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Stein concludes that "[w]hether or not the CIA has him on its payroll or not is irrelevant, close observers of the situation say, because there's virtually no daylight between Karzai and the U.S. in Kandahar anyway." I would disagree with that--if there was "no daylight" there wouldn't have been a leak. Yesterday Rachel Maddow asked CIA historian Tim Weiner how this information got out, and Weiner said:
-- A. Serwer
In a piece for Foreign Policy, crack national-security reporter Jeff Stein suggests that the CIA's relationship with Ahmed Wali Karzai was no big deal, comparing it to patronage politics in Massachussetts. Stein also writes:
Rep. Mike Rogers (R - Mich.), the ranking Republican on the House Intelligence Committee panel that oversees human spying issues, told me in an early October interview that Karzai "cooperates" with U.S. intelligence but is not a controlled agent. "There's a difference between being an intelligence asset and somebody who cooperates," said Rogers, a former FBI agent himself who has visited Afghanistan several times. "'Asset is an overstatement," he continued. "[Ahmed Wali Karzai] is a public official who cooperates ... when he's talked to -- that's different than an asset." Asked about the New York Times' allegations Wednesday, Rogers stuck to his guns. "[Rep. Rogers] stands by his comments to you," the congressman's spokeswoman, Sylvia Warner, said by email. "He is firm about that."That would seem to answer the question of whether or not Congress knew about the relationship, (although John Kerry, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, seems to not have known) and why no one will talk to Spencer Ackerman about it. I also suspect we're going to hear a lot more about this in the near future.
Stein concludes that "[w]hether or not the CIA has him on its payroll or not is irrelevant, close observers of the situation say, because there's virtually no daylight between Karzai and the U.S. in Kandahar anyway." I would disagree with that--if there was "no daylight" there wouldn't have been a leak. Yesterday Rachel Maddow asked CIA historian Tim Weiner how this information got out, and Weiner said:
I think the generals dimed out the spooks. The generals are not happy with this. There`s often conflict between the ambassador, the station chief and senior military people. General McChrystal, who`s trying to get tens of thousands more American troops into Afghanistan, cannot be happy with the perception that the Americans -- the American spooks in Afghanistan are behind a crook.The idea that the military was very unhappy with Karzai's activities jibes with what Andrew Exum was hearing as well, so Weiner's theory seems plausible if unsubstantiated.
-- A. Serwer
