Phil Harvey Speaks Out on CIA's 'Cash For Karzai' Scandal

WASHINGTON, D.C.—Everyone knows that Phil Harvey is the co-founder of adult mail order giant Adam & Eve, but fewer know that he also has a "day job": President of the D.C.-based DKT International, a non-governmental organization (NGO) which supplies health services to the populations of Third World countries which would otherwise have no access to treatments for sexually-transmitted diseases or birth control devices. So it shouldn't be too surprising that Harvey keeps up with the goings on regarding the United States' involvement in and interaction with the foreign countries that DKT serves—and that clearly includes The New York Times' front page article last Tuesday titled, “Karzai’s Office Gets Bags Full of C.I.A. Cash.” For those who may have missed the story, it seems that the U.S. government has once again decided that the best way to make friends among foreign leaders like Afghanistan president Hamid Karzai is to drop tens of millions of dollars in their laps—all of it "off the books" and part of the CIA's discretionary funds, much of it used, according to The Times, for "paying off warlords and politicians, many of whom have ties to the drug trade and, in some cases, the Taliban." And of course, a bunch of it used to keep Karzai living in the lap of luxury while his subjects starve and are killed in the U.S.-sponsored war that's been driving the U.S. trillions of dollars further into debt for nearly a dozen years. And so, to express his concerns over the issue, Harvey wrote a letter of comment to The Times, which was published in today's edition. Titled "Cash for Karzai: A C.I.A. Caper," the letter reads, "Bribing the Afghan government in this manner is shameful. How can we complain about corruption in the Afghan government when we are feeding the corruption? "How can we honor the men and women who suffered and died in combat in Afghanistan when the government that sent them into war is systematically bribing the Afghan president? "Let the Central Intelligence Agency go back to spying and stop dropping sacks of cash on President Hamid Karzai. I’m ashamed that our government would stoop to this, and I’m glad that it’s backfiring." Who says adult industry professionals aren't interested in world affairs?