This statement was made by Charles Cogan, chief of the Near East-South Asia Division in the Operations Directorate of the CIA from 1979 to 1984 following our presentation of the facts we had presented regarding the true reasons for the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan December 27, 1979.
“I think your account of the Russian motivation at the time of the invasion and afterwards strikes me as being quite authentic. Prime minister Kosygin didn’t vote for the intervention. He had his doubts and he was absent from the meeting.” — Charles Cogan at the Cambridge Forum, February 4, 2009. Cogan was Chief of the Near East-South Asia Division in the Operations Directorate of the CIA from 1979 to 1984. He is now at the Kennedy School.