By Rone Tempest and Bob Drogin
Los Angeles Times
PESHAWAR, Pakistan — Sitting on lawn furniture inside the screened-in porch of a Peshawar safe house, the CIA officer made his pitch bluntly to Haji Mohammed Zaman.
Was he prepared to kill al-Qaida Arabs? the American asked. Zaman, a powerful warlord from eastern Afghanistan, nodded. With that, the operative handed him $10,000 in cash and a sleek hand-held Thuraya satellite telephone.
"Is that all?" Zaman demanded angrily, according to a senior Western diplomat who witnessed the exchange in November, as Taliban forces were collapsing in Afghanistan. "Is that all you give to someone who knows where to find Osama bin Laden?"
The answer, clearly, is no. No one has yet snagged the Bush administration’s $25-million "dead or alive" bounty on bin Laden. But a senior intelligence official in Washington, D.C., says the U.S. spy service has distributed "tens of millions of dollars" in cash since last fall in the effort to find him, as well as in other covert operations.
The CIA’s small army of operatives often has worked less like James Bond than like bagmen, handing out bundles of $100 bills — often with sequential serial numbers — to purchase intelligence and support.
Sometimes the money bought less than complete loyalty. Sometimes the Americans bought bogus information. And some officials question whether the practice is counterproductive in the long run.
"All money does is buy you information," explained a Capitol Hill staffer familiar with the operation. "It doesn’t necessarily buy you reliable information."
But other officials say the CIA payoffs played a critical role in persuading commanders from the Northern Alliance and other guerrilla groups to provide proxy fighters last fall to help oust the Taliban and search for al-Qaida members.
"Sometimes you can do more with $100 bills than with bullets," said the intelligence official, who, in keeping with his agency’s policy, spoke on condition of anonymity. "And if we can rent guys to help, that’s fine."
The going rate, other officials said, was $100,000 for warlords; far less for lower-ranking commanders, village elders and the like. Generous cash payments also encouraged some Taliban commanders to switch sides, or to abandon their positions and go home.
"The Taliban conquered the country with bribery and negotiation," said a former CIA officer familiar with the operation. "And basically, that’s the way we reconquered it — with help from air power."
Agency spokesman Bill Harlow declined to discuss the CIA’s use of cash in Afghanistan. And while most Afghan commanders deny receiving payoffs, the evidence suggests otherwise.
In the Afghan capital, Kabul, for example, three car dealers along Parwan Say, the city’s commercial strip, said they sold "dozens and dozens and dozens" of new and late-model SUVs — including fully loaded Toyota Land Cruisers costing as much as $60,000 — to cash-rich Northern Alliance warlords and their commanders in November, December and January after the Taliban abruptly abandoned the city.
"These commanders, they were fighting each other to get these cars," one dealer said. "We couldn’t satisfy them all."
The dealers said the cars were sold for cash, usually crisp 1999 series $100 bills, often with sequential serial numbers. Afghan merchants note the dates closely because many are convinced that 1988, 1990 and 1993 dollars are counterfeit, and refuse to accept them.
The scene was much the same in Pakistan. Early last fall, as Afghan warlord Gul Agha Shirzai gathered his men near the Pakistani border city of Quetta, U.S. forces airdropped assault rifles, sleeping bags, ammunition, radios and other gear to fight the Taliban.
But Shirzai’s aides say the warlord also was given boxes of U.S. dollars and Pakistani rupees. Shirzai is now governor of Kandahar province.
Witnesses say stacks of dollars and rupees, as well as satellite phones, were handed out to ethnic Pashtun commanders at two safe houses in Peshawar on Nov. 13 to enlist their support. The Northern Alliance, composed mostly of Tajik, Uzbek and Hazara ethnic minorities, had just taken Kabul, the capital, and provincial Taliban governments and garrisons were collapsing across eastern Afghanistan.
Pakistani smugglers willing to haul communications gear, weapons and other equipment to U.S.-backed proxy forces also got satchels of cash. So much money changed hands that the value of the dollar fell sharply against the rupee, and local prices shot up.
Inevitably, the CIA got scammed in Afghanistan.
A Pakistani intelligence official said a Peshawar shopkeeper and his cohort got $50,000 from the CIA for a tip on bin Laden’s location — then disappeared with the money. "It turned out to be a swindle," said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
More important, officials say, warlords misled U.S. intelligence during the battle of Tora Bora in December. Despite intense bombing of suspected al-Qaida caves and encampments, hundreds of fighters — perhaps bin Laden himself — apparently escaped by buying safe passage from Afghan commanders who supposedly were aiding U.S. forces.
U.S. officials suspect Zaman, who had ridiculed the $10,000 offer at the Peshawar safe house, of milking money and support during the battle by providing phony intelligence about bin Laden and inflating reports of enemy fighters.
The CIA had given support to Zaman’s 4,000 anti-Soviet fighters in the 1980s. He lost out in the civil war that followed the Soviets’ withdrawal and became a political refugee in France. He returned home in November after the Taliban abandoned his former political perch, the regional Afghan capital of Jalalabad, and soon received new supplies, vehicles and cash to join the battle at Tora Bora.
But Zaman neglected to send food, blankets or ammunition to his troops, forcing them to retreat, and he announced a cease-fire with al-Qaida that was denounced by U.S. officials. Today Zaman is security chief in Jalalabad, a powerful position in a city that traditionally has thrived on smuggling and drugs.
The other key U.S. ally at Tora Bora, Hazrat Ali, wasn’t reliable either. U.S. officials say Ali allowed his troops to escort al-Qaida fighters into Pakistan during the battle. Today Ali is a powerful figure in Afghanistan’s Nangarhar province, where Jalalabad is located. He drives a new Land Cruiser and commands a fleet of other vehicles.
Others reputed to have received CIA largess now help run the Defense, Justice and Foreign ministries in the interim post-Taliban government. A senior Western aid official in Kabul questions whether that’s wise.
"They make mercenaries of these people, then put them in charge and expect a democratic government to emerge," said the official, also speaking on condition of anonymity. "You can’t build a democracy based on bribery."
Intelligence officials defend the practice.
"There is a long and strong tradition of buying just about anything in Afghanistan," a senior CIA official said. "You win battles by striking deals. The loyalty a warlord gets with his men is usually from physically taking care of them. He provides cash, housing and food. That’s a big part of the equation."
Gene Cullen, a former CIA covert commando, said he and other officers routinely paid up to $25,000 to buy information from informants during America’s military and humanitarian mission in Somalia in the early 1990s.
The intervention became a disaster when 18 Army Rangers and Delta Force soldiers, as well as hundreds of Somalis, were killed in the "Black Hawk Down" attack in 1993. But Cullen said the CIA sees cash as one of its best weapons.
"Let’s face it," he said. "The one thing we do have is a lot of money."
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