Anti-corruption efforts in Afghanistan collapsed. Prosecutions stalled. The Afghan Interior Ministry refused to authorize further investigations by the SIU or the MCTF. "We can't find a fish little enough to go after," complained the MCTF mentor in December 2010. Petraeus turned his focus to killing insurgents. U.S. interagency guidance approved in early 2011 as part of that "objectives" document actually barred the Justice Department from helping Afghan prosecutors on anti-corruption cases. The best, most constructive and courageous Afghan law enforcement professionals were left high and dry by Washington, alone against a hostile Afghan government. A draft anti-corruption plan -- in itself insufficient -- was never presented to President Obama for approval.
And no wonder. U.S. officials had blundered into a circular firing squad. Salehi, the subject of the U.S. government's corruption test case, was also the U.S. government's intermediary for covert cash payments to Karzai. A secret CIA agenda was in conflict with the agenda of much of the rest of the U.S. government. And with no one able to explicitly arbitrate this contradiction, the CIA's agenda won out.
Throughout the unfolding investigation, two senior U.S. officials have told me, through Salehi's arrest and release after a few hours of police detention, CIA personnel never mentioned their relationship with him. Even afterwards, despite pressure in Kabul and Washington, the CIA refused to provide the ambassador or the key cabinet officials a list of Afghans they were paying. The CIA station chief in Kabul continued to hold private meetings with Karzai, with no other U.S. officials present.
So whom did Salehi call from his jail cell the afternoon of his arrest? Was it Karzai, as many presumed at the time? Or was it the CIA station chief?
What began as a test case on Afghan corruption, in other words, turned into a test case in U.S. foreign-policy dysfunction, raising a number of further questions of deeper import to the United States. Just how connected are CIA activities to core United States goals abroad? Or to a concerted plan for achieving them? To what extent do CIA officials set their own agenda? Is that agenda always in the U.S. national interest? How often is it at cross-purposes with the goals of the president, the department of state, even the military? What is the appropriate degree of transparency and accountability to prevent the inadvertent sabotage of other U.S. efforts and investments? Who must call these shots?
Only if senior U.S. leaders have the courage to address these questions directly, to arbitrate them clearly, and enforce their decisions, can U.S. foreign policy hope in the future to avoid the tragic waste of lives and effort that has characterized the past decade.
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