WASHINGTON — Not long after the Pentagon severed its relationship with a private spy network operating in Afghanistan andPakistan, the F.B.I. quietly began tapping the same group to help investigate the killing of 10 medical aid workers in northern Afghanistan, according to American officials and private contractors.
The spy network, managed by Duane R. Clarridge, 78, a former top official at the Central Intelligence Agency, has provided agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation in Kabul with intelligence reports about militants who may have been involved in the attack, which killed six Americans last August.
How the F.B.I uses the information, and whether it has been valuable, is unclear. But that the F.B.I would use Mr. Clarridge’s group — at the same time the Pentagon is investigating whether it and other private spies were hired in Afghanistan and Pakistan in violation of Defense Department policy — shows the limits of the American government’s own information sources in the chaos of a war zone.
The arrangement, in which Mr. Clarridge is not being paid, shows his determination to persuade the government of the value of his spying operation, which he oversees from his home in Southern California, as he struggles to keep the network afloat with private financing.
Mr. Clarridge’s network, recently renamed the Eclipse Group, has also fed information to an F.B.I.-supervised task force in Kabul charged with rooting out corruption inside Afghanistan’s government, according to people familiar with the operation who would speak only on condition of anonymity. The group’s reports have run the gamut from the business dealings of Ahmed Wali Karzai, the half-brother of President Hamid Karzai, to rumors that Afghan officials secretly shipped large amounts of money to Dubai.
An F.B.I. spokesman declined to comment on Mr. Clarridge’s work with the bureau in Afghanistan. Raymond Granger, Mr. Clarridge’s lawyer, would not discuss any ties between Mr. Clarridge and the F.B.I., but said The Eclipse Group was “cooperating with the Justice Department’s investigation in the murder of the 10 aid workers, and is prepared to assist in other areas as well.”
Mr. Granger, a former federal prosecutor, said the F.B.I.’s use of private citizens for help in criminal investigations, in the United States or abroad, was “as basic as it gets.” He said that Mr. Clarridge was not being paid for any work he did for the government.
The attack on the 10 medical aid workers in the remote mountains of Badakhshan Province last August was the largest killing of aid workers in the country in years. American officials still do not know who was responsible. Taliban press releases in the days after the deaths accused the group of being Western spies.
Typically, the F.B.I. opens a homicide investigation when American civilians are killed overseas, with the aim of prosecuting the perpetrators in American courts.
The medical team, part of a group called International Assistance Mission, was led by Tom Little, an optometrist who for decades administered care in remote parts of Afghanistan to some of the country’s poorest villages.
Mr. Clarridge’s spy network is made up of former C.I.A. and special forces operatives, as well as dozens of Afghan and Pakistani locals. From his home near San Diego, Mr. Clarridge pieces together dispatches from overseas and arranges for the reports to be posted on a password-protected Web site.
Officials said that the Web site, afpakfp.com, is checked periodically by foreign intelligence services, including the British and the Italians. Currently, the site promises “a substantial rebuild” and asks its customers to “be patient.”
Under the Pentagon contract, Mr. Clarridge’s team of private spies regularly sent encrypted e-mails about militant activity in Pakistan and Afghanistan to a military information operations center in Kabul. Once the $22 million contract was terminated in May, Mr. Clarridge focused some of his network’s resources on digging up material about President Karzai and his family, even hatching schemes in an effort to prove his suspicions that Mr. Karzai was a heroin user.
The Defense Department’s inspector general is investigating the circumstances of how Mr. Clarridge and other subcontractors were hired for the spying operation. An initial Pentagon investigation found that the private contractors carried out “unauthorized” intelligence gathering operations in Pakistan and Afghanistan. The military is prohibited from hiring private contractors as spies.
Mr. Clarridge, who had been indicted in 1991 for lying to Congress about his role in the Iran-Contra scandal and then pardoned a year later, recently told a local newspaper reporter that he had taken to carrying a Taser when he leaves the house to protect himself against terrorist reprisals.
Private contractors familiar with Mr. Clarridge’s group said that the F.B.I.’s appetite for incriminating information about Afghan corruption had waned since last year, and top American officials and military commanders in Kabul had dialed back their public criticism of Mr. Karzai’s government. Many advisers inside the administration worried that making Mr. Karzai’s inner circle a target of corruption investigations would only further erode the Afghan president’s support for America’s military campaign in Afghanistan.