freshman congressman reluctantly voting against the war. As he saw it, America’s South Vietnamese allies just weren’t willing to fight, and for Charlie Wilson, that meant they weren’t worth backing. In those days it was very much in the mainstream for a young liberal Democrat to vote against the war. But it always made him feel a bit like a traitor.
Wilson’s first serious entry into the arena of U.S. foreign affairs came in his first year in office in 1973, when he discovered the cause of Israel. U.S. ambassadors and assistant secretaries of state, national security advisers, and CIA directors would invariably be puzzled by what prompted Wilson to take up the curious causes he chose to champion. Often they would suspect the basest motives—outright payoffs or some other ulterior temptation. The real explanation begins with his mother, Wilmuth.
Wilmuth Wilson was a woman of conviction. In Trinity, Texas, a conservative southern community, she was the town liberal and a force to be reckoned with. A mainstay of the Democratic Party and a pillar of her church, she stood out as a fearless defender of the rights of Trinity’s black citizens. “I suspect ours was the only house in town where the word nigger wasn’t used,” Charlie remembers. She openly befriended blacks, and throughout the Depression, when hoboes and tramps would come to the back door to see if they could sharpen knives in exchange for a meal, Wilmuth would always send Charlie to talk with them, telling him that they were good people just down on their luck. “Always,” she told her young son and his kid sister, Sharon (who would go on to become chairman of the board of Planned Parenthood), “always stand up for the underdog. If you’re ever in doubt, back the underdog.”
As corny as it may sound, the lesson took. It certainly helps to explain why, two years before he was elected to Congress, Charlie Wilson was the only person in Lufkin, Texas, who subscribed to the Jerusalem Post. He made this unusual move immediately after reading Exodus, Leon Uris’s novel about the founding of the modern state of Israel. It was the ultimate story about worthy underdogs, the kind Wilmuth had taught him to honor.
Wilson had been in Congress only a few months and had just won a seat on the Foreign Affairs Committee when Egypt, Syria, Jordan, and the combined forces of the Arab League launched a surprise attack on Israel during the Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur. For a few days, as Wilson followed every news account, he thought the Arab forces might actually overrun the Jewish state. At one point he became so concerned that he put in a call to the Israeli embassy, asking the switchboard operator to connect him with someone who could brief him about the war.
In Washington during those days, the Israeli embassy was a center of remarkably effective intrigue. Its mission was to support the survival of Israel by ensuring the billions in economic and military assistance that the United States gives each year. Jewish congressmen and senators were natural allies and visited regularly. So, too, were elected officials with many Jewish constituents. What made the call from Charlie Wilson to the embassy’s congressional liaison officer, Zvi Rafiah, so unusual was that Wilson is not Jewish and had virtually no Jews in his district.
Rafiah is a very short, very smart Israeli who Wilson always believed was a highly placed Mossad agent. He was used to dealing with all sorts of people, but he says he has never encountered anyone like Wilson. To begin with, Rafiah was not accustomed to having congressmen or senators come to him; they always summoned him, and he would appear at their offices armed with charts, maps, slides, military attachés, and ministers.
Wilson’s arrival an hour after his call startled Rafiah. He was wearing cowboy boots and a Stetson and from the perspective of the five-foot-six Rafiah, the congressman looked like a giant. But what surprised
Wilson’s first serious entry into the arena of U.S. foreign affairs came in his first year in office in 1973, when he discovered the cause of Israel. U.S. ambassadors and assistant secretaries of state, national security advisers, and CIA directors would invariably be puzzled by what prompted Wilson to take up the curious causes he chose to champion. Often they would suspect the basest motives—outright payoffs or some other ulterior temptation. The real explanation begins with his mother, Wilmuth.
Wilmuth Wilson was a woman of conviction. In Trinity, Texas, a conservative southern community, she was the town liberal and a force to be reckoned with. A mainstay of the Democratic Party and a pillar of her church, she stood out as a fearless defender of the rights of Trinity’s black citizens. “I suspect ours was the only house in town where the word nigger wasn’t used,” Charlie remembers. She openly befriended blacks, and throughout the Depression, when hoboes and tramps would come to the back door to see if they could sharpen knives in exchange for a meal, Wilmuth would always send Charlie to talk with them, telling him that they were good people just down on their luck. “Always,” she told her young son and his kid sister, Sharon (who would go on to become chairman of the board of Planned Parenthood), “always stand up for the underdog. If you’re ever in doubt, back the underdog.”
As corny as it may sound, the lesson took. It certainly helps to explain why, two years before he was elected to Congress, Charlie Wilson was the only person in Lufkin, Texas, who subscribed to the Jerusalem Post. He made this unusual move immediately after reading Exodus, Leon Uris’s novel about the founding of the modern state of Israel. It was the ultimate story about worthy underdogs, the kind Wilmuth had taught him to honor.
Wilson had been in Congress only a few months and had just won a seat on the Foreign Affairs Committee when Egypt, Syria, Jordan, and the combined forces of the Arab League launched a surprise attack on Israel during the Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur. For a few days, as Wilson followed every news account, he thought the Arab forces might actually overrun the Jewish state. At one point he became so concerned that he put in a call to the Israeli embassy, asking the switchboard operator to connect him with someone who could brief him about the war.
In Washington during those days, the Israeli embassy was a center of remarkably effective intrigue. Its mission was to support the survival of Israel by ensuring the billions in economic and military assistance that the United States gives each year. Jewish congressmen and senators were natural allies and visited regularly. So, too, were elected officials with many Jewish constituents. What made the call from Charlie Wilson to the embassy’s congressional liaison officer, Zvi Rafiah, so unusual was that Wilson is not Jewish and had virtually no Jews in his district.
Rafiah is a very short, very smart Israeli who Wilson always believed was a highly placed Mossad agent. He was used to dealing with all sorts of people, but he says he has never encountered anyone like Wilson. To begin with, Rafiah was not accustomed to having congressmen or senators come to him; they always summoned him, and he would appear at their offices armed with charts, maps, slides, military attachés, and ministers.
Wilson’s arrival an hour after his call startled Rafiah. He was wearing cowboy boots and a Stetson and from the perspective of the five-foot-six Rafiah, the congressman looked like a giant. But what surprised
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