Hamid Karzai's brother: a snitch for U.S. intelligence...

CQ's Spytalk, here

"Evidently taking a page from the Boston Irish mob - and countless crooks before him - Afghan President Hamid Karzai's younger brother has become a snitch for U.S. intelligence, according to an allegation buried deep in a Washington Post story Monday. 

If true, the connection with U.S. intelligence would go a long way to explaining why Ahmed Wali Karzai, the most powerful official in Afghanistan's volatile Kandahar Province, remains free despite a widespread consensus that he is one of Afghanistan's major drug kingpins.

The U.S. intelligence connection to the president's brother popped up in the 24th paragraph of a dispatch from Kabul Monday from The Washington Post's estimable Rajiv Chandrasekaran. 

Several U.S. lawmakers, including Vice President Biden when he was chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, have urged the president to dismiss his brother from the [Kandahar Province] council," which he chairs, Chandrasekaran wrote.

"But U.S. and Canadian diplomats have not pressed the matter, in part because Ahmed Wali Karzai has given valuable intelligence to the U.S. military, and he also routinely provides assistance to Canadian forces, according to several officials familiar with the issue."

The CIA declined to comment on the allegation.............The U.S. Central Command did not immediately respond to a request for comment..............A responsible Canadian official could not be reached for comment....

The provincial capital, according to Chandrasekaran's report, threatens to fall to the Taliban, largely because of official corruption.    And Ahmed Wali Karzai, the president's brother, is the city's top gangster, according to multiple reliable reports in recent years."