Also up for the medal, which dates back to George Washington, are Wilson and the late CIA case officer Gustav Avrakotos, who helped ratchet up the secret program, dubbed Operation Cyclone. was feted at a Capitol Hill reception marking the rollout of legislation granting her the Congressional Gold Medal, the highest civilian honor bestowed by Congress. Of the recent gathering in the Rayburn Gold Room to honor these three by proposing the Congressional Gold Medal, the Houston Chronicle reported the next day, on page one, above the fold: When almost everyone had written off the Afghans as a lost cause, she saw potential for greatness in the most unlikely characters. At the time nobody imagined that in addition to her role as a social lioness and host to the powerful, she was simultaneously responsible for setting in motion a process that would profoundly impact the outcome of the Afghan war. Joanne Herring was a glamorous and exotic figure out of the oil-rich world of Texas in the 1970s and ‘80s. “It began with a Texas woman, one of Wilson’s contributors. Years later, as he tried to explain how it all happened, how the CIA ended up with a billion dollars a year to kill Russian soldiers in Afghanistan, Avrakatos would offer a curious explanation. In his book Crile reports a conversation with Avrakatos:

He reported that main credit for American victory belongs to Joanne King Herring, Gustav Avrakatos and Charlie Wilson.

Crile meticulously investigated how the Cold War was won.

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