Charlie Wilson, US champion of Afghans against Soviets, dies
WASHINGTON: The former US lawmaker and hero of the film Charlie Wilson's War, who championed covert CIA support for Afghans fighting Soviet troops in the 1980s, died Wednesday at age 76, announced Memorial Medical Center-Lufkin hospital.
Fulsome tributes poured in for Charlie Wilson, who despite a playboy image became an influential player in the Cold War, funneling billions of dollars in weapons to the Afghan mujahideen through a secret CIA program.
His exploits became the subject of the 2007 movie adaptation of a book chronicling his efforts, starring Tom Hanks as Wilson and Julia Roberts as the Houston socialite Joanne Herring who helped him win support for the ambitious covert war.
Charlie Wilson led a life that was oversized even by Hollywood's standards, said a statement from Texas Governor Rick Perry.
Wilson, dubbed by Texas newspapers as Goodtime Charlie because of his hard-partying, scandal-prone ways, succumbed to a heart attack at 12:16 pm, stated Yana Ogletree, a spokeswoman from the hospital.
As the head of the House of Representatives Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, Wilson quietly oversaw vast funding increases for the CIAs campaign against Soviet forces in Afghanistan, with Pakistan playing a prominent role.
But arming the Afghan fighters - seen as a triumph in Washington after the Soviets withdrew - turned out to have unintended consequences that have since haunted the United States.
Some of the Afghan warlords that Wilson championed and who received millions from the CIA are now viewed as dangerous Islamist extremists with ties to Al-Qaeda, including Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and Jalaluddin Haqqani.
As the world now knows, his efforts and exploits helped repel an invader, liberate a people, and bring the Cold War to a close, said Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who worked with Wilson during his years at the CIA. After the Soviets left, Charlie kept fighting for the Afghan people and warned against abandoning that traumatized country to its fate -- a warning we should have heeded then, and should remember today.
Even after the attacks of September 11, 2001, Wilson never expressed regret about arming the Afghan warriors.
We were fighting the evil empire. It would have been like not supplying the Soviets against Hitler in World War II, he told Time magazine in 2007. Anyway, who the hell had ever heard of the Taliban then?
The Central Intelligence Agency broke with tradition and eventually gave Wilson the Honored Colleague Award for his efforts in Afghanistan, the first civilian to receive the award.
Wilsons scheme may never have succeeded without help from his trusted partner, rogue CIA officer Gus Avrakotos - played by Philip Seymour Hoffman in the film - a blue-collar son of Greek immigrants who resented his Ivy League educated leaders at the agency.
CBS journalist George Crile described the unlikely duo in his book that inspired the Hollywood hit, with the fitting subtitle, The Extraordinary Story of How the Wildest Man in Congress and a Rogue CIA Agent Changed the History of Our Times.
The book recounts Wilson enduring a harrowing Justice Department investigation into allegations he had snorted cocaine in Las Vegas.
Prosecutors never filed charges, as one key witness could only recall Wilson partaking of cocaine in the Cayman Islands - outside the reach of US authorities.
Asked years later in an ABC television interview if the charges were true, Wilson joked: Nobody knows the answer to that and I ain't telling.
Wilson is survived by his wife, Barbara, and a sister.
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May his soul rest in peace
