Charlie Wilson's Real War---From My Beltway Foxhole

Denis Neill was my entree into the skullduggery that caused Charlie Wilson to get his Obsessive/Compulsive manic energies mobilized. Denis was/is a man who helped Charlie persuade, cajole, and [yes] bribe his fellow Democrats into supporting Reagan's covert security assistance to the Afghan Mujahideen.

I worked for Denis Neill on the Pakistan front [as well as on Jordan & Sudan & Morocco] on a project mentioned in "Charlie Wilson's War" and actually worked with Wilson on a low-level, but important project that netted Pakistan $450,000,000 [$500million in the movie] in much-needed military aid [with the help of Dem. Senators Kerry & Dodd---I personally delivered the check!!!] I had raised #50,000 which Denis had put into a cashiers check that I delivered to freshman Senator John Kerry's rep at the DNC for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.
Denis Neill himself paid the Committee a couple thou and John Kerry another thou the same year [1988]. One of history's little ironies is that Kerry & Dodd voted with the minority Republicans on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee as a result of that check, or so Denis told me three months later at the Office Christmas Party with Charlie Wilson beaming approvingly at me [and holding a Scotch on the rocks, appropriately]. Denis then poured me a generous single malt Scotch & lit me a Cuban cigar as we partied while the USSR retreated across the border....!

I had visited Peshawar's refugee camps and had spent an evening drinking with the Soviet Ambassador in Islamabad---he thought I was some sort of American agent, perhaps? One of my assistants on a TV production project told me he was part of Dan Rather's production team which famously went across the Afghan border with Dan wearing his funny cap. Actually, phony Dan had his team go out to film the "dangerous" scenes with a Pak movie crew & actors---TV News from CBS hasn't changed much!

In the movie, the camps resembled Darfur, but in reality, they were run by northern European missionaries and the Afghans were so handsome they appeared to be movie actors playing the role of refugees.

I had a couple of hairy escapes from death on the kill-or-be-killed Pak roads filled with drivers high on ganga or some illegal non-alcoholic substance. Once an Army truck I hitched a ride in the back of almost fell off the Karakoram Highway into the Indus River a thousand feet below. I looked down and saw the gigantic rapids below swollen with winter rains.

May not have been the greatest memories, but it sure beats Arthur Schlesinger's cocktail party patter...!