Read Online Charlie Wilson's War by George Crile - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: George Crile
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Wilson’s head; if Jimmy Carter wouldn’t do what was necessary to save the United States, then, by God, he and Ed Wilson would come to the rescue of Tacho Somoza.
A meeting was arranged at the Palm Bay Club in Miami Beach, Somoza’s favorite weekend retreat. The dictator brought along his hot-blooded mistress, Dinorah Sampson. Charlie Wilson brought Tina Simons and Ed Wilson. Somoza seemed more than intrigued when Ed Wilson described the one-thousand-man army of former CIA operatives he said he could mobilize to crush the Sandinistas. “We were all drinking, getting more excited, more excited, killing Ortega, killing everybody, and then Tacho asked Tina to dance.”
Everything was going swimmingly when the dictator, now blind drunk with visions of a thousand CIA cutthroats doing in his enemies, began to fondle Tina. It all happened so fast that the two Wilsons could barely believe their eyes. Dinorah, a very fit weight lifter, began pulling apart the two dancers, screaming in Spanish at her lover, then ripped off Somoza’s glasses and stomped them on the ground.
One can only imagine how a military dictator must feel when humiliated like this. It couldn’t have been easy for Tacho to return to the table. Perhaps it was simply a need to reassert his manhood that changed his mind about Ed Wilson’s proposal, which had so recently enchanted him. But more than likely it was the price tag. Somoza was a notorious tight-wad, and the congressman remembers to this day Somoza’s look of horror when Ed Wilson said he could save the dictator for a mere $100 million—$100,000 per man. To the congressman’s dismay, Somoza passed on the offer. He just said, “Out of the question.” Wilson later observed that the whole exercise had been “very amateurish on my part.” Putting the best possible face on this maiden effort to hijack a U.S. foreign policy, he explained, “I wanted to try to do something to hold the Ortegas of the world at bay, until Carter learned better or we got a new president.”
Shortly afterward, Somoza lost the support even of his country’s business community. On July 17, 1979, with the rebel forces closing in, the dictator fled Nicaragua. It had not been Wilson’s finest hour, and the disasters were only beginning. Just over a year later, Charlie found himself looking at a picture of a screaming Dinorah Sampson on the front page of the Washington Post. She was running from the flaming wreckage of Tacho’s white Mercedes-Benz in Asunción, Paraguay, the only country that had been willing to offer sanctuary to Somoza. The killers had pumped eighteen bullets into Tacho’s body and face before finishing off the job with a rocket attack. Soon after, the man who had gotten Wilson into the affair, Representative Jack Murphy, was caught taking a bribe in the FBI’s ABSCAM sting operation and sent to jail. Meanwhile, Ed Wilson had become a hunted man after being indicted for his illegal dealings with Qaddafi. Captured in the Bahamas, he was tried and sentenced to fifty-two years in jail, where he languishes today.
From his maximum-security cell in White Deer, Pennsylvania, he insists that he had always been operating under the authority of what he calls the “inner CIA.” The congressman’s girlfriend, Tina Simons, suddenly found herself fearing for her life. After testifying against Ed Wilson, she permanently disappeared into the federal witness protection program. The Sandinistas, the Communist-backed guerrillas who Wilson had tried to stop, suddenly emerged as the preoccupation of Ronald Reagan in his not-so-secret Contra war.
Charlie Wilson escaped unscathed but unsettled. He had intervened, believing he was acting selflessly to counter a threat that the country had not yet recognized. His heart may have been in the right place, but his head certainly was not. And by the time it was over, he had managed to make himself look like a dangerous fool. It was in the aftermath of this debacle that Wilson
A meeting was arranged at the Palm Bay Club in Miami Beach, Somoza’s favorite weekend retreat. The dictator brought along his hot-blooded mistress, Dinorah Sampson. Charlie Wilson brought Tina Simons and Ed Wilson. Somoza seemed more than intrigued when Ed Wilson described the one-thousand-man army of former CIA operatives he said he could mobilize to crush the Sandinistas. “We were all drinking, getting more excited, more excited, killing Ortega, killing everybody, and then Tacho asked Tina to dance.”
Everything was going swimmingly when the dictator, now blind drunk with visions of a thousand CIA cutthroats doing in his enemies, began to fondle Tina. It all happened so fast that the two Wilsons could barely believe their eyes. Dinorah, a very fit weight lifter, began pulling apart the two dancers, screaming in Spanish at her lover, then ripped off Somoza’s glasses and stomped them on the ground.
One can only imagine how a military dictator must feel when humiliated like this. It couldn’t have been easy for Tacho to return to the table. Perhaps it was simply a need to reassert his manhood that changed his mind about Ed Wilson’s proposal, which had so recently enchanted him. But more than likely it was the price tag. Somoza was a notorious tight-wad, and the congressman remembers to this day Somoza’s look of horror when Ed Wilson said he could save the dictator for a mere $100 million—$100,000 per man. To the congressman’s dismay, Somoza passed on the offer. He just said, “Out of the question.” Wilson later observed that the whole exercise had been “very amateurish on my part.” Putting the best possible face on this maiden effort to hijack a U.S. foreign policy, he explained, “I wanted to try to do something to hold the Ortegas of the world at bay, until Carter learned better or we got a new president.”
Shortly afterward, Somoza lost the support even of his country’s business community. On July 17, 1979, with the rebel forces closing in, the dictator fled Nicaragua. It had not been Wilson’s finest hour, and the disasters were only beginning. Just over a year later, Charlie found himself looking at a picture of a screaming Dinorah Sampson on the front page of the Washington Post. She was running from the flaming wreckage of Tacho’s white Mercedes-Benz in Asunción, Paraguay, the only country that had been willing to offer sanctuary to Somoza. The killers had pumped eighteen bullets into Tacho’s body and face before finishing off the job with a rocket attack. Soon after, the man who had gotten Wilson into the affair, Representative Jack Murphy, was caught taking a bribe in the FBI’s ABSCAM sting operation and sent to jail. Meanwhile, Ed Wilson had become a hunted man after being indicted for his illegal dealings with Qaddafi. Captured in the Bahamas, he was tried and sentenced to fifty-two years in jail, where he languishes today.
From his maximum-security cell in White Deer, Pennsylvania, he insists that he had always been operating under the authority of what he calls the “inner CIA.” The congressman’s girlfriend, Tina Simons, suddenly found herself fearing for her life. After testifying against Ed Wilson, she permanently disappeared into the federal witness protection program. The Sandinistas, the Communist-backed guerrillas who Wilson had tried to stop, suddenly emerged as the preoccupation of Ronald Reagan in his not-so-secret Contra war.
Charlie Wilson escaped unscathed but unsettled. He had intervened, believing he was acting selflessly to counter a threat that the country had not yet recognized. His heart may have been in the right place, but his head certainly was not. And by the time it was over, he had managed to make himself look like a dangerous fool. It was in the aftermath of this debacle that Wilson
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