-influence-for-pay arrangement between the Israelis and Wilson did not appear in the Washington Post's "Special Interests: Lobbying Washington" column until over a month later, on December 25, 1997. In a similar case of not releasing information until it was no longer news, Gust Avrakotos, the CIA agent portrayed in the film, died on December 1, 2005, but his obituary did not appear in the Washington Post until December 25 of that year.

Is it just a coincidence that a film about the supposed exploits of Wilson and Avrakotos was originally scheduled to have its official release on December 25? (Its release was moved up to December 21 only a few weeks prior to that date.) Releasing a movie at Christmas about licentious activities in the US, and deceitful, corrupt weapons dealings around the world supposedly motivated by the desire on the part of the characters to not only kill "Russians" but to do so "as painfully as possible", seems an intentional insult to the great majority of Americans who associate the time of year with a message of peace, love, and forgiveness. Those familiar with the ways and words in Washington, DC have suggested that the timing of the release of the film is an inside joke. With the possibility of their words being secretly recorded, or even the most trusted partners in crime deciding to truthfully testify about what was said in private conversations if facing long prison terms for obstruction of investigations or for perjury, all but the most brazenly corrupt politicians will avoid openly referring to a "bribe" or "kickback". High among the euphemisms used, is "Christmas present". Whereas it is difficult to lie one's way out of being caught speaking about wanting, or having taken, bribes or kickbacks, one might be able to persuade one's constituents or a jury that when one asked for a "Christmas present", it was only a joke. Similarly if a politician is found to have taken an inappropriate payment in cash or kind that was described as a "Christmas present", rather than as a "payoff", he can contend that it was just poor judgment not to have refused the inappropriate "gift". If the book and movie are part of Charles Wilson's payment for enriching arms dealers and advancing the agendas of domestic and foreign political groups at the expense of US national interests, then release of the film as a "Christmas present" fits perfectly with the cynical nature of such deals in Washington.

 

The lie that Stinger missiles won the war in Afghanistan: propaganda numbers that don't add up

Considering the incompetence of those who work for the CIA, it is no surprise that the supposedly covert delivery of Stinger missiles to the Afghan rebels was repeatedly the subject of front page newspaper articles even months before it actually took place. They seemed not to grasp the concept of "covert", nor the element of surprise. Upon closer examination though, it appears that those missiles were given to the Afghans mainly for domestic propaganda and advertising purposes, and actually had little or no military impact.

The stories and claims about Stingers being the super weapon that defeated the Soviets are never accompanied by any evidence that would back them up. Ratios of missiles fired to helicopters and planes said to have been destroyed, or the supposed number of aircraft shot out of the air per day, are often tossed about, but never with any supporting statistics that could be used to verify them. Such basic facts as how many Soviet aircraft were shot down by all means during the ten years of that war, and how many of those were shot down before and after the Stinger missiles were given to the Afghans, are never presented in support of the claims about the effect the Stingers supposedly had. The one study that actually compiled and analyzed those numbers, and put them in the context of the larger events of the war, was done by someone who was involved on the ground helping the Afghans in that war, and who later went on to earn a Ph.D. with his research on early failures in US intelligence gathering and analysis concerning the Soviets. It shows the utter impossibility of the claims made for the Stingers. See: Stinger in Afghanistan

In ten years of war, the USSR lost less than 350 helicopters to all causes in Afghanistan. (In comparison, by official count, the US lost just over 4800 helicopters in Vietnam, but the true number may have been more than twice that, due to an accounting method which allowed almost totally destroyed helicopters' identifying numbers to be assigned to ones built from essentially all new parts, yet be claimed to have been "repaired" rather than lost/destroyed in combat.) Only a small percentage of the USSR helicopters and planes lost were shot down during the years the Stingers were present in Afghanistan. The Soviets were planning their withdrawal long before the Stingers arrived, and had begun scaling back air attacks more than half a year before the first aircraft were attacked with Stinger missiles. The rate of decline in air attacks may have actually slowed in the year following the introduction of the Stinger missiles to the war.

Someone very familiar with Charles Wilson's part in getting the Stingers provided to the Afghans ostensibly because he wanted to "kill Russians", who believes it was instead largely motivated by direct or indirect under-the-table payments from defense contractors and arms dealers, raised an interesting point. If the goal really was to shoot down Soviet aircraft, and not just generate publicity and greater sales for the Stingers, why did Wilson display in his office as a "trophy" of the effort, the empty launch tube from the first Stinger said to have shot down a helicopter in Afghanistan, and not a piece of wreckage from the helicopter? It is as if a hunter displayed just the empty rifle cartridge from the rifle round with which he claimed to have shot a killer grizzly bear, instead of displaying the head, or hide, or at least a claw; highly unlikely unless he was a salesman for the ammunition company, and had never actually killed the bear. It indicates that the important thing in Wilson's mind was the expensive military hardware he caused to be purchased, rather than any results from it.

 

What the CIA considered "Getting Even" with the USSR for Vietnam

It is often claimed that a major motivation in the CIA aid program to the Afghans was a desire to make the USSR suffer the same sort of losses as the US did in Vietnam; it was said to be "payback", "taking revenge", "getting even"... for Vietnam. Although the two wars lasted approximately the same number of years, the losses and expense inflicted on the USSR were a small fraction of those the US suffered. Those on the ground with the Afghans attribute that in large part to the ineffectiveness and inappropriateness of the CIA program aiding the Afghans, with its concentration on specific weapons rather than encouraging and facilitating the sort of classic escalating guerrilla warfare for which Afghanistan would have been an even more ideal environment than Vietnam.

Here are some comparative statistics:

Americans killed in Vietnam: more than 58,000

Soviets killed in Afghanistan: less than 15,000 (The Soviets had approximately the same number of soldiers die annually during service/training inside the USSR as died in Afghanistan each year. That has led some, even in the USSR, to speculate that additional Afghanistan fatalities were hidden among the numbers for fatalities inside the USSR. Even if that was true, it would not bring the total to half the number of US fatalities in Vietnam. However, the yearly number of military fatalities inside the USSR appears to have actually risen slightly after the withdrawal from Afghanistan, making it unlikely that it was being inflated during the war years by inclusion of war fatalities among the domestic military ones during that period.)

 

American aircraft lost in Vietnam: more than 8500 (perhaps as many as 14,000)

Soviet aircraft lost in Afghanistan: less than 500

 

American military expenditure for the Vietnam war: $615 billion in inflation adjusted 2007 $

Soviet military expenditure for the war in Afghanistan: $94 billion in inflation adjusted 2007 $ (This figure, however, comes from the CIA. The real figure may be much lower. Eduard Shevardnadze, who was Soviet foreign minister during the latter part of the war, said in his book The Future Belongs to Freedom, that the war cost the USSR 60 billion rubles (pg.58) Although at the official exchange rate this matches with the approx. $50 billion figure used by the CIA at the time of the war, at a realistic exchange rate it would have been about one-fourth that amount in dollars.

(For comparison, American military expenditure in Afghanistan 2001-2007: The official figure is $78 billion, but minimum actual costs have been at least $125 billion, and some estimates are more than twice that. So, the US has spent more fighting the current war in Afghanistan than the Soviets spent on their war in the 1980s.  The extension of the US involvement in Afghanistan proposed in late 2009 will, even as calcualted by relatively conservative analysts,  bring the total cost to the US to approximately $1 trillon, and, since mosts analysts believe the US involvement will extend well beyond the 2011 pull-out date naively or deceptively given, the ultimate costs will be far greater.)

 

American final troop withdrawal from Vietnam was a scene of chaos, captured in the image of American CIA officials physically beating away their loyal Vietnamese former employees as the latter tried desperately tried to get aboard the last helicopters out.

Soviet final troop withdrawal from Afghanistan was a leisurely, orderly, border crossing scene, captured in the image of the Soviet commanding general who looked like he had his hair professionally styled that morning especially for the occasion, giving statements to the press.

 

 

Did the expense of the war in Afghanistan bring down the USSR?

Some might try to argue that the economy of the USSR was smaller than that of the US, and thus fighting the war in Afghanistan was proportionally a greater drain on them than Vietnam was for the US. However, a major reason why their economy was smaller in its consumer side was that so much was devoted to, and tied up in, the military side. As the war in Vietnam escalated, the US needed to divert financial resources away from the consumer sector to build up the military. This was initially hidden by the government being able to print more money, but it showed up soon after in the near run-away inflation of consumer prices in the Ford and Carter years. The USSR already had a huge military, and it did not have to expand it to keep the relatively small force in Afghanistan in the 1980s. Thus, military build-up and additional expenditures in Vietnam put a great strain on the US economy, and can be seen as having been one of the major initiating causes of the very serious economic troubles that the US is now facing in the 21st century which includes the added burden of the current US involvement in Afghanistan. The Soviet war in Afganistan was carried out largely within the existing Soviet military budget, and thus was unlikely to have even been a minor straw that finally broke the decrepit camel's financial back. A few hundred pieces more of military hardware left intact at the end of the 1980s would not have made any significant difference to the Soviet economy. The equivalent of three dollars a month in extra combat pay, times 120,000 soldiers, certainly didn't cause any financial hardship on the Soviet government. With the arms manufacturers being owned by the government, there weren't even any significant opportunities for them and the "Charlie Wilsowitzes" of that part of the world to collude on defense contracts and arms deals.

Taking the above mentioned 60 billion ruble figure given by Eduard Shevardnadze , we can compare it to Gorbachev's alcohol reform in 1985 which was designed to fight alcoholism, but failed to have much effect in doing so. The increasing of prices, and placing restrictions on where alcohol could be bought and consumed, are estimated to have cost the Soviet government 100 billion rubles when people began to buy their alcohol on the black market instead of from the government shops. So, in the unlikely event that the economic collapse of the USSR was war-related, it would have been far more Gorbachev and the "War on Alcoholism", rather than "Charlie Wilson's War", that was responsible for the fall of the Soviet empire -- rather ironic, given Wilson's drinking problems.

The hollow core of the story

Many of the most important aspects of the "Charlie Wilson's War" story are impossible to verify. The majority of them depend on what supposedly took place in closed, and often secret, meetings. Whether or not the accounts of what was said and took place are likely to be true must be gauged by those things in the story which we can check. A great many people have noted that George Crile's book contained many errors about simple things that would have been easy to verify. Those with military knowledge have noted that he made numerous obvious mistakes about the weapons and military matters that were unlikely if the information was provided by anyone who had actually been involved with them, leading the readers to believe Crile either made them up himself, or heard them from people who had no real knowledge, and thus couldn't have been providing reliable firsthand information. Even people with little knowledge of politics or the military found themselves questioning the accuracy of the information in the book after they saw that Crile had made errors in mundane things familiar to them, such as one concerning a popular sports figure from Avrakotos' hometown. The book perpetuated many claims from the war which had been shown to be propaganda fabrications or distortions long before he wrote the book. One of those concerned Wilson seeing a child in a hospital in Pakistan who had been wounded by a "butterfly mine", which Crile described as a device produced to look like a toy that would attract the attention of children with the intention of maiming them when they investigated it. It must be remembered that Crile had worked for the TV program, 60 Minutes all during the war, and that he would have been in contact with, and likely directly in charge of, research and fact checking on such matters. A butterfly mine is so called because it has a vaguely butterfly-like form that allows it to fall somewhat gently when scattered from aircraft. It is a standard military device, and those used in Afghanistan were all either olive drab or brownish tan, to camouflage them against the ground, not brightly colored like butterflies, or birds, or toys. (Although the US was among the first countries to promote an international landmine ban in the 1990s, ostensibly due at least in part to the concern over innocent civilians accidentally getting killed and maimed by them in places like Afghanistan, the neocons of the Bush administration in 2004 declared they would use such mines indefinitely and anywhere they chose, regardless of international treaties.) The reports of "toy bombs" or "toy mines" were pervasive in the early years of the war. However, after some of the most vehemently anti-Soviet Westerners working independently with the Afghans offered substantial rewards for even fragmentary physical evidence of such devices, it became evident that no such devices could be found. Careful questioning of the Afghans ultimately determined that there were no credible firsthand accounts of them. (Some purported photographic evidence during the war failed to hold up to even cursory analysis, and was later totally discredited.)

Two critical elements of the Charlie Wilson's War story as told by Crile are 1.) Joanne Herring's role; whether she was truly the force that set things in motion, and if so, whether she served as a knowing or unwitting "straw (wo)man" for others who were manipulating Wilson and the CIA. 2.) What really took place in Wilson and Herring's meetings with Pakistani government officials. The first question will be dealt with elsewhere, but as far as Crile's reporting on the second, it is totally lacking in credibility. He depicts the Pakistani leaders behaving in ways that are totally at odds with reality, and attributes highly implausible actions to them. While it is impossible to prove what actually did or did not take place in closed meetings, especially with those on the Pakistani side having been conveniently assassinated before the book was written, the words he attributes to them reveal the lack of truth in that part of the story. Although Crile could easily slip such things past the average American reader, they were quite obviously nonsensical to those who were familiar with the people, place, culture, or language. The following comments are from a reader review of the book on the amazon.com site. As the writer points out these are not esoteric and obscure points, but major things which any Pakistani (or anyone with more than an elementary familiarity with Pakistani culture and history) could tell were false. He gives Crile the benefit of the doubt as to his intentions, but finds the words attributed to the Pakistani officials so ludicrous that he considers it not worth even discussing the characteristics and actions Crile falsely attributed to them:

(book review from) http://www.amazon.com/review/product/08 ... addOneStar

Inaccurate information, July 2, 2003

By R. Aamer, Woodbridge, NJ

I am originally from Pakistan and that's why I looked forward to reading this book since I witnessed the effects of Afghan war in my country. There is really an acute shortage of material on this topic and when I heard about this book, I couldn't wait to get it.

It started off amazing. Although Mr. Crile has not specifically stated his sources, I generally trusted what he was saying (he being a journalist, sources being attached to sensitive organizations and what not) but all my excitement deflated when I reached page 60 something where Mr. Crile describes the relations of Joanne Herring and General Zia. He wrote that Joanne was called "sir" in Pakistan. Give me a break. Maybe some peon in some office may have called her "sir" but that doesn't qualify as a fact worth quoting. The bigger and more outrageous claim was just a few lines down on the same page where Mr. Crile says that Joanne Herring was given the highest honor that Pakistani Government can give and that is the title of "Quid-e-Azam" translated as "The Great Leader". I dropped first my jaw and then the book when I read that. It's ridiculous. It's so painfully obvious to me that Mr. Crile's sources were exaggerating and Mr. Crile didn't do any effort to corroborate the information. Had he'd done that, he would have come to known that the title of "Quid-e-Azam" is reserved for the founder of Pakistan, M. A. Jinnah and it's not conferred upon anyone else by Pakistan Government. It's like saying that US president honored someone with the title of "The Founding Father". As I said, it's ridiculous. I could give him the benefit of doubt if there was an honor which sounded like "Quid-e-Azam". There isn't. They are all like 'Nishan-e-Imtiaz", "Sitara-e-Imtiaz" etc. and none of their meanings come anywhere close to "The Great Leader". Its not that I think that Mr. Crile is lying. He just heard something and quoted it in a "history" book. Historians used to be a bit more cautious in recording facts. Had he'd tried to verify that from any (and I mean ANY, it's that common knowledge) Pakistani, he/she would have told him that that "fact" can not possibly be true.

That was it for me. The book's credibility was GONE. I tried to go beyond that and read some 100 pages more but now that I knew for sure that Mr. Crile's sources had passed him blown up info and he hadn't verified it, the only way I could read it anymore was to consider it a work of fiction but then, its not written very well for a fictional book.

I have a lot more to say about how Mr. Cile's sources have described Zia and some other things but I won't. It's useless.

 

Wilson's brand of politics depended heavily on closed meetings. He could tell his constituents and political allies that he had taken positions totally opposite those he really had, claim he had fought hard to get concessions that were actually either never made or made freely with no effort on his part, and pretend he had come up with ideas or plans that were really those of others. That is an additional reason why he so seldom spoke on the floor of the House of Representatives where his words and positions would have been on the public record. When eight or nine of ten things he promised to people didn't come about, he could blame the others involved in those private meetings (or who were supposedly involved, as sometimes the alleged meetings never really took place) for not keeping their parts of the supposed bargains. Then he would point to the one or two things that had turned out as he said they would, take credit for them even though he might have actually opposed them, and imply that if sufficient gratitude wasn't shown for those, that he would see to it that the ingrates would get nothing they wanted in the future. Those who had opportunity to confront Wilson say that his tactic when caught in what was obviously a lie when the reality turned out to be quite different from what he claimed had been said or done, was for him to try to use his height in an intimidating manner and go purple in the face as he bellowed in a voice resembling that of the cartoon character rooster, Foghorn Leghorn, things to the effect of, "You don't know! You wasn't in that meetin'. I was!" He would not address the substance of the matter, but would just hope that the questioner would either be intimated into silence or would decide that it was worthless to pursue questioning someone so incapable of any intellectually meaningful response.  Ironically in light of that, he was reported in his younger days to have been pretty much a physical coward, especially when he hadn't been imbibing courage from a bottle. Although there are stories of him engaging in physical altercations when his size made it obvious he could easily overcome someone even more drunk than himself, they say he would back off from any potential opponent who looked as if he knew how to handle himself in a fight, even when Wilson had an advantage of 3 or 4 inches in height and 30, 40, or more pounds in weight.

 

One of the forgotten "victories" of "Charlie Wilson's War"; attacking a gasoline station, blowing the legs off an elderly woman, and wounding several others with a 30mm cannon in Arlington, Virginia

Charles Wilson was derisively referred to as "Wonder-weapon Wilson" by many in Afghanistan and Pakistan for his continually promoting totally inappropriate weapons as what were needed to win the war for the Afghans. Even apart from any financial or other benefits he may have been getting from the purchases of particular weapons, it was obvious that he had little understanding of guerrilla warfare or the weapons appropriate for it. He seemed not to grasp that irregular troops moving on foot through some of the most rugged mountains in the world could not do so while lugging hundreds of pounds of steel each. The difference between a small rocket that burned its propellant during flight after being launched from a tube weighing a couple of pounds, and a bullet of the same caliber with its propellant in a cartridge that burned all at once with explosive force that needed to be contained in a very heavy gun barrel, seemed beyond his intellectual ability to comprehend. Thus, in the early summer of 1986 when he was questioned about a small, very low cost, simple to produce, rocket system that would have been ideal for the situation in Afghanistan, he brushed the inquiry aside, saying that "we" (presumably he and those in the CIA) had instead put a quarter of a million dollars into a "similar" 30mm weapon that could be used against helicopters and ground targets. He did not provide many details, but knowledgeable individuals doubted its practicality, and assumed it was just Wilson obfuscating and side-stepping the matter. However, in August the new "wonder-weapon" actually made a brief, and rather spectacular, appearance. Two low intellect ex-military types of the sort the CIA tends to deal with and rely on for unorthodox projects requiring some modicum of practical skills, pulled their pickup truck into a gas station in Arlington, Virginia. They were apparently coming from CIA headquarters a few miles away, though some reports say the had been meeting with CIA and/or military officials elsewhere. In the back of their pickup they had a single barrel, single shot 30mm gun that was supposed to be carried and fired by one man, despite the fact that it weighed somewhere in the range of 100 - 125 pounds, which they had designed as a weapon that the Afghans were supposed to carry with them while running through the mountains, to use against helicopters. It was obviously the weapon that Charles Wilson had made reference to a couple months earlier. How two civilians obtained, and were allowed to be driving around in an urban area just across the river from Washington, DC with, live 30mm ammunition was never explained. (The maximum range of the weapon and ammunition was such that from most places in Arlington, they could have hit many government offices in DC, including the highest level one.) However, they proceeded to take the gun out to show it off in the gas station (to whom is not exactly clear), and chambered a live round. Not surprising for something that was the product of hillbilly engineering, the gun unexpectedly fired, and the 30mm projectile hit a gas pump at very close range. There was a fiery explosion, with shrapnel and burning gasoline flying everywhere. An elderly woman fueling her car was severely injured, losing both legs, and at least three other people were less seriously wounded. (Washington Post, Aug. 20, 1986, page C-1 "Four injured as anti-tank shell rips into gas pump") The matter quickly vanished from the news, and neither the weapon nor the quarter of a million dollars Wilson said had been put into its development were ever seen again.

 

Charlie Wilson's seemingly sudden turn of heart and coat when there was no longer profit to be made off weapons for the Afghans but there was prospect of enrichment from schemes to prop up the crumbling Soviet empire

When the Soviets departed Afghanistan, Charles Wilson quickly lost interest in the people and country whose plight had supposedly motivated his extraordinary actions over the previous few years. Had he really been concerned with them, really intended to help them, and really been viewed as a hero who was respected by the Afghan and leaders and their Pakistani allies, he could have influenced them in directions that would have enabled them to salvage a viable country from the rubble. There would, of course, have been the embarrassing task of trying to explain in the US, how, if the weapons and other aid supplied, had really enabled the mujahideen to militarily defeat and rout the largest army in the world, as was claimed by Wilson, the CIA, the news media, etc., so little progress was being made over a year's time against the Afghan communist forces that weren't supposed to be able to last a week on their own.

George Crile, in his book, implausibly implied that Wilson had something like soldiers' post-battle remorse/depression over the war. The true nature of what had been going on and Wilson's character makes that unlikely. Rather, all one has to do is "follow the money" to understand the sudden shift of interest; Wilson was doing as he always did. As the Soviet empire started to crumble, the neocons of the G.H.W. Bush administration frantically tried to ensure the survival of a communist government in the USSR. The simplest and best explanation can be found in the Trotskyist backgrounds of many of the early Neo-cons (see discussion of Irving Kristol, et al. elsewhere). While they wanted the post-Stalinist (but still Stalinist in basic ideology) regime out of power in the USSR, they didn't want communism to be overthrown altogether. Rather, they hoped that they could maneuver a neo-Trotskyist faction into power there that would be willing to help the US to move ahead in creating the new world order which the neocons desired. So, the first reaction was to attempt to pump money into the Soviet government, and particularly the Soviet military.

Charles Wilson was right there at the front of such efforts, saying that he had decided that the Soviets weren't such bad guys after all, and that they had a lot of problems which deserved help. He was apparently hoping to do with the Soviet state arms industries what he had done with those of the US and Israel, with the neocons and Mossad seeming eager to have him do so. (E.g. "Congressman Charlie Wilson, Not Holding His Fire", Washington Post, August 20, 1990") The prospects of brokering deals for the largest arms manufacturing concerns in the world and holding sway over appropriations of the kind of money that was being talked about to bail out the USSR and support the Soviet military (ostensibly because they lacked resources to house troops if they brought them back from Warsaw Pact countries) must have been mind boggling. However, the absurdity of the proposals and bills in Congress that would have had the US the directly supporting the Soviet Union, and especially their military, so soon after having spent billions of dollars supposedly to "defeat" them during the Cold War era, in Afghanistan and elsewhere, was a bit too much for most congressmen to try to slide past their constituents and stick to the US taxpayers, no matter what sort of enticements the neocons and lobbyists for foreign governments offered. So, most of the more outrageous of the direct aid programs were quietly dropped, and the activities of the neo-cons and Wilson in relation to the USSR, and later the FSU, had to become much lower key.

Thus, it would be wrong to say Charlie Wilson had a change of heart or was a turn-coat; his motivations, actions, loyalties, and his manipulators look remarkably consistent.

 

The chronology of the 1980s war in Afghanistan points to the true agenda in the US aid to the Afghans

The chronology of the war is enlightening, and when compared to the chronology of the US military aid to the Afghans, a pattern begins to emerge. A brief version follows, and a full version can be read at the bottom of this page.

mid-1979

A growing rebellion against the communist government of Afghanistan was receiving small amounts of aid from a number of sources. The CIA was authorized by the Carter administration to aid the rebels

December 1979

Seeing that the communist Afghan government would be in danger of being overthrown when the rebels resumed major activities in the spring, the Soviets invaded. Their military advisors already working with the Afghan army, and a few trusted Afghan officers, disabled heavy weapons like tanks, and restricted the troops' access to small arms in the lead-up to the attack, limiting the numbers that could be turned against them or taken with deserting soldiers. The invasion took place on Christmas eve; the Soviets obviously having learned the same publicity tricks as the Washington crowd.

 

1980 - 1981

There was potential for a successful massive uprising since the Afghan people saw the invasion as cause for "holy war", had there been adequate numbers of basic, effective weapons available to them. Many spontaneous uprisings took place in early 1980, but the poorly armed and militarily unknowledgeable Afghans usually got themselves killed while achieving nothing of strategic or even tactical value. Military aid only trickled in to the resistance, giving the Afghans just enough marginally useful weapons to encourage the most courageous to continue to carry out dangerous attacks, resulting in them taking heavy casualties. The US aid allocated to the Afghans rose to $10 million. However, that money was being inefficiently spent, such as paying several times the going black market price to Israeli arms dealers for poor quality weapons, with much "leakage" all along the way. The initiative was thus lost, and many anticommunist Afghans fled across the borders to Pakistan and Iran.

1982 - 1983

The Soviets conducted many punitive attacks in areas of strong resistance, causing a large portion of the population to flee as refugees. US allocated aid reached the $50 million a year range. While the Afghans were finally receiving greater numbers of very basic weapons, a large portion of those that might have been more effective against Soviet armor and aircraft were old, in poor condition and defective. This, and heavy casualties, led to low morale among those who were staying inside Afghanistan.

1984

Allocated US aid rose to $122 million, but reports by independent, militarily knowledgeable Western observers inside Afghanistan were that while the mujahideen had small arms, some heavy machine guns, RPG, and mines, there were nowhere near the numbers which the reported amounts of aid should have purchased. Moreover, there was a shocking lack of the most basic military non-weapon equipment, making the Afghans very ineffective in combat while exposing them to great risk.

1985

US aid to the mujahideen was reportedly $250 million. Independent Western observers monitoring the flow of supplies into Afghanistan saw relatively little entering the country. The CIA provided small numbers of several bizarre and inappropriate weapons while still not providing adequate amounts of basic equipment. It was the bloodiest year of the war as the Soviets drew the resistance into a number of major battles, killing many of the best field commanders and demoralizing the mujahideen. The Soviets began focusing their air attacks more on the supply routes and major resistance bases. Meanwhile when Michail Gorbachev became Soviet General Secretary in March 1985, he demanded that a way be found within a year for the Soviets to begin disengaging from the war. This means that the Soviets began planning their withdrawal early in 1985 when the amount of aid the US had to the mujahideen had been only about $240 million dollars , and they had their withdrawal planned by the next spring, at which time the Afghans had been given 1985's additional $250 million.

1986

Early in the year the Afghans began noticing a steep decline in Soviet air attacks in most areas of the country. In the middle of the year the Soviets began indicating a serious intention to withdraw from Afghanistan, and made token troop recalls to the USSR. Some better weapons were given to the mujahideen, but usually in a manner which made their use inefficient (e.g. surface to surface rockets without launchers appropriate for the circumstances). After much front page publicity in newspapers around the world, the CIA finally delivered Stinger missiles to the Afghans late in the year when most of the year's fighting was over and activity in the field would soon be curtailed by the onset of winter.

1987

Soviet air attacks across most of Afghanistan continued to decline, but only at a rate equal to or less than that before the Stingers arrived. The Soviets began to take efforts to limit losses, while the mujahideeen, anticipating the Soviet withdrawal, began stockpiling weapons and ammunition.

1988

US aid allocated was in the $600 million range. In April an explosion at the Pakistani munitions depot destroyed the weapons stored there for distribution to the Afghans, and significant additional supplies did not reach the Afghans until December. Meanwhile, the Soviets carried out the major part of their withdrawal amidst only relatively light resistance activity. Pakistan's president, the head of Pakistani Intelligence, and several high ranking officers were assassinated in a sabotaged airplane.

1989

The Soviets completed their withdrawal in February with virtually no resistance attacks in the last months and only some very minor harassment activities directed against the final departing troops. All remaining weapons in the hands of the resistance, and all subsequent military aid, would thus be used by Afghans against other Afghans. Pressured by the US to establish an alternative capital in Afghanistan, the mujahideen launch an attack to take Jalalabad rather than first eroding the military capabilities of the communist DRA forces. This led to a long and bloody stalemate.

 

Thus, in the first five years of the Soviet occupation combined, when the Soviets suffered some of their greatest losses, the mujahideen had received less aid from the US, than they received in each of the years when the Soviets were already withdrawing, and suffered relative small losses. Therefore, the largest portion of the weapons received by the mujahideen were provided after they could not be useful against the Soviets, and it was known to those in the CIA and the US congress, that they would be used to kill other Afghans.

 A couple of other ways of looking at the aid Charlie Wilson obtained for the Afghans

If we add up all the US aid allocated to the Afghan mujahideen during the nine years that the Soviets were actually in Afghanistan, it comes to about $2 billion, with the value of what really reached the Afghans being only a fraction of that. But even if they had actually received a total of $3 billion or $4 billion, as is sometimes claimed, that is only as much as the US gives Israel in aid each year. If rag-tag, sandal-shod guerrillas really were able to defeat the military might of the Soviet Union with that aid, why do the Israelis, who are portrayed as military supermen, facing much inferior Arab armies, need to get that much aid each year even when not actively fighting? (The aid to Israel is technically not all for military use, but it is fungible, and the non-military aid allows the Israelis to divert an equivalent additional portion of their GNP to the military.)

Currently, according to the official US version of what is taking place in Afghanistan, the majority of the Afghans support the US-installed government. Yet, the Afghans, even with NATO forces doing most of the serious fighting, are unable to defeat what is claimed to be a maximum of a few thousand Taliban. By 2007 the US was providing approximately $3 billion per year in military/security aid to the government in Kabul. How is it that the major portion of the Afghans who supposedly defeated the Soviet Army with a total of somewhere around $3 billion in aid, are unable to defeat the lesser portion of their previous forces when receiving $3 billion in aid to their military, plus direct outside military help totaling tens of billions of dollars, each year?

It can be seen that the aid given to the Afghans when they were fighting the Soviets was almost nothing in comparison to other US military aid programs to those facing much less formidable enemies; even the aid to the Afghans who are willing to go along with the current neocon agenda. The US taxpayers are obviously getting robbed blind in these military aid farces. However, it also raises questions about what they are getting for the enormous sums they pay for the US military. Despite all their high-tech toys, the heavy on brawn, light on brains, types who dominate the US military are generally doing worse than the unwilling 19 year old Soviet conscripts who were fighting the Afghans in the 1980s for wages that were, at a realistic exchange rate, about $5 a month. The outside fighters helping the Taliban certainly are not providing major strategic or tactical guidance; if they were, it would only further refute the claim that such individuals need to go to Afghanistan for "training". Rather than funding US military forces providing help to the Afghans of the current government in Kabul, perhaps the US taxpayers should look into contracting the defense needs of the US to the effective portion of the Afghans from the anti-Soviet resistance and those who were providing them with effective help.

 

Was Charlie Wilson really a suave ladies' man, or a crude, obnoxious boor whom women with IQs larger than their chest measurements did everything possible to avoid unless they were agents on assignment for Mossad?

Even by Washington "drunk with power as well as booze" standards, Charles Wilson stood out for being crude and obnoxious. Not surprisingly, the women who were involved with him were generally not even of the social climbing sort usually found consorting with government officials, who usually aspire to achieve at least some minimal level of respectability, but rather, "party girl" types who overlap largely with the huge legion of "escorts" who make their livings in the nation's capital. (The number of "escorts" -- i.e. discreet prostitutes -- per-capita in Washington, DC, is generally estimated to be higher than anywhere else in the USA. In relation to the "DC Madam" case in 2006, it was said by ABC News' Brian Ross, that the women who worked for that escort service "include university professors, legal secretaries, scientists, military officers.", indicating that they weren't good enough at sex to give up their day jobs -- but then, the clients in DC generally aren't very sexually sophisticated or discriminating.) Wilson's insincerity in politics was exceeded only by his insincerity with women. Even most of the naive type women who abound in Washington could easily see through him. That explains why he needed to surround himself with young women who could most charitably be described as "intellectually challenged".

The few brighter women who took an interest in Wilson were those who were doing so as part of their jobs for the Israeli government and its intelligence agencies. Even from Crile's book, it is obvious that the Israelis played upon Wilson's ego by having female operatives of an intellectual caliber far higher than would normally have tolerated Wilson for 5 minutes, pretend to be awed by him, and thus put themselves in positions to further manipulate him.

Wilson was known for having "pet names" for his female consorts. This was reportedly due to the fact that when drinking (as he was most of his waking hours), he would often mix up the names of previous and current female companions. The story is that once a rather jealous and feisty woman who tended to get more so after a few drinks, got enraged at a very drunk Wilson when he called her by the wrong name, and that she inflicted considerable physical injury while he was too drunkenly uncoordinated to put up an effective defense. Subsequently, he took to using the pet names, and while generally using one in particular for a particular woman, he made sure not to use only one name with her. Thus, he might call her a pet name such as "Sugarplum", but would also call her things like "Sweetie" and "Princess", so that if in a drunken fog he referred to her by the pet name of a former consort whom he might have called something like "Sweetpea", it could pass as just another affectionate term. Whereas, a real name like Kathy being applied by his booze befuddled brain to a woman whose name was actually something else, like Donna, would get him in trouble as soon as it came out of his mouth.

Some idea of the way that most women viewed him, and how much they detested even being around him, can be judged by the actions of the wife of the chief US foreign service officer at the US consulate in Peshawar in the mid-1980s. Wives of foreign service officers were expected to be especially gracious and diplomatic hostesses (a tradition from the time when the vast majority of foreign service officers were men), even in the most trying of circumstances. Although the consul himself, Alan Eastham, has been described as somewhat of a fool (and in a later, higher, State Department position in the region, was among those who were officially courting the Taliban into the late 1990s), even those most critical of him who also met his wife Carolyn, found her very likeable and a gracious hostess. However, in an initial encounter with Charles Wilson on one of his visits to Peshwar, she found him so obnoxious and disgusting that she subsequently would arrange to be elsewhere when Wilson would visit the city. One such occasion in 1986 when her absence was conspicuous, was during the visit in which Wilson, despite the supposed esteemed position it is claimed he had among the highest government officials in Pakistan, and all the supposed "covert ops" abilities attributed to him and his CIA companions, was prevented from traveling through the tribal territories to the Pakistan-Afghanistan border by a couple of relatively low level Pakistani policemen. Returning to Eastham's residence at the consulate in Peshawar, the frustrated Wilson holed-up on the upper floor and went on a bender that continued through much of the reception being given in his honor the next day. When he finally staggered downstairs to make an appearance, even those who disliked him have said that they were impressed by someone that tall and that drunk being able to remain vertical despite repeated tottering close calls.

 

Joanne Herring and Charles Fawcett; catalysts or tools?

Joanne Johnson was from a relatively affluent family with good social connections. Her approach to history, the world, and international politics seems to be more emotional than knowledge based. She is a born again Christian and was a member of the Minutewomen, the female branch of the Minutemen, a militant anticommunist group of the 1960s and 1970s (not the current group involved with the illegal immigration issue). The Minutemen, like the John Birchers, while very vocally opposing "communism", avoided the elephant in the room issue of the disproportionately large Jewish element in the communist movements both in Europe and in the US. This was because they had been, from the beginning, manipulated by the Trotskyists to both attack the latter's Stalinist enemies, and keep those with anticommunist attitudes but poor understanding of history who joined them, from seeing the bigger picture. Her marriages, first to real estate developer Robert King, then to Bob Herring, and finally to Lloyd Davis, brought her into contact with the rich elite who were funding the neocons in return for financially beneficial legislation and foreign policy. Thus, it is fairly certain that Joanne Herring's political attitudes were shaped by those who we now associate with the term neocon, and who had their ideological roots in Trotskyism, rather than by any true understanding of, and opposition to, totalitarian government by terror, of which Soviet communism was only one face. Through her former husband's business connections she had contact with Pakistan and a few other Islamic countries, and with individuals in Texas and elsewhere in the US whose money helped buy Charles Wilson's seat in Congress. That made her a perfect candidate for manipulation by the early neocons who wished to gain control over the situation in Afghanistan.

As discussed elsewhere on this page, most of what Crile claimed about her in his book was pure nonsense. Beyond that, it must also be understood that the Pakistanis tend to be over-flattering in their behavior to guests, to the point that the non-egotistical find it condescending and insulting; resembling the way an adult may make a show of supposedly being greatly impressed by, and best friends with, a small child. It is all the more so for those who really know the Pakistani character and how they reveal their often very harshly critical true feelings in private.

The reality is that as someone who was familiar to the Pakistanis, Herring served as a good "stalking horse" for the neocons because the Pakistanis knew her. They knew that she was simplistic in her thinking and world view, and thus was assumed to not likely to pose a threat to them. (It must be remembered that as the only Islamic country with nuclear weapons capabilities, it was constantly a target for Israeli espionage and sabotage.) Making it appear that the military aid program was being pushed along by an eccentric anti-communist socialite, provided a screen for the neocons and Israelis who were setting the agenda and manipulating the arms supplies.

However, it is impossible to understand Herring's involvement without understanding Charles Fawcett's. One of the stranger characters to have had a part in these events (some say, one of the stranger characters anytime, anywhere), Fawcett was what could be described as "gadabout" in Hollywood, East Coast, and European social circles. In his late teens in the 1930s, he left the US and went to Europe where he reportedly earned his living as an "artist's model" (i.e. nude model for figure drawing/painting) and as a "wrestler". It is difficult to sort out fantasy from fact in his biographic information. He was supposedly in Eastern Europe and claimed to have joined the Polish Army when the Germans invaded, but deserted after a week (which, curiously, would have been just when the Soviets started their invasion of the eastern half of Poland where the Polish Army had regrouped) and claimed to have hitchhiked to Paris (across Germany?). There he came into contact with an effeminate Armenian-American, Varian Fry, who was helping people avoid border controls in traveling out of France to Spain and beyond. When Fawcett asked to work with him, Fry was apparently so unimpressed with Fawcett inte