Charlie Wilson’s War - George Crile torrent

Category: Political
Language: EnglishKeywords: Charlie Wilson War

It’s common knowledge that the U.S. armed the Afghans in their fight against the Soviet Union, but until now, the fact that this was possibly the biggest, meanest covert operation in history has been absent from press reports. In one of the most detailed descriptions of a CIA operation every written, the bizarre twists and turns of the full story are told in CHARLIE WILSON’S WAR. Veteran 60 Minutes producer George Crile explains how one Congressman was able to provide the CIA with hundreds of millions of dollars to fund the Afghan program, dwarfing the price tag for arming the Nicaraguan Contras that occurred at virtually the same time.

“The scope and nature of this campaign has still not registered in the consciousness of most Americans,” Crile writes in the book’s Epilogue. “Nor is it understood that such secret undertakings inevitably have unforeseen and unintended consequences which, in this case, remain largely ignored.”

When Crile produced his first story about Texas Congressman Charlie Wilson for 60 Minutes in 1989, he too underestimated the vastness of the program and its consequences. It was a later trip to the Arab world with Wilson, the Wilson’s “princely” reception, and the events of 9/11 that opened his eyes to the far bigger picture of CHARLIE WILSON’S WAR.