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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/9669368/General-David-Petraeus-the-thoughtful-superfit-Warrior-Monk-who-helped-to-fix-Iraq.html
General David Petraeus, seen with wife Holly at the Super Bowl in 2009, has admitted to having an affair.
General David Petraeus, seen with wife Holly at the Super Bowl in 2009, has admitted to having an affair. Photo: REUTERS
General David Petraeus: the thoughtful, superfit 'Warrior Monk' who helped to fix Iraq
The Sunday Telegraph's former Baghdad correspondent Colin Freeman, who interviewed General Petraeus in 2008, reflects on his remarkable rise and fall
By Colin Freeman
6:18PM GMT 10 Nov 2012
As head of the CIA, General David Petraeus would have known all too well that an extra-marital affair would jeopardise his career. Even his critics, though, would concede that he has previously risked his reputation in far more noble causes.
In 2007, he was in charge of the controversial "troop surge" in Iraq, the last-ditch gamble to turn the country away from all-out civil war between Sunni and Shia Muslims.
At the time, Washington's political and military establishment were bitterly divided over the plan. With the US death toll in Iraq rising rapidly, many were convinced that the last thing America should do was pour an extra 28,000 troops in where so many had already died.
So when Gen Petraeus agreed to act as its executor, he was well aware that he risked becoming a modern-day answer to General William Westmoreland, whose decision to send endless extra units into Vietnam became synonymous with America's failure there.
Indeed, as Gen Petraeus later told me in an interview at his heavily-fortified headquarters in Baghdad, he himself was half-convinced he would fail at first.
"It set in upon us as we patrolled that this was going to be extraordinarily difficult," he said, speaking of his horror at seeing entire neighbourhoods devastated by civil war. Asked if he regretted taking the mission on, he replied: "About once an hour."
Instead, he turned it into his most enduring triumph, showing him to be as much a politician as military expert. Extra boots on the ground helped stabilise the streets. But far more important was the diplomatic outreach to Iraq's Sunnis, disenfranchised ever since the ouster of their kinsman, Saddam Hussein. By turning them against al-Qaeda, with whom they had allied to fight both the Americans and their fellow Shias, the key dynamic in the civil war was removed.
True, the murder rate merely dropped to hundreds a month rather than thousands, but it nonetheless represented the start of Iraq's slow - if yet incomplete - retreat from chaos.
Success with the surge earned Gen Petraeus rock star status among his own troops, and he was even tipped as a future presidential candidate.
He then did a similar job in Afghanistan after his opposite number there, General Stan McChrystal, was forced to step down after his aides made derogatory remarks to Rolling Stone magazine about US administration officials.
Finally, President Barack Obama moved him to the CIA last September, in what many saw as a ploy to stop him getting the Republican presidential nomination by putting him in a role that is by definition low-profile.
It should have been another crowning moment in a glittering career, which had seen him marked for greatness ever since coming top of the class of 1974 at West Point Military Academy.
Known as a fitness fanatic even by the standards of the US military - he would go for a daily five-mile run even in the heat of a Baghdad summer - he was nonetheless one of the US military's most thoughtful soldiers, a man well aware that winning wars involved more than just US firepower.
His authorship of an influential US counter-insurgency field manual earned him the nickname the "Warrior Monk", and as commander during the 2003 invasion of Iraq, he was known for asking embedded reporters "Tell me how this ends?"
Many interpreted that catchphrase as a premonition of the chaos that he was later called back to Iraq to fix. Few could ever have imagined it having such resonance in his own career.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/9673387/David-Petraeus-scandal-widens-to-include-Barack-Obamas-cabinet.html
David Petraeus scandal widens to include Barack Obama's cabinet
7:58PM GMT 12 Nov 2012
The crisis over General David Petraeus's resignation reached Barack Obama's cabinet for the first time as it was claimed the US Attorney General knew about the affair for months but kept it secret until the day of the presidential election.
General David Petraeus shakes hands with Paula Broadwell in this 2011 photograph. Photo: AP
Eric Holder, the head of the Justice Department, was reportedly told in the late summer that FBI agents were investigating the former CIA director's sexual relationship with Paula Broadwell, his biographer.
The information was kept inside the Justice Department until last week, even though FBI agents had already discovered classified information on Mrs Broadwell's computer.
Allegations that one of the President's closest allies had known about the affair fuelled theories of a cover-up as the scandal expanded to include a second woman and continued to shake Washington.
Mrs Broadwell's father said his daughter was the victim of an attempt to hide "something else entirely", while friends of Gen Petraeus suggested a link between the resignation and his scheduled appearance later this week before a Congressional committee investigating the attack on theUS consulate in Benghazi.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Mr Holder was told of the investigation into Gen Petraeus several months ago but it was not until Nov 6 that officials informed James Clapper, the Director of National Intelligence, who immediately urged Gen Petraeus to resign.
Neither the FBI nor the Justice Department has officially commented but in private briefings insisted there was no obligation to inform the White House because it had already determined there was no breach of national security.
However, when FBI agents confronted Mrs Broadwell in September they seized a computer they believed she used to contact Gen Petraeus and found secret documents stored on it.
FBI agents were seen searching the Broadwell home in North Carolina on Monday night. It was not clear why.
Both Mrs Broadwell and Gen Petraeus admitted their affair during interviews with the FBI but both denied that he was the source of the classified material, according to the Journal.
The nature of the files is unknown but in a speech at the University of Denver in late October, Mrs Broadwell seemed to suggest she was privy to insider knowledge about the attack on the US consulate in Benghazi.
The 40-year-old claimed Libyan militia members had been imprisoned in a small CIA building near the consulate, a theory that was not public at the time and has since been denied by the agency.
Any suggestion that the Justice Department kept its investigation in Gen Petraeus's affair secret to prevent it from becoming an election issue could be hugely damaging to the Obama administration.
Peter King, a Republican congressman who sits on the House intelligence committee, described the situation as a "crisis of major proportions" and the FBI had been "derelict in its duty" by not immediately informing the White House.
"Once the FBI realised that it was investigating the director of the CIA or the CIA director had come within its focus or its scope, I believe at that time they had an absolute obligation to tell the president," Mr King told MSNBC. "Not to protect David Petraeus, but to protect the president."
Paul Kranz, Mrs Broadwell's father, suggested that his daughter was being targeted as part as part of a broader cover-up.
"This is about something else entirely, and the truth will come out," he told the New York Daily News outside the family home in North Dakota.
A friend of Gen Petraeus questioned the "very suspicious" timing of the resignation, less than a week before the Benghazi hearings. "A lot of very senior people in the administration did not want him to give that evidence," the friend said.
Senator Dianne Feinstein, the Democrat chair of the Senate intelligence committee said there was "absolutely not" any link between the two and that the President had "no choice" but to accept Gen Petraeus's resignation after it was offered on Thursday.
Mr Obama will be forced to answer questions about the affair during a press conference at the White House on Wednesday, his first since the election.
Gen Petraeus has not been seen since stepping down on Friday but told friends Mrs Broadwell was his only mistress and that his wife Holly was "furious" at his infidelity after 38 years of marriage.
"He had a huge job and he felt he was doing great work and that is all gone now," Steven Boylan, a former Army Colonel and ex-Petraeus spokesman, told ABC News.
Meanwhile, the CIA and Congress remained locked in a standoff over whether Gen Petraeus would appear before the House and Senate intelligence committees to testify on his former agency's role in the attack on the US consulate in Benghazi.
Immediately after his resignation on Friday, the CIA announced he would no longer attend the hearing and that Michael Morell, the agency's acting director, would be sent instead.
Mr King has called the former general "an absolutely essential witness" and demanded that he still appear, while other Republicans last week raised the possibility of issuing a subpoena to force him to testify.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/9670366/David-Petraeus-Michael-Morell-the-career-spook-replacing-him.html
David Petraeus: Michael Morell, the 'career spook' replacing him
While General David Petraeus arrived at the CIA as a war hero under an intense public spot light, his replacement is a consummate man of the shadows.
Michael Morell who will replace General David Petraeus Photo: AP
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/9673124/David-Petraeus-Paula-Broadwell-had-classified-documents-on-computer.html
General David Petraeus shakes hands with Paula Broadwell in this 2011 photograph. Photo: AP
David Petraeus: Paula Broadwell 'had classified documents on computer'
FBI agents investigating the biographer alleged to have had an affair with General David Petraeus found classified documents on her computer, it has emerge
The discovery raises questions as to whether America's top soldier was involved in leaking sensitive material to Paula Broadwell, 40.
Officials examining the case say they were alerted to the data after interviewing Mrs Broadwell over her relationship with the four-star general in October this year.
Gen Petraeus, 60, has denied providing secret documents to the married mother-of-two, leaving investigators with the task of establishing who is behind their release.
Yesterday, senior government lawyers said they were keen to question Mrs Broadwell over how she came by the undisclosed material.
They are also anxious to ascertain the source of the former Army reservist's information on the attack on the US consulate in Benghazi, Libya, in September.
In a speech at the University of Denver in October, Mrs Broadwell claimed that the CIA annex where two Americans were killed during the attack "had actually taken a couple of Libyan militia members prisoners".
It was, she said, "an effort to get them back" that provided the motive for the deadly attack in which a total of four Americans, including US Ambassador Chris Stevens, were killed.
Mrs Broadwell told the audience: "Now I don't know if a lot of you heard this, but the CIA annex had actually – had taken a couple of Libyan militia members prisoner and they think that the attack on the consulate was an effort to try to get these prisoners back. So that's still being vetted."
US officials have so far made no reference to the possibility of prisoners being the catalyst for the much criticised bloodshed in Benghazi.
On Sunday, a spokesman for the CIA claimed the suggestion that the agency kept prisoners in Libya was "uninformed and baseless."
Mrs Broadwell has come under intense scrutiny since Gen Petraeus submitted his resignation as director of the CIA citing an extramarital affair.
The fitness fanatic, who is married to her husband Scott, a radiologist, has not been seen since news of the scandal broke.
Details of the pair's apparent close relationship have continued to emerge, however, with recent allegations including Gen Petraeus taking her with him on a government-funded trip to Paris in July last year.
On Monday, no one was home at the Broadwell's family residence in an upmarket area of Charlotte, North Carolina.
A spokesman for Charlotte Radiology Breast Centre, where Dr Broadwell works, refused to comment on his whereabouts. He "was not seeing patients today," she added.
David Petraeus: Michael Morell, the 'career spook' replacing him
By Raf Sanchez, Washington
4:29PM GMT 11 Nov 2012
While General David Petraeus arrived at the CIA as a war hero under an intense public spot light, his replacement is a consummate man of the shadows.
Michael Morell who will replace General David Petraeus Photo: AP
Michael Morell is a "career spook" and 32-year veteran of the agency, who rose from his first job as a lowly economic analyst to the man briefing the President of the United States.
Mr Morell was with George W Bush at a Florida primary school as the second plane hit the World Trade Center on September 11.
When Mr Bush asked him who was responsible he replied: "I haven't seen any intelligence, but I would bet every dollar I have that it's al-Qaeda," according to the Wall Street Journal.
Over the next decade he was deeply involved in the fight against al-Qaeda, including the audacious plan to storm Osama bin Laden's compound in Pakistan.
But he was one of a number of officials urging caution on President Barack Obama. He reminded the US leader of the US intelligence failures that had led to the doomed search for weapons on mass destruction in Iraq.
"We end up having bits of information that have a multitude of possible explanations," he told the Journal. "You've got to be really humble about the business we're in."
Mr Morell has been in the top job once before, running the CIA as an interim director for two months in 2011 while Gen Petraeus was preparing to take command.
The two men worked together closely, with the spy guiding the former Army commander in intelligence affairs, urging him not to pull rank and to make a point of mixing with staff at the agency's headquarters in Langley, Virginia.
But despite the enormous respect for him in Washington, and the longing for stability at the CIA after going through five leaders since 9/11, Mr Morell is likely to again hand over the director's office within months.
Directors of the CIA are usually appointed from outside of the agency and other possible contenders include John Brennan, a former spy who is now Mr Obama's counterterrorism adviser, and Jane Harman, a former Democrat congresswoman with close links to the agency.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/9674959/Barack-Obama-puts-Gen-John-Allens-Nato-nomination-on-hold.html
By Raf Sanchez, Washington
4:29PM GMT 11 Nov 2012
Michael Morell is a "career spook" and 32-year veteran of the agency, who rose from his first job as a lowly economic analyst to the man briefing the President of the United States.
Mr Morell was with George W Bush at a Florida primary school as the second plane hit the World Trade Center on September 11.
When Mr Bush asked him who was responsible he replied: "I haven't seen any intelligence, but I would bet every dollar I have that it's al-Qaeda," according to the Wall Street Journal.
Over the next decade he was deeply involved in the fight against al-Qaeda, including the audacious plan to storm Osama bin Laden's compound in Pakistan.
But he was one of a number of officials urging caution on President Barack Obama. He reminded the US leader of the US intelligence failures that had led to the doomed search for weapons on mass destruction in Iraq.
"We end up having bits of information that have a multitude of possible explanations," he told the Journal. "You've got to be really humble about the business we're in."
Mr Morell has been in the top job once before, running the CIA as an interim director for two months in 2011 while Gen Petraeus was preparing to take command.
The two men worked together closely, with the spy guiding the former Army commander in intelligence affairs, urging him not to pull rank and to make a point of mixing with staff at the agency's headquarters in Langley, Virginia.
But despite the enormous respect for him in Washington, and the longing for stability at the CIA after going through five leaders since 9/11, Mr Morell is likely to again hand over the director's office within months.
Directors of the CIA are usually appointed from outside of the agency and other possible contenders include John Brennan, a former spy who is now Mr Obama's counterterrorism adviser, and Jane Harman, a former Democrat congresswoman with close links to the agency.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/9674071/Petraeus-shocked-to-hear-of-emails-lover-sent-to-rival.html
Petraeus 'shocked' to hear of emails lover 'sent to rival'
David Petraeus, the former CIA director, was shocked to learn last summer that his mistress was suspected of sending threatening emails warning another woman to stay away from him, it has emerged.
The retired general regrets the affair "on so many levels", his friend and former spokesman Steve Boylan was reported as saying.
"I don't think anyone can really imagine how this has affected both his family and himself and, to some degree, the nation," Mr Boylan said. "He regrets the poor judgment and the lack of discipline more than we can probably put into words."
A close associate of Gen Petraeus told the Associated Press that the former head of America's spy agency was shocked to learn that his girlfriend Paula Broadwell was allegedly sending threatening messages to Jill Kelley, a family friend of the Petraeus's.
Jill Kelley has been identified as the woman who allegedly received harassing emails from Paula Broadwell (AP)
The AP reported that Gen Petraeus was not shown the message, but that he was told by investigators that the emails warned Mrs Kelley, a Florida socialite, to stay away from him.
FBI agents were searching Mrs Broadwell's home on Monday night.
Mr Boylan, who said he spoke to Gen Petraeus over the weekend, told Agence France-Presse that his former boss was devastated by the scandal.
He also said that the general told Holly, his wife of 38 years, of the affair before it became public.
General David Petraeus with wife Holly at the Super Bowl in 2009 (Reuters)
"To say she is disappointed and furious would probably be a huge understatement at this point," Mr Boylan said.
The couple has two adult children, Stephen, who led an infantry platoon in Afghanistan, and Anne.
Gen Petraeus, 60, commanded international troops in Iraq and Afghanistan and Mrs Broadwell, 40, had close access to the four-star general during several trips she took to Afghanistan to write his official biography.
Both Mrs Kelley and Gen Petraeus have insisted their relationship was just platonic.
Source: agencies
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/9674163/Gen-John-Allen-investigated-for-inappropriate-communications-to-Jill-Kelley.html
Gen John Allen investigated for 'inappropriate communications' to Jill Kelley
The US commander in Afghanistan, General John Allen, is under investigation for "inappropriate" emails to Jill Kelley, the woman linked to the sex scandal involving former CIA director David Petraeus, it has emerged.
General John Allen is under investigation over allegations of “inappropriate communications” with Jill Kelley, a key figure in the scandal which led to Gen Petraeus’ resignation.
The latest twist in the unfolding controversy, disclosed to reporters aboard the US Defence Secretary Leon Panetta’s plane, suggests the probe into Gen Petraeus’ shock resignation is widening yet further.
Mr Panetta said Gen Allen's nomination as NATO supreme commander had now been put in hold with the agreement of President Barack Obama.
The nature of the emails is not yet clear, although a senior defence official told news agency AFP there was a “distinct possibility” they were linked with Gen Petraeus.
The US official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said the FBI had uncovered between 20,000 and 30,000 pages of correspondence between Gen Allen and Mrs Kelley.
They are understood to mostly take the form of emails, with the majority being sent between 2010 and 2012.
Mrs Kelley, a 37-year-old "social liaison" to an air force base in Tampa, Florida, had a longstanding family friendship with Gen Petraeus but had no official status in the military.
From left: Gen David Petraeus, Scott Kelley and his wife, Jill, and Holly Petraeus are shown at the 2010 Gasparilla parade in Tampa, Florida. (Tampa Bay Times)
She is said to have alerted the FBI after allegedly receiving threatening emails earlier this year that were eventually traced to Mrs Broadwell.
The FBI then found emails between Mrs Broadwell and Gen Petraeus that revealed their affair.
General David Petraeus shakes hands with Paula Broadwell in this 2011 photograph (AP)
Mrs Kelley, a mother-of-three, has already employed Judy Smith, Monica Lewinsky's former crisis manager, and Abbe Lowell, a white-collar attorney who defended John Edwards, to assist her.
Mr Panetta said in a statement that his department was informed about the case by the FBI on Sunday and that he had referred it to the Pentagon's inspector general for investigation.
He had ordered a Pentagon investigation of Gen Allen on Monday, he said.
He added Gen Allen would remain in Kabul as the commander of NATO-led security forces but that he had asked the Senate Armed Services Committee to delay action on Allen's pending nomination to be NATO's supreme allied commander.
He has also requested the Senate committee moves promptly on the nomination for Gen Allen's successor in Afghanistan, General Joseph Dunford.
It remained unclear what allegations Gen Allen faces, and officials declined to comment as to whether the Marine general was accused of using his work email to communicate with Mrs Kelley or had disclosed any classified information.
The defence official said: “It's far too early to speculate on what the IG [inspector general] might find.
"There is enough concern that we believe it was a prudent measure to take appropriate steps to direct an investigation and notify Congress.
"We need to see where the facts lead in this matter, before jumping to any conclusions whatsoever."
He added that Gen Allen insisted on his innocence.
"General Allen disputes that he has engaged in any wrongdoing in this matter," he said.
Both Gen Petraeus and Gen Allen served in Tampa, home to US Central Command, which Gen Petraeus led before taking over as commander in Afghanistan in 2010.
Gen Petraeus resigned as CIA director on Friday.
(Clockwise from top left) General David Petraeus and Paula Broadwell, US Marine General John Allen, David Petraeus with his wife Holly and Jill Kelley Photo: AP/AFP/EPA
By Hannah Furness
8:01AM GMT 13 Nov 2012
Gen Allen has disputed any wrongdoing.
David Petraeus ordered lover Paula Broadwell to stop emailing Jill Kelley
David Petraeus reportedly tried to rein in his mistress after federal agents discovered that she had sent a string of harassing emails to a Florida socialite.
By Jon Swaine, Florida and James Orr in North Carolina
12 Nov 2012
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/9673429/David-Petraeus-ordered-lover-Paula-Broadwell-to-stop-emailing-Jill-Kelley.html
From left: Gen David Petraeus, Scott Kelley and his wife, Jill, and Holly Petraeus are shown at the 2010 Gasparilla parade in Tampa, Florida. Photo: Tampa Bay Times
Paula Broadwell, the former CIA director’s biographer and lover, allegedly sent threatening messages to Jill Kelley, a 37-year-old “social liaison” for the US military in Tampa, triggering the FBI investigation which led to Gen Petraeus’s downfall.
When Mrs Kelley, a family friend of the Petraeuses, learned from the FBI that the anonymous messages were coming from Mrs Broadwell she turned to the former general for help. Gen Petraeus then urged Mrs Broadwell to stop, according to the Washington Post.
Mrs Kelley reportedly went to the FBI in early summer after she began receiving the emails. The relationship between the general and his biographer is believed to have ended in July.
On Sunday Mrs Kelley, who insists that the former CIA director is just a close friend who is like a grandfather to her children, was identified as the woman Mrs Broadwell believed was her rival.
Mrs Kelley was silent yesterday after hiring Monica Lewinsky's former crisis manager.
After stating that she and her husband, Scott, a surgeon, "have been friends with Mr Petraeus and his family for over five years", Mrs Kelley requested privacy and briefly fled their $1.2 million (£756,000) mansion after being besieged by media during a birthday party for one of her daughters.
Neighbours and friends yesterday supported the mother-of-three's strenuous denials that she had engaged in anything other than friendship with the 60-year-old retired general. "She would say he was kind of like a grandpa to her girls," said one, who asked not to be named.
Mrs Kelley, whose role as "social liaison" is unpaid, was a frequent guest at Central Command functions. After being presented at one event with a certificate naming her an "honorary ambassador" for allied nations, she began using the title minus the "honorary", according to The Associated Press.
She and her husband hosted Mr Petraeus at a party on their lawn for Tampa's annual Gasparilla parade in 2010. He arrived with a 28-car motorcade. Other guests included Pam Bondi, Florida's Attorney General and a close ally of Mitt Romney, the former presidential candidate.
Mrs Kelley is believed to have sparked the inquiry after receiving messages from anonymous email accounts that reportedly warned her to "back off" and to "stay away from my guy".
She has hired Abbe Lowell, a formidable white-collar attorney who defended John Edwards, the former US presidential candidate, against corruption charges that were dropped earlier this year.
Mrs Kelley also recruited Judy Smith, a Washington-based crisis manager and former spokesman for George W. Bush, who represented Ms Lewinsky after her affair with Bill Clinton. Neither Mr Lowell nor Ms Smith returned requests for comment.
Mrs Kelley, who has an identical twin sister, comes from a Lebanese family that moved to Philadelphia in the 1970s. Her parents are believed to have run a restaurant and a vehicle registration company in nearby New Jersey.
Her alleged harasser, Mrs Broadwell, has come under intense scrutiny since Gen. Petraeus submitted his resignation on Friday. The former military officer and fitness fanatic, whose husband is also a senior medic called Scott, has not been seen since news of the scandal broke.
Details of her apparent relationship continued to emerge yesterday, however, with reports that Gen Petraeus took her with him on a government-funded trip to Paris in July last year. The US defence department did not comment.
Mrs Broadwell has reportedly hired Robert Muse, a prominent Washington criminal attorney who dealt with the fallout of the Watergate scandal, to represent her.
No one was at the Broadwell's family home in an upmarket area of Charlotte, North Carolina, on Monday. Later on in the evening, FBI agents were seen searching the home. It was not clear why.
A spokesman for Charlotte Radiology Breast Centre, where Dr Broadwell works as a radiologist, refused to comment on his whereabouts. He "was not seeing patients today," she said.
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/timstanley/100189423/david-petraeus-fbi-cia/
Tim Stanley
Dr Tim Stanley is a historian of the United States. His biography of Pat Buchanan is out now. His personal website is www.timothystanley.co.ukand you can follow him on Twitter @timothy_stanley.
The general, the hostess, the director and his lover: Petraeus adds farce to the Benghazi tragedy
By Tim Stanley US politics Last updated: November 13th, 2012
The Director (right) and his lover (left)
It’s bad enough that America has a president who doesn’t know his “act of terror” from his elbow, but the Petraeus scandal adds a dash of farce to the Benghazi tragedy. Blogger RS McCain has sourced this fun summary of the scandal, which began when the lover of the former Director of the CIA first started sending anonymous and ominous emails to a woman that she suspected of moving in on her man…
Jill Kelley, the woman who was (allegedly) threatened by Gen. Petraeus’s squeeze Paula Broadwell and who (apparently) started the FBI investigation that led to Petraeus’ ouster, who went to the FBI for help after the threats and then (allegedly) had a relationship with the FBI agent in charge of her own case, who (allegedly) sent her shirtless pics of himself, also (apparently, allegedly) had “compromising” communications with Gen. John Allen, the Big Damn Commander of our war effort in Afghanistan … It’s not a love triangle. It’s a love Pentagon.
Indeed, it's all very swinging. One of the commentators on McCain’s blog appends this honest, if rather tangential, insight: “I'm a former Swinger. It's a great lifestyle. Though, hard to keep up.” Amen, brother.
How does this comedy relate to the horror of Benghazi, when four American citizens were killed at the tail end of what increasingly looks like an intelligence operation gone bad? It testifies to the extraordinary incompetence at all levels of the federal security state. There was the affair itself between Petraeus and Paula Broadwell (a mother of two), which screams “potential for blackmail.” The well toned two shared an obsession with “fitness and the study of leadership” and they communicated through emails stored in draft folders – a method “often used by terrorists” and lovesick teens. Broadwell apparently got jealous of party hostess Ms Kelley and started harassing her, which is when the FBI was called in. The FBI took a bizarrely long time to piece things together while rummaging around in private email accounts. The FBI is also now looking at "potentially inappropriate" correspondence between Kelley and US Marine Corps General John R Allen. There's 20,000 to 30,000 pages to work through, which hints at an "inappropriate" relationship of Tolstoyan proportions.
Lots of questions occur. Did the CIA know about the FBI investigation and why didn’t it intervene? If the FBI knew about the affair, did it tell Attorney General Eric Holder? If Eric Holder knew, did he tell the President? If the White House was kept in the dark, then it was shielded from a potential security risk. Indeed some are asking if Petraeus passed on classified information to his lover. And why wasn’t it until after the election that the public discovered what was going on?
Petraeus’ fall from grace looks innocent as much as adultery can be innocent. But its proximity to the Benghazi disaster makes it a lot more important. A question still lingers as to why the former CIA Director gave a brief to the House Intelligence Committee that contradicted his own agency's reports about what happened in Libya. Victoria Toensing of Fox News writes,
For some reason DCI Petraeus backed the Obama unsupported theory that the video made the attackers do it rather than his own Chief of Station’s assessment that it was a planned military attack. Why do the shifting stories and misplaced theory of cause matter? Because if an administration pushes a political agenda that applauds the killing of Bin Laden as the ultimate act for eradicating the radical Islamic threat, then that same administration ignores its Ambassador’s urgent pleas for more security for fear it will appear Bin Laden’s demise was not the answer to that threat. Our country’s chief spy is supposed to know which theory is held up by the evidence.
All speculation, but the Petraeus affair compounds this mystery with another. If the FBI knew that the Director was a security risk, why didn’t it obey the law and inform the Intelligence Committees and the White House? Maybe it did, maybe it didn't. The mystery deepens.
Tags: Barack Obama, Benghazi, CIA, David Petraeus, eric holder, FBI
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/9669532/Spy-chief-Gen-David-Petraeus-his-embedded-biographer-and-the-FBI-email-trawl-that-exposed-their-affair.html
Spy chief Gen David Petraeus, his 'embedded' biographer and the FBI email trawl that exposed their affair
General David Petraeus resigned as CIA director after an FBI hunt for a suspicious emailer revealed his affair with biographer Paula Broadwell.
Spy chief Gen David Petraeus, his 'embedded' biographer and the FBI email trawl that exposed their affair
General David Petraeus resigned as CIA director after an FBI hunt for a suspicious emailer revealed his affair with biographer Paula Broadwell.
He was lauded as the greatest soldier-scholar of his generation, a highly decorated general who was equally at home negotiating the intrigues of Washington or in the trenches of Iraq and Afghanistan.
She was a fellow West Point graduate, a counter-terrorism expert, a fitness champion and a tall, striking brunette two decades his junior who had modelled for a machine gun manufacturer.
Now the career of General David Petraeus has ended in the tawdry disgrace of a sex scandal after he stunned the US military, intelligence and political establishments with his resignation as America's spy chief because of an extramarital affair.
His reported mistress, Paula Broadwell, was the co-author of a fawning recent biography of the general, who resigned as director of the Central Intelligence Agency on Friday. Both are married with children.
In a remarkable twist, it was agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation who discovered that the head of the CIA was conducting an affair. The investigation was launched when an unidentified woman described as close to the general contacted the FBI after she received threatening emails, according to an account in The Washington Post.
The FBI traced the emails to Mrs Broadwell and in the process uncovered explicit messages between her and Gen Petraeus, law enforcement officials told the newspaper.
It is reported that investigators initially thought that the CIA director's personal email account might have been hacked, but concluded that the two were indeed having an affair and that Mrs Broadwell perceived the other woman as a threat to that relationship.
Other US media also reported that the investigation involved two women, indicating that Gen Petraeus' career may have collapsed amid an acrimonious love triangle. Suspicions of infidelities had followed him for years, current and former US military officials told The Washington Post.
"It was portrayed to us that the FBI was investigating something else and came upon him," a congressional official briefed on the inquiry told The New York Times.
The dates of the affair are unclear. An unnamed official told The Wall Street Journal that the relationship started after Gen Petraeus left the army in August 2011 and that he broke it off several months ago. But the two were reported to have been close in Afghanistan when Mrs Broadwell was, in military parlance, an "embedded" journalist with him between 2010 and 2011.
Ronald Kessler, a veteran Washington journalist who has written a book on the FBI and has close contacts at the bureau, said that the investigators found emails from the general's time in Afghanistan apparently detailing sexual encounters, including a tryst under his desk.
Gen Petraeus is not under investigation for any crime, US officials said. But as head of the CIA, he would have known that an affair would jeopardise his career. The military mastermind who rewrote US doctrines of counter-insurgency and was proud of savvy in media and politics has been brought down by human weakness and a shocking lack of judgment.
He was a model and mentor for many up-and-coming officers. Among his fellow top brass, however, there were those who viewed him as a vaunting careerist who crafted his portrayal in the media for his own personal ambitions.
So it is a sad irony that an affair apparently with an adulatory biographer sabotaged his ambitions. "Gen Petraeus is a man obsessed by his own image," a senior officer who knows him well told The Sunday Telegraph in the US. "Sadly this has been his downfall."
His fall from grace leaves Barack Obama searching for a new spy chief just days after his re-election. The timing also prompted conspiracy theories: the CIA director had been due to testify Congress this week to be grilled about how his agency and the White House handled intelligence on the US consulate attack in Benghazi that claimed the lives of four Americans, including the ambassador to Libya. Some congressmen demanded that he still appear, despite his resignation.
Gen Petraeus, 60, led the 101st Airborne Division in the 2003 Iraq invasion and later commanded the military "surges" in Iraq and Afghanistan, operations based on his counter-insurgency strategy that focused on protecting civilians as well as killing enemies.
The "surge" in Iraq, under George W Bush, is widely credited with turning around a failed war; the second, under Mr Obama, delivered a major blow to the Taliban.
The general, who has been married for 37 years and has two adult children, retired from the army when appointed by Mr Obama last September to head the CIA. At the time some Republicans hoped that the war veteran could be persuaded to run for president. There was speculation this year that Mitt Romney might pick him as a running mate.
Mrs Broadwell, 40, a high achiever in her own right, lives in a large brick home valued at nearly $1 million in an upmarket district of Charlotte, North Carolina, with her husband Scott, a radiologist, and their two young sons, Landon and Lucien.
She is a research associate at Harvard's Centre for Public Leadership and is working on a doctorate in the war studies department at King's College London.
She has several other qualifications from leading institutions and previously worked for US Special Operations Command and an FBI joint terrorism task force. According to the biography on her personal website, which was taken down after the scandal broke, she has completed half-triathlons and was a "female model/demonstrator" for a manufacturer of .45-calibre machine guns.
Mrs Broadwell and Gen Petraeus met in 2006 at Harvard when she was studying for a master's degree at the Kennedy School of Government and he gave a lecture there. She introduced herself and the visiting officer answered her follow-up questions on counter-insurgency and counter-terrorism.
With his help, she moved on to a PhD dissertation entitled "A case study of General Petraeus's leadership".
Two years later, Mr Obama was appointed him to run the war in Afghanistan after his predecessor, Gen Stanley McChrystal, quit following disparaging comments that he and his senior staff made to a Rolling Stone magazine journalist about Obama administration officials. Gen Petraeus noted at the time that there would have been no such naive slips by his team.
Mrs Broadwell spotted an opportunity to turn her dissertation into a book and negotiated a deal with Penguin Press, bringing in Vernon Loeb, a Washington Post editor, to help. She boasted of her access to her subject in a hagiographical work that some reviewers said amounted to a gushing love letter.
"I took full advantage of his open-door policy to seek insight and share perspectives," she wrote in All In: The Education of General David Petraeus, published in January. In the book blurb, she describes her "passion for leadership and security policy".
In an interview with Jon Stewart, the US television show host, Mrs Broadwell told how from summer 2010 to summer 2011 she spent several months "embedded" - the military term for journalists given official access to the armed forces in a war zone - with Gen Petraeus in Afghanistan.
During the show, she made clear her starry-eyed fondness for her subject. "He can turn water into bottled water," she joked. She has also said that she viewed him as a mentor and in the book she notes that he saw her as an "aspiring soldier-scholar" - a high accolade from a man who regarded himself as the master exponent of that combination.
Both were also fitness fanatics. Indeed, she conducted much of her research work during the five-mile morning runs to which Gen Petraeus would invite honoured guests in Iraq and Afghanistan.
"I thought I'd test him, but he was going to test me - it ended up being a test for both of us since we both ran pretty quickly," she told Stewart. "That was the foundation of our relationship." When he didn't want to answer questions, she said, "he would pick up the pace so neither of us could talk".
The revelation of the affair came as little surprise to some who worked with the two in Afghanistan. "As soon as the announcement was made, I knew in an instant who it was," a senior US military source who has worked closely with Gen Petraeus and knew Mrs Broadwell told the Business Insider website.
"Everything made sense. Who had exclusive access to him? Who wrote the hagiography on his life? Who framed their entire existence around his persona?"
The unnamed source added: "She went from someone very likeable to a shameless, self-promoting prom queen. A very disturbing shift in how she carried herself. If she knew [Gen Petraeus] was going to make an appearance at an event, she'd crash it without an invitation."
Gen Petraeus graduated top of the class in 1974 from West Point military academy. It was not only the start of a glittering career, he also met his future wife there: Holly Knowlton was the daughter of the general who ran the academy.
Mrs Petraeus heads the wing of the US Consumer Financial Protection Bureau that assists military families financially. The couple's son, Stephen, has followed his father into the military, and their daughter, Anne, is a food writer who was married last month.
In a short statement after his resignation, Gen Petraeus said: "After being married for over 37 years, I showed extremely poor judgment by engaging in an extramarital affair. Such behaviour is unacceptable, both as a husband and as the leader of an organisation such as ours."
Obama administration officials said that the White House was only informed of the FBI investigation on Wednesday, although former intelligence officials have expressed surprise that the president's team was not alerted earlier.
Gen Petraeus met Mr Obama in the White House on Thursday to offer his resignation. Fresh back from his gruelling election campaign, the president did not initially want to accept it, but said he would think about it overnight. The next day, he called his CIA director to tell him that he would not pressurise him to stay.
"By any measure through his lifetime of service, David Petraeus has made our country safer and stronger," the president said in a statement that did not mention the affair.
Mrs Broadwell has made no public comment, but her identity was disclosed to media outlets by several US officials.
Gen Petraeus's success with the military surges earned him rock-star status among his own troops. Earlier, as a commander during the 2003 invasion of Iraq, he was known for asking embedded reporters, "Tell me how this ends?"
Many interpreted that as a catchphrase that foresaw the chaos that he would later be called back to Iraq to fix. Few could ever have imagined it having such resonance in his own career.
He regularly shared his wisdom with younger officers to whom he preached a mantra of individual leadership and personal character, reminding them of the need to do the right thing, even when nobody was watching.
Last week Mrs Broadwell shared 12 lessons on leadership from Gen Petraeus in an article for Newsweek. Several take on an added resonance in light of the scandal that erupted a few days later.
Most notable is number five: "We all will make mistakes. The key is to recognise them and admit them, to learn from them." It is a moral that Gen Petraeus and Mrs Broadwell will doubtless both be considering now as they try to put their lives back together.
Additional reporting by Colin Freeman
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/9670461/David-Petraeus-Senate-to-probe-FBI-failure-to-report-affair-until-after-election.html
David Petraeus: Senate to probe FBI failure to report affair until after election
US senators announced they would launch an investigation into the failure of the FBI to report Gen David Petraeus's affair with his biographer to the country's leaders until after the US presidential election.
By Raf Sanchez, Washington
5:01PM GMT 11 Nov 2012
Senator Dianne Feinstein, the Democrat chairman of the Senate's intelligence committee, said that she was informed of Gen Petraeus's resignation only a few hours before it was made public on Friday even though the FBI investigation had opened months before.
The White House said it was only informed of the affair on Wednesday, the day after the presidential election, and President Barack Obamawas only briefed on Thursday, the day Gen Petraeus offered his resignation.
Representative Peter King, a Republican who sits on the House intelligence committee, said there were "a lot of unanswered questions" over the timing of the resignation, which could have been a major election issue if it had occurred a week earlier.
"The FBI director had the obligation to tell the President or the National Security Council at the earliest date," he told CNN yesterday. Mrs Feinstein, a close ally of President Barack Obama, joined with Republicans in expressing concern that the explosive news of the affair had been kept secret and that the FBI had failed to keep Congress informed.
"We will investigate why the committee didn't know," she told Fox News.
"We should have been told."
Gen Petraeus was interviewed by the FBI two weeks ago, where agents disclosed that they were aware of his affair with Paula Broadwell.
However, the FBI determined that there was no national security breach and no criminal charges would be brought against either the CIA director or Mrs Broadwell.
Mr King and other Republicans have also demanded that Gen Petraeus should still testify before Congress this week on the CIA's role in the attack on the US consulate in Benghazi.
The disgraced former CIA director was scheduled to appear at the US Capitol on Thursday to answer questions on his agency's response to the attack in eastern Libya, which left Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans dead.
Immediately after Gen Petraeus's resignation, it was announced that he would no longer attend the two House and Senate intelligence committee hearings and that Michael Morell, the agency's acting director, would take his place.
Mr King described Gen Petraeus as an "absolutely essential witness" and added: "David Petraeus testifying has nothing to do with whether or not he's still the CIA director, and I don't see how the CIA can say he's not going to testify."
"He was at the center of this and he has answers that only he has," he told CNN on Friday.
Representative Trey Gowdy raised the possibility that the Republican-controlled House could take legal action to force him to testify.
"I hope we don't have to subpoena a four-star general and former CIA director, I would hope he would come voluntarily," Mr Gowdy told Fox News.
"But if he won't, he will be subpoenaed."
Mrs Feinstein said no decision had been made on whether to demand Gen Petraeus testify before her committee.
Gen Petraeus was due to appear at the closed hearings alongside a host of other senior figures from the American intelligence community.
However, his testimony during the classified sessions was of particular interest as it emerged that his agency was deeply involved in the work of the Benghazi consulate and the response to the attack on September 11.
Two of the Americans killed were initially identified as State Department subcontractors but it was later disclosed that they were both former US Navy SEALs were working for the CIA.
They were part of a team of around a dozen CIA operatives who drove from the agency's private annex building to try to fight off the attack at the lightly guarded compound.
FBI handling of David Petraeus case 'inexcusable'
The FBI's handling of the David Petraeus investigation has been condemned as "inexcusable" as it emerged one of its agents had sent topless pictures to the socialite at the heart of the scandal and leaked sensitive details to Republicans.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/9675957/FBI-handling-of-David-Petraeus-case-inexcusable.html
David Petraeus submitted his resignation as director of the CIA on November 9, 2012 Photo: GETTY
13 Nov 201
13 Nov 201
America's top law-enforcement agency found itself under intense scrutiny as it was alleged that one if its field agents had become obsessed with Jill Kelley, the 37-year-old party organiser from Florida who was bombarded with threatening emails from Paula Broadwell, Mr Petraeus's mistress.
On Wednesday members of the House intelligence committee are expected to grill Sean Joyce, the FBI's deputy director, and Michael Morell, Mr Petraeus's replacement as head of the CIA, demanding to know why his agency's investigation into the former CIA director and four star general was kept secret until the day of the presidential election.
Peter King, a Republican member of the committee, said it was "inexcusable" that the FBI had waited for months to inform the White House that it was looking into a key member of Mr Obama's national security team.
"Whenever General Petraeus's name came up I believe the FBI had an absolute obligation to tell the White House, and specifically the President, what this involved," Mr King said.
FBI agents also abruptly searched Mrs Broadwell's home in North Carolina as they continued to hunt for any evidence that the sex scandal could have led to a breach of national security.
The bureau's involvement with the affair began in Tampa over the summer, when Mrs Kelley told a friend in the FBI she was receiving anonymous messages accusing her of inappropriate flirting with Mr Petraeus.
The unnamed agent carried her concerns to the local field office, where investigators began a routine cyber harassment investigation that quickly escalated after they realised they had stumbled over evidence that the then-director of the CIA was having an extramarital affair.
Unbeknown to senior FBI officials, however, the agent allegedly had a history of infatuation with Mrs Kelley, a married mother-of-three, and had earlier sent her photographs of himself shirtless.
Supervisors became concerned about his near-obsession with the case and decided to pull him off the investigation and refer him to the bureau's internal affairs unit, according to the Wall Street Journal.
The agent reportedly became convinced that the FBI was stalling the investigation in order to protect President Barack Obama from political embarrassment and took it on himself to leak details to Eric Cantor, the second most senior Republican in the House of Representatives.
Mr Cantor contacted the FBI on October 31 – a week before anyone outside the Justice Department was officially told about the investigation – but did not go public with the information out of concern about the reliability of the source.
The FBI has refused to officially comment on the decision to keep the investigation secret, but in private briefings has insisted that there was no obligation to pass information on because it had already determined that there was no breach of national security.
However, the FBI had already discovered classified information on Mrs Broadwell's computer and investigators returned to her house in a wealthy suburb of Charlotte, North Carolina, late on Monday night.
Mrs Broadwell, 40, her husband, and two children were not at home but officials said the search was "consensual".
Both Mrs Broadwell and Mr Petraeus, 60, have denied that he gave her the classified documents and charges are not expected against either.
The FBI did not return multiple calls requesting comment.
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Mr Wijat's friend Magic Rabbit 
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