JAILED AFGHAN DRUG LORD WAS INFORMER ON U.S. PAYROLL

WASHINGTON -- When Hajji Juma Khan was arrested and transported to
New York to face charges under a new American narco-terrorism law in
2008, federal prosecutors described him as perhaps the biggest and
most dangerous drug lord in Afghanistan, a shadowy figure who had
helped keep the Taliban in business with a steady stream of money and weapons.

But what the government did not say was that Mr. Juma Khan was also a
longtime American informer, who provided information about the
Taliban, Afghan corruption and other drug traffickers. Central
Intelligence Agency officers and Drug Enforcement Administration
agents relied on him as a valued source for years, even as he was
building one of Afghanistan's biggest drug operations after the
United States-led invasion of the country, according to current and
former American officials. Along the way, he was also paid a large
amount of cash by the United States.

At the height of his power, Mr. Juma Khan was secretly flown to
Washington for a series of clandestine meetings with C.I.A. and
D.E.A. officials in 2006. Even then, the United States was receiving
reports that he was on his way to becoming Afghanistan's most
important narcotics trafficker by taking over the drug operations of
his rivals and paying off Taliban leaders and corrupt politicians in
President Hamid Karzai's government.

In a series of videotaped meetings in Washington hotels, Mr. Juma
Khan offered tantalizing leads to the C.I.A. and D.E.A., in return
for what he hoped would be protected status as an American asset,
according to American officials. And then, before he left the United
States, he took a side trip to New York to see the sights and do some
shopping, according to two people briefed on the case.

The relationship between the United States government and Mr. Juma
Khan is another illustration of how the war on drugs and the war on
terrorism have sometimes collided, particularly in Afghanistan, where
drug dealing, the insurgency and the government often overlap.

To be sure, American intelligence has worked closely with figures
other than Mr. Juma Khan suspected of drug trade ties, including
Ahmed Wali Karzai, the president's half brother, and Hajji Bashir
Noorzai, who was arrested in 2005. Mr. Karzai has denied being
involved in the drug trade.

A Shifting Policy

Afghan drug lords have often been useful sources of information about
the Taliban. But relying on them has also put the United States in
the position of looking the other way as these informers ply their
trade in a country that by many accounts has become a narco-state.

The case of Mr. Juma Khan also shows how counternarcotics policy has
repeatedly shifted during the nine-year American occupation of
Afghanistan, getting caught between the conflicting priorities of
counterterrorism and nation building, so much so that Mr. Juma Khan
was never sure which way to jump, according to officials who spoke on
the condition that they not be identified.

When asked about Mr. Juma Khan's relationship with the C.I.A., a
spokesman for the spy agency said that the "C.I.A. does not, as a
rule, comment on matters pending before U.S. courts." A D.E.A.
spokesman also declined to comment on his agency's relationship with
Mr. Juma Khan.

His New York lawyer, Steven Zissou, denied that Mr. Juma Khan had
ever supported the Taliban or worked for the C.I.A.

"There have been many things said about Hajji Juma Khan," Mr. Zissou
said, "and most of what has been said, including that he worked for
the C.I.A., is false. What is true is that H. J. K. has never been an
enemy of the United States and has never supported the Taliban or any
other group that threatens Americans."

A spokeswoman for the United States Attorney's Office for the
Southern District of New York, which is handling Mr. Juma Khan's
prosecution, declined to comment.

However, defending the relationship, one American official said,
"You're not going to get intelligence in a war zone from Ward Cleaver
or Florence Nightingale."

At first, Mr. Juma Khan, an illiterate trafficker in his mid-50s from
Afghanistan's remote Nimroz Province, in the border region where
southwestern Afghanistan meets both Iran and Pakistan, was a big
winner from the American-led invasion. He had been a provincial drug
smuggler in southwestern Afghanistan in the 1990s, when the Taliban
governed the country. But it was not until after the Taliban's ouster
that he rose to national prominence, taking advantage of a record
surge in opium production in Afghanistan after the invasion.

Briefly detained by American forces after the 2001 fall of the
Taliban, he was quickly released, even though American officials knew
at the time that he was involved in narcotics trafficking, according
to several current and former American officials. During the first
few years of its occupation of Afghanistan, the United States was
focused entirely on capturing or killing leaders of Al Qaeda, and it
ignored drug trafficking, because American military commanders
believed that policing drugs got in the way of their core
counterterrorism mission.

Opium and heroin production soared, and the narcotics trade came to
account for nearly half of the Afghan economy.

Concerns, but No Action

By 2004, Mr. Juma Khan had gained control over routes from southern
Afghanistan to Pakistan's Makran Coast, where heroin is loaded onto
freighters for the trip to the Middle East, as well as overland
routes through western Afghanistan to Iran and Turkey. To keep his
routes open and the drugs flowing, he lavished bribes on all the
warring factions, from the Taliban to the Pakistani intelligence
service to the Karzai government, according to current and former
American officials.

The scale of his drug organization grew to stunning levels, according
to the federal indictment against him. It was in both the wholesale
and the retail drug businesses, providing raw materials for other
drug organizations while also processing finished drugs on its own.

Bush administration officials first began to talk about him publicly
in 2004, when Robert B. Charles, then the assistant secretary of
state for international narcotics and law enforcement, told Time
magazine that Mr. Juma Khan was a drug lord "obviously very tightly
tied to the Taliban."

Such high-level concern did not lead to any action against Mr. Juma
Khan. But Mr. Noorzai, one of his rivals, was lured to New York and
arrested in 2005, which allowed Mr. Juma Khan to expand his empire.

In a 2006 confidential report to the drug agency reviewed by The New
York Times, an Afghan informer stated that Mr. Juma Khan was working
with Ahmed Wali Karzai, the political boss of southern Afghanistan,
to take control of the drug trafficking operations left behind by Mr.
Noorzai. Some current and former American counternarcotics officials
say they believe that Mr. Karzai provided security and protection for
Mr. Juma Khan's operations.

Mr. Karzai denied any involvement with the drug trade and said that
he had never met Mr. Juma Khan. "I have never even seen his face," he
said through a spokesman. He denied having any business or security
arrangement with him. "Ask them for proof instead of lies," he added.

Mr. Juma Khan's reported efforts to take over from Mr. Noorzai came
just as he went to Washington to meet with the C.I.A. and the drug
agency, former American officials say. By then, Mr. Juma Khan had
been working as an informer for both agencies for several years,
officials said. He had met repeatedly with C.I.A. officers in
Afghanistan beginning in 2001 or 2002, and had also developed a
relationship with the drug agency's country attache in Kabul, former
American officials say.

He had been paid large amounts of cash by the United States,
according to people with knowledge of the case. Along with other
tribal leaders in his region, he was given a share of as much as $2
million in payments to help oppose the Taliban. The payments are said
to have been made by either the C.I.A. or the United States military.

The 2006 Washington meetings were an opportunity for both sides to
determine, in face-to-face talks, whether they could take their
relationship to a new level of even longer-term cooperation.

"I think this was an opportunity to drill down and see what he would
be able to provide," one former American official said. "I think it
was kind of like saying, 'O.K., what have you got' "

Business, Not Ideology

While the C.I.A. wanted information about the Taliban, the drug
agency had its own agenda for the Washington meetings -- information
about other Afghan traffickers Mr. Juma Khan worked with, as well as
contacts on the supply lines through Turkey and Europe.

One reason the Americans could justify bringing Mr. Juma Khan to
Washington was that they claimed to have no solid evidence that he
was smuggling drugs into the United States, and there were no
criminal charges pending against him in this country.

It is not clear how much intelligence Mr. Juma Khan provided on other
drug traffickers or on the Taliban leadership. But the relationship
between the C.I.A. and the D.E.A. and Mr. Juma Khan continued for
some time after the Washington sessions, officials say.

In fact, when the drug agency contacted him again in October 2008 to
invite him to another meeting, he went willingly, believing that the
Americans wanted to continue the discussions they had with him in
Washington. He even paid his own way to Jakarta, Indonesia, to meet
with the agency, current and former officials said.

But this time, instead of enjoying fancy hotels and friendly talks,
Mr. Juma Khan was arrested and flown to New York, and this time he
was not allowed to go shopping.

It is unclear why the government decided to go after Mr. Juma Khan.
Some officials suggest that he never came through with breakthrough
intelligence. Others say that he became so big that he was hard to
ignore, and that the United States shifted its priorities to make
pursuing drug dealers a higher priority.

The Justice Department has used a 2006 narco-terrorism law against
Mr. Juma Khan, one that makes it easier for American prosecutors to
go after foreign drug traffickers who are not smuggling directly into
the United States if the government can show they have ties to
terrorist organizations.

The federal indictment shows that the drug agency eventually got a
cooperating informer who could provide evidence that Mr. Juma Khan
was making payoffs to the Taliban to keep his drug operation going,
something intelligence operatives had known for years.

The federal indictment against Mr. Juma Khan said the payments were
"in exchange for protection for the organization's drug trafficking
operations." The alleged payoffs were what linked him to the Taliban
and permitted the government to make its case.

But even some current and former American counternarcotics officials
are skeptical of the government's claims that Mr. Juma Khan was a
strong supporter of the Taliban.

"He was not ideological," one former official said. "He made payments
to them. He made payments to government officials. It was part of the
business."

Now, plea negotiations are quietly under way. A plea bargain might
keep many of the details of his relationship to the United States out
of the public record.