Senior lawmakers from both parties on Wednesday criticized what U.S. officials said were financial ties between the CIA and Ahmed Wali Karzai, a brother of the Afghan president, with Sen. John Kerry suggesting that intelligence officials had misled him about Karzai's role in Afghanistan's opium trade. Kerry, D-Mass., who is chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, demanded that members of Congress receive 'untainted' information about Karzai's drug connections in light of a news report that Karzai was on the CIA payroll. Kerry's statement came days after he said in a public forum that there was no 'smoking gun' evidence linking Karzai to the drug trade. Kerry said he had repeatedly been assured by intelligence officials that the evidence was inconclusive. Kerry and other senior members of Congress were reacting to an article in The New York Times on Wednesday in which current and former U.S. officials said that Karzai, the younger brother of President Hamid Karzai and a powerful figure in southern Afghanistan, was on the CIA payroll for much of the past eight years. The Obama administration is wrestling with a new Afghanistan strategy amid uncertainty about whether President Karzai's government can survive questions about its legitimacy. Ahmed Wali Karzai is believed by many top U.S. military and civilian officials to be enriching himself from the opium trade, although some U.S. intelligence officials said that there was no concrete proof. 'We should not condemn Ahmed Wali Karzai or damage our critical relations with his brother, President Karzai, on the basis of newspaper articles or rumors,' Kerry said Wednesday. 'But the appropriate congressional committees must be immediately provided with the most comprehensive and untainted information about his alleged entanglements,' he said. George Little, a CIA spokesman, said agency officials 'engage regularly with Congress, providing objective information on a wide range of national security topics.' In Kabul last week, Kerry helped cajole President Karzai to agree to a runoff election with his top competitor after the Afghan elections in August were marred by widespread voting fraud. Sen. John McCain of Arizona, a leading Republican voice on national security issues, reacted angrily to the news about Ahmed Wali Karzai, calling the CIA payments 'wrong' and suggesting that military commanders in Afghanistan opposed the strategy. 'Karzai's brother should not be in the country,' McCain said on 'The Early Show' on CBS. Robert Gibbs, the White House spokesman, declined to comment on Karzai's financial relationship with the CIA, referring questions to the agency. 