This week, the New York Times reported that Ahmed Wali Karzai, the brother of Afghan President Hamid Karzai, has been receiving payments from the CIA since 2001. It's an awkward situation, since most observers think Karzai is heavily involved in Southern Afghanistan's drug trade. However, it is not without precedent. Click through this TNR slideshow to see other questionable people who turned out to be on the CIA payroll over the years.
Naji Sabri served as the foreign minister of Iraq from 2001 until the U.S. invasion. In early 2003, the CIA paid him $100,000 for information about Saddam Hussein’s weapons programs. In return, Sabri informed the agency that Hussein was not running an active nuclear or biological weapons program, but that information was ignored by the White House.
On the CIA payroll from the late 1950s to the mid-80s, former Panamanian general and military dictator Manuel Noriega informed on socialists and leftist students during the cold war. But, during the late 80s, things turned sour because he was thought to be a double agent and he was deeply involved in the drug trade. In 1989, the United States invaded Panama to overthrow the government and captured Noriega. He is currently imprisoned in Florida.
Encounter, a British literary magazine that ran from 1953–1990, was a European precursor to journals like Commentary and The National Interest. (Irving Kristol was one of its founding editors, along with the poet Stephen Spender.) In 1967, Spender resigned as literary editor following the revelation that the CIA had been covertly funding the magazine--which the CIA’s Michael Josselson called "our greatest asset."
In the 1940s and 50s, the CIA planted content in Reader’s Digest--an incredibly successful magazine that had taken a strongly anti-communist stance since the publication of its first issue. Subsequently, the CIA influenced the magazine’s numerous pro-Vietnam War editorials.
During the 1990s, Iraqi exile Ahmed Chalabi was the head of the Iraqi National Congress (INC), the main opposition group to Saddam Hussein. Although the CIA didn't trust him--some analysts suspected he was an Iranian double-agent--the agency gave the INC a great deal of support, even helping Chalabi train a thousand-man exile army which he planned to use against Hussein.
Following a CIA-backed coup against Congo's communist-friendly president Joseph Kasavubu, Joseph Mobutu ruled Zaire with an iron fist from 1965–1997. Despite his miserable human rights record, the CIA backed him as a staunch ally against the spread of communism in Africa. After the Soviet Union collapsed, however, the U.S. changed its position toward Mobutu, denying him a visa to enter the country.
Moderate mujahidin leader Ahmed Shah Massoud received backing from the CIA during the 1980s, when he played a key role in driving the Soviets out of Afghanistan. After the communists withdrew, Massoud would become the head of the Northern Alliance that was fighting against the Taliban. He was assassinated by Al Qaeda agents on September 9, 2001.
Cuban-born terrorist Luis Posada Carriles was on the CIA payroll from 1961 to 1976. Originally trained to participate in the Bay of Pigs invasion, Carriles masterminded the bombing of a Cuban airliner that killed all 73 people onboard. He subsequently helped Oliver North supply arms to the Contras, engineered a series of Havana hotel bombings in 1997, and did jail time in Panama for plotting to blow up Fidel Castro. Carriles was arrested in Texas in 2005, on an immigration violation.
Click here to read Michael Crowley on Ahmed Wali Karzai.
Intellectual rigor. Honest reporting. Influential analysis. Don't miss another issue of the magazine considered "required reading" by the world's top decision-makers. Subscribe today.
COMMENTS (1)
Hmmm....
I take the TNR slideshow tour of CIA, uh, stooges.
The last slide [#10] is a redirect to a Jason Z. post.
E tu, Jason? A spook?
Or, perhaps, John Kerry? We already know that President Karzai had PO box at Langley.
gw
Hmmm....
I take the TNR slideshow tour of CIA, uh, stooges.
The last slide [#10] is a redirect to a Jason Z. post.
E tu, Jason? A spook?
Or, perhaps, John Kerry? We already know that President Karzai had PO box at Langley.
gw