An aide to Afghan President Hamid Karzai at the center of a corruption probe is on the CIA payroll, The New York Times reported Thursday, bringing to fore deep contradictions in American policy and its devious nature there. Mohammed Zia Salehi, an Afghan National Security Council official, appears to have been paid by the U.S. spy agency for many years, unnamed Afghan and American officials in Kabul and Washington told the newspaper. The Times said it was unclear whether Salehi was being paid for information, or to advance U.S. views inside the Karzai administration, or both. Salehi was arrested by Afghan police in July but released after Karzai intervened. Salehi's relationship with the CIA underscores deep contradictions at the heart of the Obama administration's policy in Afghanistan, the newspaper said. Karzai is under pressure from the Obama administration to do more to root out corruption in his government to shore up the legitimacy of his government. Washington believes a successful counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan hinges on winning Afghan public support for the government in Kabul and sidelining the Taliban. With US backing, Salehi was arrested in July after Afghan police said a wiretap caught him soliciting a bribe in exchange for holding up a US investigation into a company suspected of moving money for Afghan leaders, drug traffickers and insurgents. The Times said the CIA was not believed to have played a role in his release, and that Karzai's intervention was likely motivated by his fear of what Salehi might reveal about the government's inner workings. He is not the first Afghan leader accused of corruption to be linked to the intelligence agency's vast funding network in the country. Karzai's half-brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai, is simultaneously accused by investigators of ties to Afghanistan's massive opium trade but is also said to be receiving CIA money. He has denied both allegations. The agency's relationship with men like Salehi and Ahmed Wali Karzai comes amid tension within US President Barack Obama's administration about whether rooting out government corruption is the key to stabilising the country or a dangerous over-expansion of the US role there. "Corruption matters to us," an unnamed senior Obama administration official told the Times. "The fact that Salehi may have been on our payroll does not necessarily change any of the basic issues here."