JOANNE HERRING AND OPERATION CYCLONE OF TALIBAN IN GREAT GAME

Joanne Herring in Afghanistan with the mujahideen

By Philip Sherwell

12:01AM GMT 02 Dec 2007

Joan Herring was Girl Friend of Pakistan Army chief of Army Staff General  ZIA ul Haq Dictator President of Pakistan and Murderer of Zufiqar ali Bhutto whom he Hanged via Fake Trail in Judicial Courts of Pakistan .

Gen Zia ul Haq Befriended Joanne Herring as his Girl Friend when he was in Jordon Killing Palestinians who were Attacking Israel and also Threatening Jordon King Shah Hussein  when he was a  Brigadier in Jordan of 2nd Armored Brigade of Pakistan Army and Jordan Army he was Training .

Later when he Killed the First Elected PM of Pakistan Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto and became a Dictator and President of Pakistan , he Appointed Joanne Herring wife of Oil Magnet and Businessman Mr Herring as  Ambassador of Islamic republic of Pakistan as he called Pakistan at that time ,  Joann Herring was In charge of Pakistani Embassy in Texas USA , She also Received Quaid I Azam Medal from Gen Zia Ul Haq for her Services .

She was Party Animal and Orgy Doer and had links with Influential Congress and Senators and Congressmen in USA including the President Ronald Reagan , Israel and also Middle East Dictators like King of Jordan and also Egyptian and Israeli’s, with Parties of Sex , booze and orgies.

Gen Zia ul Haq had been Picked up Favor with Israel and USA , after Operation Black Friday when he Killed a Lot of Palestinians attacking Israel from Jordan and he Killed 10,000 Under his Tanks as Brigadier in charge of 2nd Armored Brigade of Tanks at that Shahid Khaqan Abbasi was his ADC later to become PM of Pakistan under PML Pakistan Muslim League ,  to stop Palestinians from attacking Israel and also Protect King Hussein of Jordan, who he Lifted on his shoulders to Prevent his Killing and Ran out of the Kings Palace , later to Develop Personal Friendship and Loyalty of King Hussian and Joan Herring.

As Personal Friend of King Hussein Joanne Herring also got acquainted  and Befriended Gen Zia Ul Haq Army Chief of Pakistan Army and Father of Taliban terrorism in Pakistan and Father of Drug smuggling Heroin and also Islamic Extremism and Terrorism known as Talibanisation and Saudisation and Wahabization of Pakistan .

Gen Zia would Interrupt his cabinet meeting to just Take her call as People in his Cabinet like Sahibzada Yaqub Khan had noted in his Memoirs . She has such a Deep and Personal relationship with Senator Texas Charlie Wilson , the Father of “Charlie Wilson war ” , or Operation Cyclone , that Started as revenge for Vietnam but ended up Defeat of Soviet USSR Russian Empire

Film trailer: Charlie Wilson’s War

Arts channel

Joanne Herring was a pampered Texan until she took to the mountains of Afghanistan to fight the Red Menace. As her astonishing story comes to the big screen, she talks to Philip Sherwell

Joanne Herring speaks in the slow, refined drawl of a Southern belle. With her svelte figure, surgeon-assisted features, dyed blonde hair and obligatory sunglasses, she looks far younger than her 78 years, as she drives around Houston’s ritzy suburbs in a red Jaguar convertible, accompanied by her two bandana0wearing black poodles.

Joanne Herring and General Zia ul Haq President of Pakistan

Thrice-married socialite, hostess, philanthropist, businesswoman, diplomat, television chat-show presenter and God-fearing ultra-conservative, Mrs Herring has been compared to a cross between Scarlett O’Hara and Dolly Parton in her various incarnations of Texan royalty.

But the most extraordinary role in her remarkable life is about to be portrayed by Julia Roberts in a new Hollywood blockbuster, Charlie Wilson’s War, to be released in America on December 21. For Mrs Herring also changed the course of history.

A few months after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, she smuggled herself into that mountainous land to film the atrocities that the Russian forces were inflicting as they strafed villages from helicopter gunships.

Mrs Herring nearly became a casualty of those same tactics, surviving a helicopter attack by Soviet forces on their mujahideen foes while she was filming the battle with her combat photographer son, Robin King, and Charles Fawcett, an adventurer and movie-maker.

Joanne Herring and Senator Charlie Willson of Texas

The footage they brought back was pivotal in persuading America to arm secretly and fund the tribal warriors fighting the Red Army. The biggest covert war in history turned Afghanistan into Moscow’s “Vietnam”, culminating in humiliating defeat for the Kremlin and the collapse of the Soviet Union.

“Many times I wondered what a nice girl from Texas was doing in a place like that,” she told The Sunday Telegraph last week. “Never in my wildest dreams would I have thought I would have ended up in the underbelly of the world fighting the demons of communism.”

She treasures a fading photograph that captures the bizarre incongruity of her mission. It shows her sitting demurely, looking as if she were dressed for a light lunch at the country club, with her coiffed hair, big glasses and neat cardigan and blouse, but she is surrounded by bearded, turbaned warriors toting automatic rifles in the bleak rocky terrain of Afghanistan.

Joanne Herring with King Shah Hussain of Jordon Friend of General Zia

On her return, she showed the film to Republican friends and political grandees, such as George Bush senior, the new vice-president under Ronald Reagan, Henry Kissinger and CIA chief William Casey.

Perhaps most significantly, she was dating Charlie Wilson, a flamboyant Texan congressman with a reputation as a hard-drinking playboy who was also a consummate Washington wheeler-dealer and influential member of the defence appropriations committee.

Mrs Herring and Mr Wilson (played by Tom Hanks in the film) forged an alliance with a rule-bending CIA operative Gust Avrakotos (Philip Seymour Hoffman) to launch a clandestine international operation to back the mujahideen.

The maverick triumvirate secured Israeli and Swiss arms, paid for by US and Saudi money, and smuggled them through Egypt, in deals struck while belly dancers deployed their seductive talents on visiting dignitaries in Arab capitals.

It is little wonder that the film by veteran director Mike Nichols, who won an Oscar for The Graduate in 1968, begins with the declaration: “Based on a true story. You think we could make this up?” The trailer tempts cinema-goers with the message: “A stiff drink. A little mascara. A lot of nerve. Who said they couldn’t bring down the Soviet Empire.”

Mrs Herring will be given the red-carpet treatment at the film’s premiere in Los Angeles and feted at a slew of parties next week, and she is delighted that their battle to halt the spread of communism is receiving the celluloid treatment.

“I am very proud of what we did. We were a tight-knit network of anti-communists who loved our country and loved freedom,” she says. “I hope people who come to watch this movie will leave with an appreciation of what we achieved.”

She is also braced for her “tarty” depiction on the big screen. “It’s not the real me, but Hollywood is Hollywood and I accept that. I love Julia Roberts, she’s gorgeous and I’m sure she plays the part wonderfully.”

Is she worried about her reputation? “I’ve had a lot of bullets shot at me in my life, metaphorically and literally,” she says, laughing again. “Nobody likes it, but I’m not worried about it.”

In fact, Mrs Herring won what she sees as a major victory earlier this year when she first saw the script. “I don’t curse, I don’t drink double Martinis and I don’t jump in and out of hot-tubs with men,” she insists. “I’m not that kind of girl. I’m a Christian.”

Mrs Herring deployed a high-powered Texan lawyer to argue her corner and Nichols agreed to cut the bad language, although the Martinis and the raciness are still there. But the frostiness has healed and Mrs Herring was charmed when she visited the set and met Roberts (“so sweet”) and Hanks (“a real gentleman and a patriot, I hear”).

She entertains visitors with her easy-going charm in a condominium in the same affluent River Oaks district where she grew up as an only child. A lift takes guests straight into an elegant living-room decorated in French style, although it is a step down from the colonnaded mansions she once occupied.

The “party girl” label has stuck with her, to her dismay. She dropped out of the University of Texas at age 20 to marry her first husband, the property developer Robert King, who she met at a debutante’s ball.

For her 30th birthday party, he threw a “Roman orgy” costume extravaganza, complete with a mock slave auction, that remains the stuff of Texas legend half a century later. It was captured for posterity by a photographer from Life magazine. The then Mrs King was the first of many to be thrown into the swimming pool during the celebrations.

She became a Houston institution as host of the daytime Joanne King Show on local television but she and Mr King parted company – he liked the quiet life and she craved excitement. Soon after her divorce, she met and won the heart of the oil tycoon Robert Herring – a relationship that was to change not just her life but the fate of the world.

For, in the course of his international business travels, Mr Herring was offered the post of roving honorary consul representing Pakistan in America. He declined politely, but suggested his wife in his place.

“I was a woman, of course, but they still wanted to get Bob to build his pipelines,” she says. “They didn’t really know what to do, but they ended up saying yes.”

Mrs Herring threw herself into the role, learning about the culture of Pakistan and teaching villagers how to establish cottage industries for rugs and textiles. She also become a confidante of President Zia-ul-Haq, who brought the “red menace” threat to Mrs Herring’s attention after the Soviet invasion. And so, with Mr Fawcett and her son, Robin, she ventured into Afghanistan on her fateful trip in 1980.

She lays out the geopolitical realities of the time, lacing her analysis with her personal political loathing of communism. “I looked at the map and I saw that after Afghanistan, the Russians would want the warm-water ports of Pakistan,” she explains. “And then it was just a short distance to the Straits of Hormuz. If they had managed to sink a couple of tankers there, they could have crippled the US economy.

“But, at that time, people didn’t want to know about it in America. No one cared about Afghanistan. It was just some rocky mountains to the folks in Washington.”

Shortly after her return to the US, another twist of fate intervened. Her beloved husband died of lung cancer and, after a period of mourning, she struck up a relationship with Mr Wilson, a fellow Texan, nicknamed “Good Time Charlie” for his partying lifestyle.

Her Book on Her exploits available for Read as Diplomacy and Diamonds

Even under President Reagan, the US did not at this stage want an open confrontation with Moscow, so the congressman, the socialite and the CIA chief developed their own clandestine network.

“The Americans, the British, the French and Middle Eastern governments were all involved, but surreptitiously,” says Mrs Herring. “We even cornered the market on mules along the Pakistani-Afghan border to take the weapons in.”

The operation helped turn the tide of the war as the mujahideen could then bring down Hind choppers with their shoulder-held missiles, depriving the Russians of the air invincibility that was so crucial in the mountainous country.

It was these anti-Soviet Islamic forces, with their foreign volunteers, such as Osama bin Laden, that later turned into al-Qaeda, the fanatical organisation responsible for the September 11, 2001, attacks on America. But Mrs Herring is dismissive of the suggestion that her actions helped create a “terrorist Frankenstein”, as some have argued.

“It’s the stupidest thing I ever heard. Why were we there? Who were we fighting? We were fighting the Russians and we beat the Russians. You cannot predict the future but we won the war we went to fight.

“We did not make al-Qaeda. But we abandoned the Afghans and we’ve betrayed the Palestinians, and some extremists have exploited that. Certain so-called holy men – and that’s spelt t-h-u-g-s – exploited this issue because they want power and money.”

Mrs Herring and Mr Wilson split up but remain friendly. The former congressman, now 74, who was a consultant on the film and had a heart transplant in September, recently told an interviewer: “Joanne is a very difficult woman to say no to.” She, meanwhile, married her third husband, the millionaire businessman Lloyd Davis, but they divorced in 2005.

Joanne Herring is still excited by the memories of those daring days and fascinated by the intrigues of international affairs. “It’s such a tragedy that women cannot talk about politics in an intellectual way without people suspecting they have some other agenda,” she laments.

Their story remained largely unknown until the publication in 2003 of the book Charlie Wilson’s War by the late George Crile, an American television news producer. Mrs Herring is enjoying her time in the spotlight and it may not be over yet. She is writing her memoirs and Universal Studios is considering turning her astonishing life into a sequel. As they say, you couldn’t make it up.

source : https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1571233/How-Joanne-Herring-won-Charlie-Wilsons-War.html

Reference :

1.  Philip Sherwell (December 2, 2007). “How Joanne Herring won Charlie Wilson’s War”. The Telegraph. Retrieved June 12, 2014.
2. ^ Niaz, Anjum (February 21, 2010). “An affair to remember”. Anjum Niaz. Dawn News. Retrieved June 12, 2014.
3. ^ Martin, Douglas (February 10, 2010). “Charlie Wilson, Texas Congressman Linked to Foreign Intrigue, Dies at 76”. The New York Times.
4. ^ Jump up to:^a b “How Joanne Herring won Charlie Wilson’s War”. The Telegraph. December 2, 2007. Retrieved April 29, 2011.
5. ^ King Herring, Joanne (2011). Diplomacy and Diamonds: My Wars from the Ballroom to the Battlefield. Dorman-Hickson, Nancy. (1st ed.). New York: Center Street. ISBN 9781599953229. OCLC 548634243.
6. ^ Herring, Joanne King (19 October 2011). Diplomacy and Diamonds: My Wars from the Ballroom to the Battlefield. Center Street. ISBN 9781599953823. Retrieved 11 March 2018 – via Google Books.
7. ^ “Marshall Plan Charities – Joanne King Herring”. joanneherring.com. Retrieved 11 March 2018.
8. ^ Jump up to:^{a b c d e} Dormon-Hickson, Nancy (2011). Diplomacy and Diamonds: My Wars from the Ballroom to the Battlefield. [u.s.a]: Center Street; Publication. ISBN 9781599953823. Retrieved June 13, 2014.
9. ^ Crile, George (2003). Charlie Wilson’s war (1st Grove Press ed.). New York: Grove Press. ISBN 978-0802141248.
10. ^ Stern, Hassan Abbas; foreword by Jessica (2005). Pakistan’s drift into extremism : Allah, the army, and America’s war on terror. Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe. ISBN 978-0765614971.
11. ^ Jump up to:^a b Sirohi, Semma (August 12, 2003). “Pakistan-Israel Nexus: Zia’s Secret Star Of David”. Work published in outlikk India, by Seema Sirhi. Outlook India. Retrieved June 12, 2014.
12. ^ Benko, Ralph. “The Fall of the U.S.S.R. Twenty Years Ago: Beauty Killed the Beast”. Forbes. Retrieved June 12, 2014.
13. ^ Jump up to:^a b Haqqani, Husain (2013). Magnificent Delusions. [u.s.a]: Public Affairs; Publication. ISBN 978-1610393171., page 256
14. https://books.google.com.pk/books?id=MS6uKHOugAYC&dq=Maelan+McGill+William+Dunlap+Johnson&q=Maelan+McGill&redir_esc=y&hl=en
15. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joanne_Herring
16. http://joanneherring.com/

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GUST L. AVRAKOTOS OPERATION CYCLONE OF TALIBAN IN GREAT GAME

By Patricia Sullivan Washington Post Staff Writer

Sunday, December 25, 2005

Characters of Charlie Wilson War Real Above Played by Movie stars Below

Gust L. Avrakotos, 67, the CIA agent in charge of the massive arming of Afghan tribesmen during their 1980s guerrilla war against the Soviets, died of complications from a stroke Dec. 1 at Inova Fairfax Hospital. He was a McLean resident.

Mr. Avrakotos, who ran the largest covert operation in the agency’s history, was dubbed “Dr. Dirty” for his willingness to handle ethically ambiguous tasks and a “blue-collar James Bond” for his 27 years of undercover work. In the 1980s, he used Tennessee mules to bring hundreds of millions of dollars in automatic weapons, antitank guns and satellite maps from Pakistan to the mujaheddin.

Working with former congressman Charles Wilson (D-Tex.), Mr. Avrakotos eventually controlled more than 70 percent of the CIA’s annual expenditures for covert operations, funneling it through intermediaries to the mujaheddin. As a result, the tribesmen drove the Soviets out of Afghanistan, and the long Cold War shuddered toward an end.

Those weapons later were used in the fratricidal war in Afghanistan before the Taliban took control. Critics noted that those weapons probably were still in use, both in support of and against U.S. troops, when the United States went to war in Afghanistan in 2001.

Mr. Avrakotos, whose thermonuclear approach to internal politics twice led him to coarsely insult the CIA’s European division director, lost his position just as the Stinger antiaircraft missile launchers downed the first Soviet gunships. He was transferred to an African assignment and retired shortly thereafter, in 1989.

Mr. Avrakotos remained obscure until 2003, when “60 Minutes” producer George Crile published “Charlie Wilson’s War,” a best-selling description of how Wilson and Mr. Avrakotos strong-armed Congress and the bureaucracy into supporting the cause of the mujaheddin. He may become still better known: Tom Hanks has bought the rights to turn the book into a movie.

Mr. Avrakotos was born in Aliquippa, Pa., the son of Greek immigrants, and attended Carnegie Institute of Technology until family finances forced him to leave after two years. He worked in a local steel mill, then sold beer and cigarettes to ethnic taverns throughout western Pennsylvania, learning to banter with the first-generation immigrants from eastern and central Europe. He returned to college and graduated from the University of Pittsburgh.

Gust Avrakotos

He joined the CIA in 1962, just after it began recruiting agents from beyond its Ivy League training grounds. Because he spoke Greek, he was assigned to Athens. While he was there, a military junta overthrew the democratic, constitutional government, and Mr. Avrakotos became the chief liaison to Greek colonels. Their fascist regime fell in 1974, and the November 17 terrorist group assassinated the CIA’s station chief. CIA renegade Philip Agee, who had exposed the Athens station chief’s name, six months later revealed Mr. Avrakotos as well, and the Greek press vilified him for his role in the regime.

He left Greece in 1978. But he could not get another decent assignment with the CIA, Crile wrote, because his superiors considered him too uncouth for promotion.

A second-generation, working-class Greek American with a profane tongue and bare-knuckle character, Mr. Avrakotos never quite felt at home in the polished WASP world of the CIA’s elite. So when the intelligence scandals of the 1970s resulted in a purge of agents in 1977, and most were first- or second-generation Americans, Mr. Avrakotos felt betrayed by the organization. Not one to let bygones be bygones, Mr. Avrakotos once showed a photograph of a colleague who crossed him to an old Greek woman and requested that she put a curse on him.

He eventually found a position with the Middle East desk at the CIA and worked his way into a position as section chief of the area that includes Afghanistan. He was made a member of the elite Senior Intelligence Service in 1985 and received the Intelligence Medal of Merit in 1988.

“Throughout his Afghan tour, Avrakotos did things on a regular basis that could have gotten him fired had anyone chosen to barge into his arena with an eye toward prosecuting him. But then Avrakotos was not just lucky. He was brutally worldly wise, keenly aware of the internal risks he was taking. And so he always made it difficult for anyone to get him, should they try,” Crile wrote.

Backed by Wilson’s appropriations acumen, Mr. Avrakotos purchased so many weapons that he had to buy a special ship to move containers of them to Karachi. He badgered the Saudi Arabian government to keep a secret commitment to match U.S. funds to the mujaheddin and intimidated Sen. Gordon J. Humphrey (R-N.H.) into quieting his criticism of the CIA. He batted away a proposal by Oliver North and Richard Perle to set up loudspeakers in the mountains to entice Soviets to defect.

He shopped in Egypt for wheelbarrows and bicycles rigged as bombs. It was illegal to provide sniper rifles to foreigners, so he redefined the weapons as “individual defensive devices . . . long-range, night-vision devices with scopes.”

But it was after he filed a memo warning against North’s arms-for-hostages scheme that came to be known as Iran-contra that his career ascent ended, and he was reassigned to Africa.

He retired from the CIA in 1989, then worked for TRW in Rome and for News Corp., for whom he began a business intelligence newsletter, working in Rome and McLean.

He returned to work on contract for the CIA from 1997 until 2003.

His marriage to Judy Avrakotos ended in divorce. A granddaughter died in 2004.

Survivors include his wife of 19 years, Claudette Avrakotos of McLean; a son from his first marriage, Gregory Avrakotos of Melbourne Beach, Fla.; a sister; and two granddaughters.

source : http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/24/AR2005122400871.html?noredirect=on

Reference :

1. Who was Really Gust Avraktos ?   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gust_Avrakotos

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