The Afghan covert program in May 1980: INR's briefing for Secretary Muskie

Edmund Muskie became Secretary of State on 9 May 1980, and this memorandum is dated the same day. The editors of the Foreign Relations volume think it was meant to brief him on the CIA's covert program for the Afghan resistance. It was drafted by David Mark of the Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR), signed by its director, Ronald Spiers, sent through Under Secretary David Newsom, and marked "Not for the System"¹.

What it says

It opens with the turning point. On 28 December 1979, two days after Soviet troops entered Afghanistan, the program was widened "to include for the first time the supply of lethal weapons." Before that it had consisted of radio broadcasts and leaflets inside Afghanistan and some food, medicine and field radios for guerrilla groups^1,3.

Then it describes the pipeline. The weapons were Soviet-made: rifles, submachine guns, machine guns, ammunition, mines and anti-tank launchers and rockets. They came at first from CIA reserve stocks and were by then bought on the international arms market. US Air Force C-141s flew them to Saudi Arabia, where Saudi C-130s carried them on to Pakistan. Pakistanis did the training, some of them trained by Americans in Saudi Arabia, and the CIA station chief in Islamabad worked out the details with Pakistani intelligence and President Zia-ul-Haq¹.

The third paragraph names the gap: the rebels had no means of shooting down Soviet helicopters and aircraft. Egypt had donated 15 Soviet-made SA-7 shoulder-fired launchers with a few missiles, and the CIA was buying more from a Bulgarian source "through devious cut-outs." Zia had not yet agreed to pass the SA-7s on, knowing it would be a major escalation, though the CIA thought he would¹.

Pakistan's cooperation is called "exemplary," but the memo warns that it was put at risk in mid-February by reports in the Washington Post and New York Times attributed to White House officials. Zia, it says, had made clear Pakistan would stop all participation if there were further leaks^1,4.

The paper trail

The second half is a short legal history. The covert-action committee first considered support for the Afghan opposition on 6 April 1979. Two findings of 3 July 1979, each notified to Congress under the Hughes-Ryan Act, covered media and propaganda work and cash or non-lethal supplies worth $695,000 in total. A finding of 7 November added cash, communications gear and procurement advice; the 28 December finding added weapons; and in February 1980 a further sum, to be matched by the Saudis, was approved. A House intelligence subcommittee held hearings on 20 December 1979^1,2,3. The figures for everything after July 1979 are still withheld.

How to read it

This is State's view of a CIA operation, written to orient a new Secretary in a few minutes, and it is candid about what State worried about most: deniability, Pakistan's nerves, and leaks. The volume's editors call the 1979 program "a modest beginning" to what became "the longest and largest" operation of its kind in US history to that point; this memo catches it a year in, still small enough to summarize on three pages⁵. The first decision is printed in the June 1979 committee record; the whole program is on our page on Operation Cyclone.