A month ago, General David Petraeus said secret talks with a "senior Taliban leader" showed that the US-led offensive was generating enough pressure that peace might be possible. The man who called himself the Taliban's number-two leader had been flown to Kabul on a NATO plane, ushered into Hamid Karzai's presidential palace and paid enough money to show up three times. Now it turns out he was not Mullah Akhtar Muhammad Mansour after all. Carlotta Gall co-wrote the story for the New York Times.
KCRW
