It wasn't that long ago that the suggestion that there should be more civilian oversight of the CIA provoked hysterical reactions from conservative lawmakers that doing so would put Americans in danger. With the news that Wali Ahmed Karzai, brother of Afghan President Hamid Karzai, may have been on the CIA payroll while being involved in the opium trade that also funds the Taliban, it might be time to revisit that assertion. Because if the Times report is true, that means that the CIA has not only been undermining the military’s efforts to cut down the Taliban’s revenue base, but it also means that it’s possible that American tax dollars have inadvertently helped fund the same people who are killing American soldiers. Andrew Exum further says that military officials in southern Afghanistan he's spoken to describe Wali Karzai “and his activities as the biggest problem they [the military] face — bigger than the lack of government services or even the Taliban.”
The Karzai revelation has important strategic implications, namely, how a counterinsurgency strategy is going to work with a corrupt government headed by someone who stole an election and whose sibling is a high-level drug dealer helping to provide the enemy with a revenue source. Spencer Ackerman also points out that there are a number of serious unanswered questions about the CIA and Karzai—my question is, did Congress know about the relationship? Yesterday the House Dems on the intelligence committee accused the CIA of misleading or witholding information from them five times, but only cited four instances. Was yesterday’s revelation one of those times? It's a serious problem either way, but if Congress was aware of the relationship that would seem to me to be a pretty big deal.
Spencer also notes that there may have been a number of reasons why the Bush administration decided to maintain this relationship for eight years--perhaps they believed they needed the relationship to maintain stability in Afghanistan while Iraq was imploding, for example. I would only add that many of the things we have come to think of as major mistakes by the CIA have their origins in the whims of the executive. There's always going to be tension in a democratic society between the impulse for transparency and having an effective intelligence service. That doesn’t make oversight any less important. It makes it more important. That whole new Church Committee thing is looking like a good idea.
— A. Serwer
