The World - News from March 15, 1987

The CIA obtained one of the Soviet Union’s premier helicopter gunships from Afghan army defectors and discovered its weakness, NBC News reported. Pakistan secretly gave at least one MI-24 gunship to the CIA after defectors from the Soviet-supported Afghan army flew two of the helicopters to Pakistan in July, 1985, the network said. After the CIA obtained the MI-24, officials discovered the vulnerability flaw and used that information to change the Stinger missile supplied to the Afghan rebels so it could be effective against the Soviet helicopter, NBC reported.