Bearden was born in Oklahoma and spent his early years in Washington state, where his father worked on the Manhattan Project, and later moved with his family to Houston, Texas.
Bearden studied Chinese at the Yale Institute of Far Eastern Languages and earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in linguistics from the University of Texas at Austin.
He served as the CIA's chief of station in Pakistan from 1986 to 1989, and played a role in managing Agency's provision of arms, intelligence and training to the ISI which in turn provided the Afghan mujahedeen fighting occupying Soviet forces.
[6][2] Bearden appeared several times in the BBC Documentary by Adam Curtis called The Power of Nightmares where he talked of his involvement with the Mujahadeen, the Afghan Arabs and how he was assigned to the role by William Casey, the then current Director of Central Intelligence.
The fax was allegedly written by ex-CIA officer David Sullivan, and addressed to members of Congress investigating CIA issues, including the Aldrich Ames spy case.
Bearden predicted that relying on the Northern Alliance against majority ethnic groups would create "a brutal, general civil war that would continue until the United States simply gave up".