State Department official Peter W. Rodman said the directive stated “a clear policy of seeking to defeat the Soviet Union… and force a Soviet withdrawal.”27
Ultimately, the directive committed U.S. security agencies to use “all means available” to assist the Muj in defeating the USSR and to prompt a Soviet pull-out.28 It was a bold and overt initiative and one that was vastly different from President Carter’s directive, which had the less ambitious goal of “harassment” of Soviet forces. Carter’s classified 1980 directive did not speak of driving the Soviets from Afghanistan or beating them on the battlefield.29 The contrast was noted by Milt Bearden, a career CIA official: “The CIA’s covert action role in Afghanistan dating back to the Carter administration called for ‘harassing’ the Soviets, not driving them out,” stated Bearden, who in 1985 became deputy director of the CIA’s Soviet–East European Division. “Reagan was upping the ante, and now he actually believed he could win.” Bearden said that the covert program “had taken a new turn”—“Reagan had rewritten the ground rules.”30
THE RESULTS OF NSDD-166
The impact of NSDD-166 was immediately felt as it authorized a supply of highly advanced weapons and millions of dollars in covert aid—requesting from Congress over $450 million for 1986 alone. It reprogrammed an additional $200 million from an unspent DOD account and then sought reauthorization through congressional intelligence committees. Because of NSDD-166’s floodgate, in 1985 the CIA delivered 10,000 rocket-propelled grenades and 200,000 rockets to the Afghan rebels, exceeding the total for the previous five years combined.31
By 1987, 65,000 tons of U.S. materiel was arriving annually, as was what Pakistani General Yousaf dubbed a “ceaseless stream” of Pentagon and CIA specialists. Also arriving were imagery specialists carrying satellite photos of Soviet targets in Afghanistan; communications specialists boasting sophisticated communications gear; experts armed with teachings on psychological warfare; demolitions specialists with explosives and timing devices for blowing up bridges, tunnels, fuel depots, and whatever else; and much more. Among these, the satellite photos were exhaustive. General Yousaf’s office was soon covered with maps of Soviet targets, along with carefully diagrammed approach and evacuation routes and even analysis of how Soviet troops could be expected to react once attacked.32
This was all provided courtesy of the Central Intelligence Agency. Milt Bearden never forgot his extraordinary order from maverick CIA director Casey: “go out and kill me 10,000 Soviets until they give up.”33 While the United States could not provide troops to do the killing, the CIA could train and arm Afghan soldiers to handle that task. Langley fielded operations officers who set up training schools to educate Afghan rebels in sabotage, guerrilla warfare, mine-laying, antitank attacks, secure communications, and more. This training ground was jokingly labeled “CIA U.”34
Eventually the U.S. effort became so intense that Bill Casey reportedly sought to expand it to Soviet territory, gunning down Soviet troops on their own turf. He targeted Soviet factories, military installations, and storage depots in some of the most dangerous action of the entire Cold War. Intelligence officials became quite anxious over such ambitious lengths and how the Soviets might react. Already, the escalation had been “directed at killing Russian military officers,” said one official. “That caused a lot of nervousness.” And now, this was “an incredible escalation,” said Graham Fuller, a senior intelligence official who was among those strongly opposed to raids on Soviet territory.35
As it turned out, extending the war within the USSR had been Casey’s thinking before NSDD-166 had even been signed. Not surprisingly it was a prospect that also appealed to Reagan.36 According to Peter Schweizer:
In early 1983, [Casey] met with the president and Bill Clark in the Oval Office to discuss the situation in Afghanistan. The conversation turned to raising the stakes for Moscow. The DCI suggested taking the war into the Soviet Union itself, and Reagan liked the idea. “The president and Bill Casey were determined that Moscow pay an even greater price for its brutal campaign in Afghanistan, including the possibility of taking the war into the Soviet Union itself,” recalls Clark…. Soviet casualties were not running high enough as far as the Reagan administration was concerned. The Kremlin could sustain these losses, Reagan told aides and colleagues, because of the closed nature of its system. He wanted the numbers up, and he wanted the Soviet high command demoralized.37
Casey’s audacious goal was also that of Reagan and Bill Clark, the latter of whom confirmed that he and Reagan personally gave “authorization to Afghanistan forces and their supporters ‘to cross the river’ if they were so inclined and sufficiently supported.”38 Though these instincts were first broached in 1983 among Reagan, Casey, and Clark, NSDD-166 turned them into formal administration policy, a bold initiative from a country that was looking to avoid direct confrontation with the Soviets. According to Milt Bearden, through NSDD-166 Reagan ordered that the Red Army be pushed back across the Amu Dar’ya, the river that marked the border between Afghanistan and the Soviet republic of Uzbekistan.39
This decision to extend the war into Soviet territory took off once Muj commanders and the Pakistani Intelligence Service (ISI), which was managing the flow of CIA aid to the Mujahedin, embraced the idea. Only then was it adopted and pursued by the White House. According to Schweizer, in 1985 and 1986 specially trained Muj units operating inside the USSR, equipped with high-tech explosives from the CIA and Chinese rocket launchers, sabotaged Soviet targets. They derailed trains, attacked border posts, and laid mines. On one occasion, thirty Muj fighters attacked two hydroelectric power stations in Tajikistan; in another, they orchestrated a rocket attack on a Soviet military airfield. Schweizer said there were dozens of ambushes.40
As if that were not explosive enough, the Reagan administration had a bitter internal debate over whether to ship sniper-rifle packages—rifles equipped with long-range, sophisticated sighting scopes—to the rebels. These would be employed to infiltrate the Afghan capital of Kabul and assassinate Soviet generals and senior military officials. American intelligence took the aggressive step of identifying the residences of Soviet generals in Kabul and tracking their regular movements.
The Reagan administration understood that providing sniper rifles might violate the 1977 presidential directive precluding assassinations—a question that some say was hotly debated internally. Ed Meese says that he was not privy to that debate. In a sense, however, he does not understand the fuss. “It doesn’t strike me as unusual to send sniper rifles when you’re already sending Stinger missiles to shoot down helicopters,” said Meese. “Some of these helicopters were probably carrying Soviet officials.”41 In the end, the rifles were sent, but without the intelligence information, nor the night goggles necessary to carry out assassinations. General Yousaf recalled receiving a few dozen rifles, more than thirty but less than 100.42
Perhaps the most authoritative testimony on the subject of Washington’s assistance came from General Yousaf, who supervised the covert war during the critical period of 1983–87, when Washington’s weapons flowed like milk and honey. As he recalled: “[W]ithout the intelligence provided by the CIA, many battles would have been lost, and without the CIA training of our Pakistani instructors, the Mujahedin would have been fearfully ill-equipped to face—and ultimately defeat—a superpower.”43
Altogether, the Reagan administration funneled over $2 billion in money and guns to the Mujahedin, compared to the $30 million sent under President Carter.44 Steve Coll of the Washington Post was not alone in properly calling it the largest U.S. covert action program in the history of the CIA.45 Moscow responded with reportedly $3 to $8 billion annually trying to win the war, an investment that far exceeded its means.46
In the Soviet press, the covert effort was reported as an “escalation of aggression” in the “undeclared war” by “militarists” in the Reagan administration and CIA in particular. The United States was “drilling” these “criminal Afghan
These inflammatory accusations from the Soviet media failed to gain traction internationally, in spite of the
