The Largest Covert Operation in CIA History
According to the author of the newly released Charlie Wilson’s War (known as My Enemy’s Enemy in the UK), the exception to CIA incompetence was the arming between 1979 and 1988 of thousands of Afghan moujahedeen (“freedom fighters”). The agency flooded Afghanistan with an astonishing array of extremely dangerous weapons and “unapologetically mov[ed] to equip and train cadres of high tech holy warriors in the art of waging a war of urban terror against a modern superpower,” in this case, the USSR.
(Via Chapel Perilous)