Complaints that the CIA has on its payroll numerous Afghan officials are misplaced. Questioning the war itself and the multi billion dollar sinkhole that it has become is one thing, but once you have a president who has committed the nation to wallowing in that quagmire forever, you have to do what you can to mitigate the situation. If CIA is doing its job properly, it should be wired into the corrupt and duplicitous Karzai government at every level. That way there will be no real surprises when the Afghan government starts direct talks with Taliban leader Mullah Omar and with the Iranians. Those who argue with scarcely concealed horror that the Agency is corrupting former officials should note that those same officials will be corrupt whether or not CIA has a hand in it. The purpose of any intelligence agency is to prey on the venality of others whenever necessary to obtain information that is considered important; indeed, corruption is the currency that fuels any intelligence operation.
Back in my time with CIA we used to regularly pay government officials and politicians throughout western Europe to provide us with insider information. It was not because we thought those governments would act against our interests, but we did need to get access to groups and factions that were outside the sphere of normal diplomatic interaction. For example, the US Embassies in France, Italy, Spain, and Portugal would not meet with communist leaders during the 1970s so it was up to the Agency to establish informal relationships. Of course, they would be lying to us and we would be lying to them but that was understood on both sides. I’m sure Karzai’s boys are lying to us while collecting their pay envelopes.
ian 
Jim Dooley 
Phil Giraldi wrote:
“Complaints that the CIA has on its payroll numerous Afghan officials are misplaced.”
Yeah, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t mean anything: If, as I suspect, the CIA has lots of important Afghan officials on the payroll, in and of itself that’s a bit of “intelligence” too, isn’t it? Indeed maybe a very significant bit depending on the extent of that payroll.
I.e., what does it mean to Afghanistan and the future if, as opposed to having at least a basic core of governmental officials loyal to their own nation, you got a government composed of people selling it out for their own hides? If after all they’ll sell it to you today, they ain’t likely to do too much for their nation in the future either, will they?
Think … a top tier of officialdom disgusting and demoralizing their nation by just skimming whatever they can for themselves and trying to position themselves to be on at least the last helicopter out to their foreign accounts when things go tits-up…. Savors more than just a little like Saigon at the end and the crowds at the gates of the U.S. embassy with the helos on top, to me at least.
I don’t think that you can really “blame” the CIA though for … doing what it does. But one has to admit it’s a damn funny thing seeing this done when on the other hand what we say we want to do—and what obviously really needs to be done although I doubt it’s possible—is create a real, authentic, honorable, non-corrupt government loyal to its own people.
If then it is true that the present Afghan “government” is just a societal crust swiss-cheesed with corrupt officials left and right, well then what’s that say about our ability to get what we say we want?
Indeed I also think one might praise the CIA for doing as it’s doing given the chance (or likelihood in my view), that you aren’t ever going to be able to create a “real” Afghan government. So that when the inevitable becomes recognized—that the “gov’t” there is really just a clique—we are in the bidding to be buying it and frustrating those others who want to buy it or otherwise get rid of it. And of course that may be what the CIA is consciously doing: Getting ready for the inevitable failure of our “honorable” aims, and preparing to achieve all the subsidiary ones that wanted to flow therefrom by … other means.
Not dumb.