DALLAS — Charlie Wilson, the former congressman from Texas whose funding of Afghanistan’s resistance to the Soviet Union was chronicled in the movie and book “Charlie Wilson’s War,” died Wednesday. He was 76.
Wilson died at Memorial Medical Center-Lufkin after he started having difficulty breathing while attending a meeting in the eastern Texas town where he lived, said hospital spokeswoman Yana Ogletree. Wilson was pronounced dead on arrival, and the preliminary cause of death was cardiopulmonary arrest, she said.
Wilson represented the 2nd District in east Texas in the U.S. House from 1973 to 1996 and was known in Washington as “Good Time Charlie” for his reputation as a hard-drinking womanizer. He once called then-Rep. Pat Schroeder of Colorado “Babycakes” and tried to take a beauty queen with him on a government trip to Afghanistan.
Actor Tom Hanks portrayed Wilson in the 2007 movie about Wilson’s efforts to arm Afghan mujahedeen during their war against the Soviet Union in the 1980s. Wilson, a member of the House Appropriations Committee, helped secure money for weapons, plunging the U.S. into a risky venture against the world’s other superpower.
Wilson, a Democrat, was considered a progressive but also a defense hawk. He had acknowledged some responsibility for Afghanistan becoming a safe haven for al-Qaeda after the Soviets retreated and the U.S. withdrew its support.
“That caused an enormous amount of real bitterness in Afghanistan, and it was probably the catalyst for Taliban movement,” Wilson said in a 2001 interview.
The Soviets spent a decade battling the determined and generously financed mujahedeen before pulling the Red Army from Afghanistan in 1989.
Mike Vickers, who as a CIA agent in 1984 played a key role in the covert effort to arm the Afghan rebels, said Wilson played a part in the Soviet Union’s collapse, just two years after its withdrawal from Afghanistan.
Vickers, now assistant secretary of defense for special operations, praised Wilson as a “great American patriot who played a pivotal role in a world-changing event — the defeat of the Red Army in Afghanistan, which led to the collapse of communism and the Soviet empire.”
After leaving Congress, Wilson lobbied for a number of years before returning to Texas. In 2007, Wilson had a heart transplant at a Houston hospital.
Ogletree said Wilson is survived by his wife, Barbara, and a sister.
