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The Extraordinary Story of How the Wildest Man in Congress and a Rogue CIA Agent Changed the History of Our Times
Grove Press
May 2004
On Sale: April 22, 2004
Featuring: Charlie Wilson
560 pages
ISBN: 0802141242
EAN: 9780802141248
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Non-Fiction
Charlie Wilson's War was a publishing sensation and a New
York Times, Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times
bestseller. In the early 1980s, a Houston socialite turned
the attention of maverick Texas congressman Charlie Wilson
to the ragged band of Afghan "freedom fighters" who
continued, despite overwhelming odds, to fight the Soviet
invaders. Wilson, who sat on the all-powerful House
Appropriations Committee, managed to procure hundreds of
millions of dollars to support the mujahideen. The arms were
secretly procured and distributed with the help of an
out-of-favor CIA operative, Gust Avrokotos, whose
working-class Greek-American background made him an anomaly
among the Ivy League world of American spies. Avrakotos
handpicked a staff of CIA outcasts to run his operation and,
with their help, continually stretched the Agency's rules to
the breaking point. Moving from the back rooms of the
Capitol, to secret chambers at Langley, to arms-dealers'
conventions, to the Khyber Pass, this book presents an
astonishing chapter of our recent past, and the key to
understanding what helped trigger the sudden collapse of the
Soviet Union and ultimately led to the emergence of a
brand-new foe in the form of radical Islam.
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