s/t: The Extraordinary Story of How the Wildest Man in Congress & a Rogue CIA Agent Changed the History of Our TimesIn a little over a decade, two events have transformed the world we live in: the collapse of the USSR & the rise of militant Islam. Charlie Wilson's War is the untold story behind the last battle of the Cold War & how it fueled the new jihad. Crile tells how Charlie Wilson, a maverick congressman from E. Texas, conspired with a rogue CIA operative to launch the biggest, meanest & most successful covert operation in the Agency's history.In the early '80s, after a Houston socialite turned Wilson's attention to the ragged band of Afghan "freedom fighters" who continued, despite overwhelming odds, to fight Soviet invaders, the congressman became passionate about their cause. At a time when Ronald Reagan faced a total cutoff of funding for the Contra war, Wilson, who sat on the all-powerful House Appropriations Committee, managed to procure hundreds of millions of dollars to support the mujadiheen. The arms were secretly procured & distributed with the aid of an out-of-favor CIA operative, Gust Avrakotos, whose working-class Greek-American background made him an anomaly among the Ivy League world of American spies. Nicknamed "Dr Dirty," the blue-collar James Bond was an aggressive agent who served on the front lines of the Cold War where he learned how to stretch Agency rules to the breaking point.Avrokotos handpicked a staff of CIA outcasts to run his operation: "Hilly Billy," the logistics wizard who could open an unnumbered Swiss bank account for the US government in 12 hours when others took months; Art Alper, the grandfatherly demolitions expert from the Technical Services Division who passed on his dark arts to the Afghans; Mike Vickers, the former Green Beret who created a systematic plan to turn a rabble of shepherds into an army of techno Holy warriors.Moving from the back rooms of the Capitol, to secret chambers at Langley, to arms-dealers conventions, to the Khyber Pass, Charlie Wilson's War is one of the most detailed & compulsively readable accounts of the inside workings of the CIA ever written.words : 216127