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CIA hired Karzai brother before 9/11, Woodward says
Key Excerpts from Article on Website of Washington Post


Washington Post, September 30, 2010
Posted: October 11th, 2010
http://blog.washingtonpost.com/spy-talk/2010/09/cia_hired_ka...

Ahmed Wali Karzai, the half-brother of Afghanistans president and boss of the strategically important Kandahar province, has been on the CIA payroll for over a decade, Bob Woodward writes in his new book, Obamas Wars. By the fall of 2008, Woodward says, Ahmed Wali Karzai had been on the CIA payroll for years, beginning before 9/11. He had belonged to the CIA's small network of paid agents and informants inside Afghanistan. In addition, the CIA paid him money through his half-brother, the president. Hamid Karzai was plucked from obscurity and installed as president after U.S.-backed Afghan forces chased the Taliban from power following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. There have been many accounts of his brothers relationship with the CIA over the years, leaving the impression that he is a CIA agent, i.e., a controlled asset of the spy agency. But Woodwards account of the CIAs relationship with Karzai, who has also been accused repeatedly -- but not charged with -- protecting the illicit opium trade, is more nuanced. He was not in any sense a controlled agent who always responded to U.S. and CIA requests and pressure, Woodward writes. He was his own man, playing all sides against the others -- the United States, the drug dealers, the Taliban and even his brother if necessary.

Note: What this article fails to mention is that President Karzai was also an employee of the major oil company Unocal, as reported in this Chicago Tribune article.


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