The Petraeus Affair

[Geee]

American Spectator:

It's such a cliché. A powerful man, away from home for years at a time, in jobs that put him under enormous emotional strain. A younger woman, attached to him by her job, spending endless hours with him on and off duty. That they fell into a love affair is so ordinary as to be boring.

What makes the sudden fall of CIA Director David H. Petraeus different? Nothing, really, except perhaps the timing of his defenestration, and even that is only mildly suspicious.

Petraeus had almost disappeared from sight after his move to the CIA last year. After winning high praise for his counterinsurgency commands in Iraq and Afghanistan -- about which more in a moment -- Petraeus was looked upon as an almost historic figure. No one knew his politics well enough to predict how the ambitious and still-young general would pursue the next step in his career. Before he took the CIA job, there was talk that he'd oppose Obama in the 2012 election.

[Geee]

Feinstein Says She Had to Call Petraeus Directly to Learn What the FBI Never Told Her

 

(CNSNews.com) - News of Gen. David Petraeus' extramarital affair came as a "lightning bolt" to Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Dianne Feinstein, because the FBI never told her about its four-month investigation of Petraeus' biographer, Paula Broadwell.

"Is it true that you received no advance word of this? And are you going to investigate the FBI's decision not to tell you about an investigation that has been going on for at least weeks?" Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace asked Feinstein.

"The answer is yes, and yes. We received no advanced notice," Feinstein responded. "It was like a lightning bolt.

http://cnsnews.com/news/article/feinstein-says-she-had-call-petraeus-directly-learn-what-fbi-never-told-her

[Geee]

Military liaison Jill Kelley revealed as third woman in Petraeus love triangle

 

In the scandal that continues to read more and more like a Lifetime made-for-TV movie, the woman who sounded the alarm that led to the resignation of former CIA Director David Petraeus over an extramarital affair has been identified as a volunteer State Department military liaison.

Jill Kelley, reportedly a close friend of Petraeus, alerted the FBI when she received harassing emails from Petraeus’ mistress, his biographer Paula Broadwell, the Associated Press revealed Sunday.

 

http://dailycaller.com/2012/11/12/military-liaison-jill-kelley-revealed-as-third-woman-in-petraeus-love-triangle/

[pollyannaish]

Ok. I think I've discovered why Washington can't seem to get anything done. Sheesh.

[pollyannaish]

Josh Marshall ‏@joshtpm

My God, petraeus starting to sound like most mentally balanced person in his own scandal http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324439804578115410189757452.html

[pollyannaish]

So I just got an alert on my phone from

fox. Yup. The hits keep coming.

 

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/11/13/top-us-commander-in-afghanistan-gen-john-allen-under-investigation-for-alleged/

[Valin]

@Geee

 

Is Philandering A Security Concern?

11/12/12

 

In the shadow of L’Affaire Petraeus, the New York Times ran an op-ed by Steven Kinzer which adds some needed perspective to much of the overheated media coverage these days. Kinzer is the author of an upcoming book on the Dulles brothers, the younger of whom, Allen, was the head of the CIA from 1953 to 1961.

 

Allen Dulles is rightly revered in the Agency as one of its most important directors. He also was a notorious womanizer and adulterer. Kinzer’s essay is worth reading in full to get a flavor of just how flagrant Dulles’ dalliances were. One episode, however, stands out as particularly relevant in today’s context:

 

(Snip)

 

General Petraeus’ mistress was a graduate student and an Army Reserve officer. Dulles had at least a hundred mistresses, among whom was the queen of a foreign though allied power. Yet we’re treating Petraeus’ case as potentially having far-reaching national security implications, whereas Dulles was carrying on like this at the height of the Cold War, when the stakes were incomparably higher.

 

Marital fidelity is an important virtue, but nobody has all the virtues and it is difficult to argue that this is the one “must have” virtue that trumps everything else. Despite having an illegitimate child, Grover Cleveland was a pretty good president, and if Bill Clinton had been constitutionally eligible, voters would probably have preferred him to both candidates in any of the elections since 2000.

 

(Snip)

[Rheo]

Veteran F.B.I. Agent Helped Start Petraeus E-Mail Inquiry

 

DOVER, Fla. — The F.B.I. agent who helped start the investigation that led to the resignation of David H. Petraeus as C.I.A. director is a “hard-charging” veteran counterterrorism investigator who used his command of French in investigating the foiled “millennium” terrorist plot in 1999, colleagues said on Wednesday.

 

The agent, Frederick W. Humphries II, 47, took the initial complaint from Jill Kelley, the Tampa, Fla., hostess who was socially active in military circles there, about e-mails she found disturbing that accused her of inappropriately flirtatious behavior toward Mr. Petraeus. The subsequent cyberstalking investigation uncovered an extramarital affair between Mr. Petraeus and Paula Broadwell, his biographer, who agents determined had sent the anonymous e-mails. It also ensnared Gen. John R. Allen, who now commands troops in Afghanistan, after the investigation discovered that he had sent “inappropriate communication” to Ms. Kelley.

 

Colleagues and news reports described the role of Mr. Humphries, in just his third year at the F.B.I., in building the case against Ahmed Ressam, who was detained as he tried to enter the United States from Canada in 1999 with a plan to set off a bomb at Los Angeles International Airport.

 

In May 2010, after he had moved to the Tampa field office, Mr. Humphries was attacked outside the gate of MacDill Air Force Base by a disturbed knife-wielding man. He fatally shot the man, and the shooting was later ruled to be an appropriate use of force, according to bureau records and colleagues.

Mr. Berger took issue with news media reports that have said his client sent shirtless pictures of himself to Ms. Kelley.

 

“That picture was sent years before Ms. Kelley contacted him about this, and it was sent as part of a larger context of what I would call social relations in which the families would exchange numerous photos of each other,” Mr. Berger said.

 

The photo was sent as a “joke” and was of Mr. Humphries “posing with a couple of dummies.” Mr. Berger said the picture was not sexual in nature.

In regard to his client speaking with Mr. Cantor, Mr. Berger declined to address the issue, saying only that his client “had followed F.B.I. protocols.”

[mozartlover]

Ok. I think I've discovered why Washington can't seem to get anything done. Sheesh.

 

Because nobody can keep their pants zipped long enough to get any work done?

[Rokke]

Let me get this straight...all we need to do to shut down our government is send in a few bus loads of publicity seeking groupies, give everyone anonymous email accounts, and toss in a few cocktail parties. Well, I'm game. Anyone know where I can find 590 ditzy bimbos?

[nickydog]

You can start with Tampa.

[SrWoodchuck]

I saw somewhere, "......it's not a love triangle.......it's a love Pentagon!"

[pollyannaish]

@Rokke now that the Jersey Shore has washed out to sea, I bet we could find at least 650. And we'd solve a couple of issues at once.

[Rokke]

I lived in Tampa and on the Jersey Shore. Maybe I should break out my old black book. Volume 4. Series 2.