Many members of the Hamid Karzai administration in Afghanistan are on the payrolls of the US Central Intelligence Agency, a media report said on Friday.
According to The Washington Post, the CIA is making secret payments to multiple members of the Afghan administration to maintain sources of information in a government in which the Afghan leader is often seen as having a limited grasp of developments.
An aide to Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai, Mohammed Zia Salehi, is already at the centre of a corruption investigation.
According to officials, Salehi, the chief of administration for the Afghan National Security Council, had been receiving money from the US intelligence agency for years.
However, it is unclear exactly what Salehi did in exchange for his money, whether providing information to the spy agency, advancing American views inside the presidential palace, or both.
Other prominent Afghans who American officials have said were on the CIA's payroll include the President's half brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai, suspected by investigators of playing a role in the country's booming opium trade.
The new revelation have raised new questions about how the US can root out corruption in the Afghan government when US operations in the country require support from some of the same politicians and leaders accused of graft.
Quoting sources, the daily said that the US Intelligence agency has continued the payments despite concerns that it is backing corrupt officials and undermining efforts to wean Afghans' dependence on secret sources of income and graft.
'Some aides function as CIA informants, but others collect stipends under more informal arrangements meant to ensure their accessibility,' the daily quoted a US official as saying.
The CIA, however, refused to acknowledge the claim.
However, a former agency official said the payments were necessary because 'the head of state is not going to tell you everything' and because Karzai often seems unaware of moves that members of his own government make.
The Washington Post reported that a second US official defended the agency's activities and alluded to a simmering conflict within the US government over the scope of American objectives in Afghanistan, and the means required to achieve those goals.
'No one is going to create Plato's Republic over there in one year, two years, or 10,' the official was quoted as saying, adding, 'If the United States decides to deal only with the saints in Afghanistan, it's in for both loneliness and failure. That's the risk, and not everyone in our government sees it.'
Image: Afghan President Hamid Karzai
