Viagra helps CIA win friends in Afghanistan

The Afghan chieftain looked older than his 60-odd years, and his bearded face bore the creases of a man burdened with duties as tribal patriarch and husband to four younger women. His visitor, a CIA officer, saw an opportunity, and reached into his bag for a small gift.

Four blue pills. Viagra.

"Take one of these. You'll love it," the officer said. Compliments of Uncle Sam.

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The enticement worked. The officer, who described the encounter, returned four days later to an enthusiastic reception. The grinning chief offered up a bonanza of information about Taliban movements and supply routes — followed by a request for more pills.

For U.S. intelligence officials, this is how some crucial battles in Afghanistan are fought and won. While the CIA has a long history of buying information with cash, the growing Taliban insurgency has prompted the use of novel incentives and creative bargaining to gain support in some of the country's roughest neighborhoods, according to officials directly involved in such operations.

'Whatever it takes'
In their efforts to win over notoriously fickle warlords and chieftains, the officials say, the agency's operatives have used a variety of personal services. These include pocketknives and tools, medicine or surgeries for ailing family members, toys and school equipment, tooth extractions, travel visas, and, occasionally, pharmaceutical enhancements for aging patriarchs with slumping libidos, the officials said.

"Whatever it takes to make friends and influence people — whether it's building a school or handing out Viagra," said one longtime agency operative and veteran of several Afghanistan tours. Like other field officers interviewed for this article, he spoke on the condition of anonymity when describing tactics and operations that are largely classified.

Officials say these inducements are necessary in Afghanistan, a country where warlords and tribal leaders expect to be paid for their cooperation, and where, for some, switching sides can be as easy as changing tunics. If the Americans don't offer incentives, there are others who will, including Taliban commanders, drug dealers and even Iranian agents in the region.

The usual bribes of choice — cash and weapons — aren't always the best options, Afghanistan veterans say. Guns too often fall into the wrong hands, they say, and showy gifts such as money, jewelry and cars tend to draw unwanted attention.

"If you give an asset $1,000, he'll go out and buy the shiniest junk he can find, and it will be apparent that he has suddenly come into a lot of money from someone," said Jamie Smith, a veteran of CIA covert operations in Afghanistan and now chief executive of SCG International, a private security and intelligence company. "Even if he doesn't get killed, he becomes ineffective as an informant because everyone knows where he got it."

The key, Smith said, is to find a way to meet the informant's personal needs in a way that keeps him firmly on your side but leaves little or no visible trace.

"You're trying to bridge a gap between people living in the 18th century and people coming in from the 21st century," Smith said, "so you look for those common things in the form of material aid that motivate people everywhere."
Among the world's intelligence agencies, there's a long tradition of using sex as a motivator. Robert Baer, a retired CIA officer and author of several books on intelligence, noted that the Soviet spy service was notorious for using attractive women as bait when seeking to turn foreign diplomats into informants.

"The KGB has always used 'honey traps,' and it works," Baer said. For American officers, a more common practice was to offer medical care for potential informants and their loved ones, he said. "I remember one guy we offered an option on a heart bypass," Baer said.

For some U.S. operatives in Afghanistan, Western drugs such as Viagra were just part of a long list of enticements available for use in special cases. Two veteran officers familiar with such practices said Viagra was offered rarely, and only to older tribal officials for whom the drug would hold special appeal. While such sexual performance drugs are generally unavailable in the remote areas where the agency's teams operated, they have been sold in some Kabul street markets since at least 2003 and were known by reputation elsewhere

Santa's Killing Rampage

COVINA, Calif. — Stinging from an acrimonious divorce, a man plotting revenge against his ex-wife dressed up like Santa, went to his former in-laws' Christmas Eve party and slaughtered at least six people before killing himself hours later.

Three people were listed as missing after Bruce Pardo's rampage — his ex-wife and her parents — and it was feared their remains were among the ashes of the home, which Pardo set ablaze using a bizarre homemade device that sprayed flammable liquid.

Pardo, 45, had no criminal record and no history of violence, according to police, but he was angry following last week's settlement of his divorce after a marriage that lasted barely a year.

"It was not an amicable divorce," police Lt. Pat Buchanan said.

The massacre began when an 8-year-old girl answered Pardo's knock at the door. Pardo, carrying what appeared to be a large present, pulled out a handgun and shot her in the face, then began shooting indiscriminately as about 25 partygoers tried to flee, police said.

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The gift-wrapped box Pardo was carrying actually contained a pressurized homemade device he used to spray a liquid that quickly sent the house up in flames, police said.

When the fire was extinguished early Thursday, officers found three charred bodies in the living room area.

"They were met with a scene that was just indescribable," police Chief Kim Raney said. Investigators found three more bodies amid the ashes later in the day.

None of the dead or missing have been identified.

Following the shootings, Pardo quickly got out of the Santa suit and drove off, witnesses told police. He went to his brother's home about 25 miles away in the Sylmar area of Los Angeles. No one was home, so Pardo let himself in, police said.

Police were called to the home early Thursday, and officers found Pardo dead of a single bullet to the head.

Billy Joe Johnson

Lawyer: Still waiting on report
Johnson was out of truck when shot
By MARGARET BAKER - mbbaker@sunherald.com

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tool goes here LUCEDALE — George County High School football star Billey Joe Johnson Jr. was outside his truck with the driver’s door open when he died of a gunshot wound to the head, an independent pathologist has concluded.

Johnson’s attorney, Jerome Carter of the Cochran Law Firm in Mobile, said Monday night that the independent pathologist was able to make those conclusions after examining the truck the 17-year-old was stopped in minutes before his death the morning of Dec. 8.

Carter, however, said there were portions of Johnson’s head and face that the pathologist was unable to examine to determine the manner of death because it is in the hands of the state medical examiner’s office.


Billy Joe Johnson.
Story: SUNHERALD TV: Billey Joe Johnson Jr. laid to rest

“What we hired our pathologist to do, we couldn’t do because what was to be analyzed and examined was not there,” Carter said. “We’re still conducting our investigation relative to the manner of death on the forensic side of it, but we must wait for the state to release their information. The manner of death is what is still to be determined.”

Carter and his team are awaiting the results of the state pathologist’s report. Jackson County District Attorney Tony Lawrence said Monday night that he’s not been presented the final report.

“Forensic scientists know better than I do when their testing is complete and they can release their report,” Lawrence said. “I did not get any calls from them today.”

Johnson’s family called on the NAACP to investigate when their son died of what authorities said was a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head the morning he was stopped at Benndale Carpet off Mississippi 26.

Johnson had just been identified as a suspect in a burglary in progress at a former girlfriend’s Lucedale home minutes before a George County sheriff’s deputy pulled him over for running a stop sign and a red light.

In the incident report, the sheriff’s deputy said that he was at his patrol car checking Johnson’s driver’s license when he heard a gunshot and breaking glass and then saw Johnson dead outside his truck with a shotgun on top of him.

Johnson’s family, along with representatives of the NAACP, say Johnson would not have committed suicide because he had too much to live for. An all-star running back, Johnson had been offered numerous college scholarships.

As part of their findings so far, they’ve said that the wounds on Johnson’s body were not consistent with what was included in the report of the incident.

The attorney said Monday that his investigators also found no evidence of Johnson’s truck being fully examined, such as sticker marks that authorities would use to mark things like where a bullet might have struck and other evidence.

“With three hours invested into it (the medical examination) with our pathologist, we were simply hopeful that there would be something there that would be able to make a determination on the manner of the death,” Carter said. “But everything that could conclusively tell us was just not there.”

Carter said their investigation is continuing.

“There are a number of people contacting us to give us information,” he said.