A spirited discussion about energy, hosted by Newsweek's Howard Fineman.

President Jimmy Carter approves covert aid to anti-Communist forces in Afghanistan. Official history had held that CIA involvement began only after the Soviet invasion in December, but this directive—revealed by Carter National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski to a French newspaper in 1998—proved otherwise (in fact, unsanctioned CIA aid to Islamist national forces in Afghanistan had begun at least a year earlier). Brzezinski intimated that the move was partly responsible for the Soviet invasion, and eventually the collapse of the U.S.S.R. "It had the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap," he told Le Nouvel Observateur. "The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter: 'We now have the opportunity of giving to the U.S.S.R its Vietnam War.' Indeed, [that] conflict brought about the demoralization and finally the breakup of the Soviet empire." After the Red Army invasion, the U.S. stepped up both sanctions and aid to the mujahedeen, which led to the Soviet withdrawal in 1989. Afghanistan then fought a series of tribal wars for power, until the Taliban gained control in 1996. In a December 1979 memo to Carter, Brzezinski saw support for Islamic nationalists as a lesser evil, and a means to an end: "World public opinion may be outraged at the Soviet intervention. Certainly, Moslem countries will be concerned, and we might be in a position to exploit this." This policy would be maintained throughout the rest of the Cold War.

On the road as the Illinois senator conducts a summer campaign swing.