CIA agent ran agency’s largest covert operation
Published 9:00 pm Sunday, December 25, 2005
Gust L. Avrakotos, 67, the CIA agent in charge of the massive arming of Afghan tribesmen during their guerrilla war against the Soviets in the 1980s, died of complications from a stroke Dec. 1 at Inova Fairfax Hospital in Fairfax, Va. He was a McLean, Va., resident.
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, anti-tank guns and satellite maps from Pakistan to the mujaheddin.
Working with former Rep. Charles Wilson, D-Texas, 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.
Those weapons later were used in the fratricidal war in Afghanistan before the Taliban took control. Critics noted that those weapons probably are still in use, both in support of and against U.S. troops in Afghanistan.
Adventurer had trekked with Byrd to South Pole
Norman Dane Vaughan, a century-old adventurer and the last surviving member of Admiral Richard Byrd’s historic 1928-30 expedition to the South Pole, has died.
Vaughan died Friday of natural causes just four days after his 100th birthday at Providence Alaska Medical Center in Anchorage.
Byrd asked Vaughan more than seven decades ago to take him by dog sled onto the Ross Ice Shelf to select his base camp, Little America. Vaughan then headed the transportation of 650 tons of supplies by dog sled from ship to the camp.
The New England musher was chief sled dog driver for the select team that skied and sledded for 87 days across 1,500 miles of frozen terrain to collect geological samples and other research specimens.
From Herald news services
