 Devine learned the ins and outs of recruiting sources and running covert action operations in the time before the 1973 Chilean coup d'état.His service on the Afghan Task Force was perhaps the pinnacle of his varied career, and put him at the head of the largest covert action campaign of the Cold War.Devine replaced Gust Avrakotos, the chief of the South Asia Operations Group portrayed by actor Philip Seymour Hoffman in the 2007 film, "Charlie Wilson's War", and inherited a program funneling hundreds of millions of dollars to the Afghan mujahideen.