American oil industry, causing oil suppliers within the United States to lose millions of dollars in revenue. This negative was significant to Reagan, who was always a friend to big business, but, in the end, the president and his team estimated that the benefits of the situation would outweigh its costs to American industry. Also, while the domestic oil industry would be saddled, consumers would save billions of dollars in lower prices. Overall, the U.S. economy would benefit.
Internationally the United States would have to deal with the ramifications of potentially protecting Saudi ships should Iran, Libya, or the Soviets choose to take matters into their own hands. In addition, the United States bore the risk that should the world ever find out, the information could provoke a possibly violent confrontation with the Soviets.
Despite this multitude of risks on both sides, it was clear that Saudi Arabia had much more at stake in this gamble. Not only were the Saudis risking retribution from angry neighbors, but they were also risking their country’s sole commodity and source of wealth. Why, then, in the face of so many risks, did the Saudis agree to the conspiracy? On the surface it seemed like a bad economic decision, but in truth it was not. While they lost money on a per-barrel basis, the Saudis made up the difference through the overall price of oil sold.
To the Saudis, the agreement was less of an economic arrangement and more of an investment in future relations with the United States, an intangible for which there could be no real price tag. Good relations with the United States had already paid off in October 1981 in the form of the Reagan administration’s agreement to sell Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS) aircraft and F-15 “enhancement items” to Saudi Arabia. The AWACS were capable of detecting aircraft within a perimeter of 350 miles, a wide range of space in the narrow Middle East. In the October 1, 1981 press conference explaining his decision, Reagan’s choice of words was ironic in light of the U.S.–Saudi oil collaboration four years later:
I have proposed this sale because it significantly enhances our own vital national security interests in the Middle East. By building confidence in the United States as a reliable security partner, the sale will greatly improve the chances of our working with Saudi Arabia…. As President, it’s my duty to define and defend our broad national security objectives.19
Indeed, the AWACS sale was critical to such a working partnership later when oil, not planes, drew the two sides together. The administration was in fact able to work with Saudi Arabia to enhance its national security interests—against Moscow. In essence, the Reagan administration in 1985–86 cashed in its 1981 chips. Caspar Weinberger later said explicitly: “One of the reasons we were selling the Saudis those weapons is because of the hope that lower oil prices would result.”20
On October 28, 1981, after intense lobbying from all corners, the AWACS sale was approved in the Senate by a small four-vote margin. Reagan’s dedication to this issue was vital to its passage in Congress, a fact which was not lost on the Saudi regime. Indeed not only was Saudi cooperation in the oil shock repayment for Reagan’s hard lobbying, but it also represented the potential for future military deals between the two countries. To this end, the administration did not hesitate to deliver, rewarding Saudi loyalty in May 1986 when Reagan vetoed a joint congressional resolution to prevent the sale of what Reagan dubbed “defensive missiles” to Saudi Arabia.21 To the Saudis, this was significant support at an uneasy time, reinforcing the importance of their oil conspiracy with the United States and solidifying the connection between the two nations.
In the end, it was this strong connection between the two countries that produced an agreement that was conducive to success. The excellent rapport that began with Reagan and Fahd extended to include Casey and Prince Bandar as well. Though Casey was Irish Catholic and Bandar was a devout Muslim, both detested Soviet Communism and wanted to smash it any way they could. Both knew the USSR as a godless empire that suppressed and jailed religious believers, including Catholics and Muslims. Hatred of atheistic Communism was the glue that bound the two men and their camps together, making it possible for two very different nations to find common ground.
Ultimately, this 1985–1986 covert action was pure, unadulterated economic warfare, and by all accounts the joint oil manipulation was probably the most direct, damaging assault of the White House’s economic warfare campaign. The Reagan team successfully carried out its plan without a major hitch and kept the secret through the life of the administration and beyond.22
To this day, researchers who venture through microfiche from 1985–1986 business weeklies will find no help in ascertaining the real reason for the drop in oil prices. Press accounts from the period simply profiled the merry befuddlement by the typical car owner over the cheaper prices at the tank—a pleasing polar reversal from the spikes, rationing, and gas lines of the previous decade. To understand the true reason for the 1980s price dive, researchers must look elsewhere.
A STINGING DEFEAT
With the severest months of the oil blow winding down in the fall of 1986, the conflict in Afghanistan thrust itself back onto center stage. As evening settled on September 26, 1986, three menacing Soviet Mi-24 helicopter gunships hovered over impoverished, war-ravaged Afghanistan. Lingering in the distance near the Jalalabad airport, the gunships were a frightening but common sight.23 Hundreds of these aircraft had wreaked havoc since the Red Army invaded, and for almost seven years all the Muj rebels could do to combat them was hide in the brush and futilely fire bullets in the air as Soviet helicopters lit up the ground.
On this night, however, the entire war was about to change. A soldier named Mohammed Afzal emerged from the trees with a bazooka-looking weapon called a Stinger resting on his right shoulder. He aimed the barrel in the vicinity of one of the Soviet aircraft, fired, and watched the helicopter explode into thousands of pieces. The remaining pilots struggled to comprehend the calamity. Before they could come to their senses, Afzal fired at a second helicopter, which instantly burst into a fireball. The mortified third pilot was unable to escape. He too soon met his doom.
The Muj rebels were ecstatic. Not only had they struck down three Soviet gunships, but the weapon they now possessed would strike down the enemy’s primary tactical advantage and thereby transform the war. “The shots were heard round the world,” said reporter Fred Barnes.24
Of all the aid that NSDD-166 had authorized for the Afghan rebels, the crown jewel was the Stinger antiaircraft missile. It was a superb weapon with a range of roughly five kilometers, or 15,000 feet, racing upward 1,200 miles per hour to its target. Weighing only thirty-five pounds—astonishingly light for a tool whose cargo can obliterate a helicopter—it had less recoil than a shotgun. With an infrared heat-seeking mechanism that allows it to easily find its target, the Stinger missile enabled the operator to successfully destroy his target without needing to aim precisely at an aircraft’s heat source. The infrared capability made the Stinger effective in all types of weather, more so than the Soviet-designed SA-7, also a shoulder-fired, heat-seeking, surface-toair missile. The Stinger can distinguish between real targets and flares. Also unlike the SA-7, the operator of the Stinger did not need to sit in place and keep the target in his sights until impact, risking detection and counter fire.25
The Stinger kill rate was deadly. Of the first eleven missiles the rebels unleashed, ten took down Soviet helicopters. After that, the Muj averaged one destroyed plane or helicopter for each of the next 200 days.26 A U.S. Army study conducted after the war found that of the 340 firings of Stingers in combat, 269 downed aircraft.27 The Stingers were deadly against both the Soviet helicopter gunships that had proven so effective and the sophisticated, high-flying planes and helicopters that took off from the Turkistan Military District.
THE ORIGIN OF THE STINGERS
While attempts have been made to unearth who first broached the subject of Stingers in Afghanistan, the idea was long believed to have come up during internal administration discussions sometime in 1985 or 1986. But
