Charlie Wilson's War (34 page)

thousands of Tennessee mules carried the CIA’s weapons to the jihad.

Liz Wickersham, Charlie’s companion on his Las Vegas hot tub weekend.

Annelise “Sweetums” Ilschenko, former Miss World contestant at the heart of the DIA plane scandal.

Bush, Reagan, and O’Neill. Charlie, Liz, and President Carter. Barbara and George Bush joking with fellow Texans Charlie Wilson and former governor Ann Richards.

Charlie and Cynthia Gale Watson, a.k.a. Snowflake, in front of the notorious DIA plane.

“The greatest foreign policy crisis since World War II.”—Jimmy Carter on the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan

“I used to tell him: ‘I don’t want to know what you are doing [with the CIA]; you just go ahead.’”—Speaker Tip O’Neill

Carol Shannon, Charlie’s personal belly dancer

Charlie’s money transformed a rabble of shepherds and tribsmen into an army of techno holy warriors.

Charlie with Jalaluddin Haqani. Once the CIA’s favorite commander, after 9/11 he became a prime target of U.S. military forces who believed that he was harboring Osama bin Laden.

Charlie greeting Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, the Pakistanis’ favorite commander who received the greatest amount of U.S. support. Branded as a terrorist after 9/11, he was the target of a failed assassination attempt from a CIA-launched Hellfire missile.

Gust Avrakotos, the CIA’s blue-collar James Bond. It was Charlie Wilson’s war but it never would have happened without Gust Avrakotos.

Charlie Wilson, patron of the greatest modern jihad and architect of the CIA’s victory in the last campaign of the Cold War