The false Mansour was “the Brits’ guy,” said a senior American official familiar with the case. “It was the British who brought him forward.”…

American officials said they had doubts from the beginning. Mansour is well known, having served in the former Taliban government as minister of civil aviation. But this visitor was a few inches shorter than their intelligence indicated Mansour is, and he didn’t come with the people he said he would bring. CIA officers, including the Kabul station chief, were particularly skeptical, but British intelligence believed that the contact was real, according to the senior American official…

The senior American official cast doubt on the Afghan claims that the Taliban impostor is a shopkeeper. The man’s comments indicated that he knew Taliban positions on issues and that he seemed to have some knowledge of the movement’s inner circle.

Daudzai said the impostor may have been dispatched by Pakistan’s spy agency to “test the system,” but “we can’t say for sure.”