Gust Avrakotos

Gust Avrakotos
Born	(1938-01-14)January 14, 1938 Aliquippa, Pennsylvania, U.S.
Died	December 1, 2005(2005-12-01) (aged 67) Inova Fairfax Hospital, Fairfax, Virginia, U.S.
Resting place	St. Catherine's Greek Orthodox Church, Falls Church, Virginia, U.S.
Education	Carnegie Institute of Technology University of Pittsburgh
Occupation(s)	Case officer, Task Force Chief
Employer	Central Intelligence Agency
Awards	Intelligence Medal of Merit (1988)

Gust Lascaris Avrakotos (January 14, 1938 – December 1, 2005) was an American case officer and the Afghanistan Task Force Chief at the Central Intelligence Agency.

Avrakotos joined the CIA in August 1962 and was posted to Greece in 1963. Following the 1967 Greek coup d'état and the establishment of a far-right military junta, Avrakotos became the main liaison point for the CIA and Greek government. He worked closely with the regime until 1978, when he returned to a U.S. posting. He worked on the CIA's Near East desk, which included oversight of the agency's work in Afghanistan. The following year. he became acting Chief of the South Asia Operations Group, which included involvement in Operation Cyclone, the CIA program to arm and finance the Afghan mujahideen in their war against the Soviets. He acquired arms and ammunition from numerous sources, and worked with U.S. Representative Charlie Wilson to build a coalition of international supporters to fund, arm and train the mujahideen.^[1]

Avrakotos resigned from the CIA in 1989 after being moved to the CIA's Africa Division, and authoring a memorandum opposing the CIA's involvement in the Iran-Contra Affair. After working for defense contractor TRW Inc. and then News Corporation, he returned to the CIA as a contractor between 1997 and 2003.

Avrakotos was little known to the public until 2003 when journalist George Crile published Charlie Wilson's War: The Extraordinary Story of the Largest Covert Operation in History, a history of U.S. involvement in the Soviet–Afghan War.^[1] The book was the basis of the film Charlie Wilson's War, released in 2007, in which Avrakotos is portrayed by Philip Seymour Hoffman.