Bill Bass, a state appeals court judge from Tyler, is sitting in a dark theater, having just watched Charlie Wilson's War. As the credits roll, he wants to speak but can't. He's crying.
The real Charlie Wilson is one of Judge Bass' dearest friends. To see him portrayed by Oscar-winning actor Tom Hanks has reduced him to tears.
"I was very moved by it," he says. "I remember Charlie's efforts, and his efforts did change the world. Charlie is one of a handful of people who made a difference in the history of the 20th century. ... I'm so proud to have known him."
Given the power of a Hollywood movie, a new generation of people the world over will soon know Charlie Wilson, whose cinematic bio opens today.
Mr. Wilson's 24-year career as a congressman from Lufkin, Texas, began in 1973. The movie's focus is a covert operation he spearheaded from 1979 to 1989 that armed the mujahedeen freedom fighters of Afghanistan, whose country was being ravaged by the Soviet Union.
Mr. Wilson put together an unusual coalition of Israelis, Egyptians, Saudis, Pakistanis, Democrats and Republicans – including President Ronald Reagan – who imported to the front lines Stinger missiles that helped topple the Soviets.
The movie foreshadows the grim events that followed. After the Soviets' demise, the Taliban seized control, which Mr. Wilson blames on the U.S. losing "the end game." The Taliban, of course, gave rise to Osama bin Laden and the events of Sept. 11, 2001.
The film is based on the book of the same name by the late George Crile, who, as a 60 Minutes producer, revealed the name of the Afghans' guardian angel in 1987. As Gen. Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq, Pakistan's president at the time, said while staring into a 60 Minutes camera, "Charlie did it!"
Now recuperating in Houston from a heart transplant he underwent in September, Mr. Wilson, 74, is the first to admit that, as overwhelming as 60 Minutes or a best-selling book can be, neither comes close to a movie.
"Words don't describe it," he says in a lengthy interview with The Dallas Morning News. "It's magical. It's esoteric in a way. It's just an out-of-this-planet experience. It's the most exciting thing that's ever happened in my life. And that covers a lot of ground."
Indeed, it must. The film opens with Mr. Wilson the bachelor frolicking in the penthouse suite of a Las Vegas hotel, surrounded by a hot tub full of glistening naked women who are high on cocaine.
Happily married since 1999 to a loving, protective wife, Mr. Wilson had by the 1980s acquired a reputation as one of Washington's most active playboys. His flock of female congressional "aides" was known as "Charlie's Angels." A lover of whiskey, he hasn't had a drink, he says, since 1998.
"Charlie is a live wire and always has been," says Dr. J.C. "Sonny" Clement, 72, a Lufkin dentist who has known Mr. Wilson since the early 1960s. "He's got the heart of a lion, and if he believes in something, he goes after it 100 percent. He partied the same way. But I will say this: I never saw him use illicit drugs." (A 1980 investigation into Mr. Wilson's alleged cocaine use was dropped for lack of evidence.)
Former state Rep. Buddy Temple, 65, has been friends with Mr. Wilson since 1964. At that time, Mr. Wilson was in the Texas Legislature, where he would serve in the House from 1960 to 1966 and in the Senate from 1967 to 1973. Mr. Temple praises his old friend for "loyalty and compassion, a keen intellect and amazing political instincts."
And one more thing. "When you're with Charlie," he says with a husky laugh, "there's never a dull moment."
No stranger to bars, the 6-foot-4 Mr. Wilson hated seeing fights break out, "so he would fly in there all arms and legs and try to break it up," says Dr. Clement. "He just wasn't afraid of getting hurt."
Handling the hoopla
Charlie Wilson's War offers a ribald accounting of his love of women, including Houston socialite Joanne Herring, portrayed by Julia Roberts. Mr. Wilson says all the talk about past shenanigans has been rough on Barbara, his wife.
"We're certainly discussing it plenty now," he says. "I told her when the book came out, 'There's nothing in there I hadn't told you about.' She said, 'Yeah, but I never expected to see it in print with pictures.' "
Friends worry that all the hoopla might be a bit too much for a guy who only recently got a new heart. He says it came from a 33-year-old man in Kansas City, Kan.
"I hate to be this colloquial," he says of this torrent of activity, "but it's the same kind of rush I get when the Cowboys come from behind."
Speaking of, he loves the fact that the belly dancer he sent to the Middle East to woo Egyptian allies is lasciviously portrayed in the film by Tracy Phillips, the daughter of Cowboys head coach Wade Phillips.
"She sure as hell doesn't look like her daddy," says Mr. Wilson, "and you can put that down!"
Debauchery notwithstanding, Charlie Wilson's War is at its best in documenting his serious side. He describes himself as "a Scoop Jackson Democrat – a liberal Democrat. I believe in being a dove but a heavily armed dove. I believe the Soviet Union did not mean us well. I despised the tyranny."
Rep. Wilson first became intrigued with the Afghan conflict on Christmas Eve 1979, when the Soviets invaded. He then began to read alarming reports from the front lines and saw Dan Rather documenting the carnage on 60 Minutes. His first visit came in early 1981.
When he went to Pakistan and saw Afghan children in refugee camps with their arms and legs blown off, and families fighting for pellets of grain to stay alive, he felt enraged. "I saw all the havoc, all the cruelty, all the horror and terror they'd spread," he says.
'An opportunity'
He pauses, as though he too is about to cry. "I just saw an opportunity," he says, "to grab the sons o' bitches by the throat."
He did so as a member of the House Appropriations Committee. Working in secret with a maverick CIA agent (played in the film by Philip Seymour Hoffman), he managed to secure congressional funding, which, coupled with matching contributions from foreign partners, added up to $1 billion. He says the turning point was lining up "hundreds" of Stinger missiles, which he says cost close to $80,000 each.
But it took awhile to get there. For Mr. Wilson, the low point came in 1985, "when the Soviets had backed our guys up." Using the Mil MI-24, otherwise known as the Hind helicopter gunship, the Soviets "were killing us, and there was no way to shoot them down. It was a very distressing time. The mujahedeen held on through sheer courage."
The high point, however, came soon afterward. On Sept. 26, 1986, the Stinger missiles he had fought so hard to import finally reached Afghan fighters. On that day alone, four Hind helicopters flew into Jalalabad. Three were shot down.
"I was just exhilarated," he says. Long committed to bipartisan solutions, Mr. Wilson salutes Reagan for securing the mission. "Once Ronald Reagan gave us the OK to use Stinger missiles," he says, "the war was over. Until my dying day, I'll give Reagan credit."
So, he regards as wrongheaded a review of the film that appeared in the New York Post.
It's erroneous, he says, to portray Charlie Wilson's War as an attempt by Democrats "to claim credit for winning the Cold War. ... The way we won the thing was by having no partisanship and no damaging leaks."
No leaks occurred, he says, because the media were focused on Central America. "They were focused on a small thing and missed the big thing," he says. "They had Nicaraguans killing Nicaraguans in Nicaragua, while we were killing Russians in the Hindu Kush."
Over eight years, Mr. Wilson averaged four trips a year for a total of 32. He strongly objects to critics who suggest that toppling the Soviets created a vacuum that led to the rise of Mr. bin Laden.
"No one had heard of the Taliban," he says. "They didn't exist until 11 years after the Russians were defeated. What happened was, by not pursuing the end game as we should have, we let chaos develop in Afghanistan. I tried hard to pull the other way, but my colleagues were tired of listening to me."
In many ways, Mr. Wilson continues to feel frustrated. He objects to the war in Iraq, saying that in the aftermath of 9/11, "the Bush administration was doing everything right – rebuilding the infrastructure in Afghanistan, beating back the Taliban and the real radical Islamists. Then when Iraq came, it took out much of the CIA and the Agency for International Development that was doing the reconstruction.
"It also took out a lot of our best special forces, and most of all, it took away our focus. If not for the war in Iraq, our focus would have stayed where it belonged, and bin Laden would have been strung up many times over by now."
A lasting imprint
A Naval Academy graduate who served as a lieutenant, Mr. Wilson is revered by his buddies for what they call his passion. For Judge Bass, the movie's legacy will be its "accurate depiction of a very good man, warts and all."
He loves the scenes that show the interior of Mr. Wilson's Arlington, Va., apartment, "where Charlie loved looking down on the Marine Corps monument. He was a true patriot. He loved women and whiskey, but he was like his idol, Winston Churchill.
"As Charlie always said, Winston Churchill won the Nobel Prize for literature. He was in the last cavalry charge in modern history. He was a great writer who, in his spare time, managed to save Western civilization," Judge Bass says.
"But then Charlie would look you in the eye and say, 'And he still drank, didn't he?' And, of course, he did. What both men have in common is greatness and the fact that each made a lasting imprint on history."
