New York: George Crile III, a 60 Minutes producer who wrote a best-selling book about US support for Afghan militants fighting the Soviet Union, has died at the age of 61.
Crile died on Tuesday of pancreatic cancer, CBS News spokesman Kevin Tedesco said. A 1988 profile Crile produced about Charlie Wilson, a former US House member from Texas, led to the book ’Charlie Wilson's War’ which chronicled the CIA's support for Mujahedeen fighting Soviet forces in Afghanistan.
Wilson is credited with using his position on the Appropriations Committee in the 1980s to prod Congress to buy arms for the Mujahedeen.
After the September 11 attacks, the research and reporting Crile did for his book and on Islamic militancy, including an interview with a member of Osama bin Laden's inner circle gained new interest.
Tom Hanks bought the film rights to the book, and a movie version featuring Hanks as Wilson is in pre-production for Universal Studios Inc, according to a statement from CBS News. Crile worked for CBS News, part of CBS Corp, for more than 25 years.
Among the stories he produced for '60 Minutes' and '60 Minutes II' were interviews with the wife of deposed Haitian dictator Francois 'Papa Doc' Duvalier and reports on Three Mile Island, the Gulf War and the KGB, the former Russian secret police and intelligence agency.
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