We were watching Charlie Wilson's War tonight on DVD, which is much better than I expected. The movie spins him as a heroic guy who against all odds gets something big done. (And leaves the unforeseen results of our intervention still blowing back into our faces in Iraq and elsewhere.) Here is what the real guy looked like, not quite as slick as Tom Hanks, but smooth enough to charm lots of folks into his project.
He and his CIA partner who produced the U.S. intervention in the Afghan war against the USSR are the kind of renegade cowboys that you expect spies to be, from spy novels.
Most spies are a lot duller. In 1977 I was an Assistant Cultural Affairs Officer in the U.S. Foreign Service in Brasilia, trying to figure out what I wanted to be when I grew up and trying to get a dissertation topic together, in case I decided that what I wanted to be was a college professor (which is as we all know how the story worked out). In the meantime, I was doing a kind of cultural diplomacy, organizing U.S. academic, media and cultural world speakers to come to Brazil to talk about points we wanted to make in Brazil.
But there were some very interesting times along the way in my career as a very junior diplomat. My own personal favorite encounter with the world of spies was the night I went to a Soviet Embassy (this was 1977 after all) party as the escort of one of the senior Brazilian national employees I worked with, a very interesting lady name Asta-Rose Alcaide, who was an ex-opera singer and the very cultured head of the Brasilia opera society. You can see her as she looks today in the photo here (courtesy of the Web).
As soon as we walked into the Soviet Embassy for the reception, I saw several people sizing me up and presumably assuming that I was a new CIA guy there to get familiar with the competition. At least, a very squarely built Second Secretary of the Bulgarian Embassy made a beeline over to talk to me while Asta-Rose was circulating around to talk about opera to people. (The Soviets were clearly relieved to be able to talk about something they actually liked and that made them look good.)
I don't think the Bulgarian had been trained to be much of a conversationalist. After a while I think he decided I was either who I said I was, a very junior guy who worked with Asta-Rose in the cultural section, or I was under deep enough cover that it would take a lot of work to pry it off.
I did see quite a few of our own CIA guys there. I remember thinking that the evening would certainly count as work, not fun, for them. A lot of wary circling around and chit-chat. It was an interesting window into a world that I was distinctly glad not to actually belong to.
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