War of the generals

He forgot to add generals who pass top secret documents to their lover-biographers.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Petraeus Acknowledging the Obvious

Americans may stay on Afghan soil for a “long-haul” mission that could evolve into several decades of “generational struggle,” General David Petraeus, ex-commander of US troops in Afghanistan, admitted.

The current war in Afghanistan is unlikely to end in the foreseeable future, David Petraeus, who led the US military campaign there back in the 2000s, told PBS News Hour.

  RT

It already IS a generational "struggle". Fourteen Sixteen years has taken in a second generation.

To back his remarkable statement, he cited other examples of US deployments in other parts of the world that have lasted decades.

“We have been in Korea for 65-plus years because there is an important national interest for that,” Petraeus said.

However, Petraeus “doesn’t think the US involvement will last that long” in Afghanistan.

I'll take that bet.

And why is this man being given any kind of platform? As a leaker of national security secrets, he should be facing the same punishments visited on Chelsea Manning, Edward Snowden, and others. Or they should be given the same privileges he has.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Neeeeeext

Trump has chosen his Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security.

[General John] Kelly, 66, whose military career spanned more than four decades, retired earlier this year as the chief of U.S. Southern Command. In that post, where he oversaw military operations in most of Central and South America, he publicly clashed with the Obama administration on its plans – which were never executed – to close Guantanamo Bay and dismissed as “foolishness” concerns that the military’s treatment of detainees at the facility had cost the U.S. the moral high ground in the War on Terror.

[...]

Kelly [is] the third general tapped by the president-elect, in addition to Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, who will serve as Trump’s national security adviser, and retired Gen. James Mattis, who Trump said Thursday he intended to nominate as his Defense Secretary. Concerns about the number of military officials in Trump’s cabinet may harm the prospects of another military man, retired Gen. David Petraeus, whom Trump is considering for secretary of state.

[...]

[Kelly] never endorsed a candidate [in this year's presidential election.] Whoever won, Kelly said, shouldn't doubt they're “getting anything but the absolute best military advice, completely devoid of politics.”

  Politico

Other than the politics of war, that is.

Kelly’s son 2^nd Lt. Robert M. Kelly died in 2010 when he stepped on a landmine on a tour of duty in southern Afghanistan, and Kelly remains one of the most senior U.S. military officers to lose a son or daughter in Iraq or Afghanistan. He has also opposed the Obama administration’s decision to open combat roles to women.

The son's death will surely have an impact on Kelly's willingness to advocate for more war.  Whether negatively or positively isn't clear.

Kelly was in charge of Guantánamo for three years until he retired last year.

As the head of U.S. Southern Command, Kelly’s first and only four-star assignment, he was prepared to carry out a directive to shut down the prison complex. At the same time, the general made no secret of the fact that he believed the president’s goal was misguided. “They’re detainees, not prisoners,” Kelly told Military Times.

[...]

SOUTHCOM, as it’s known, gave Kelly purview not only of Guantanamo Bay but also the massive criminal network that has metastasized from the trafficking of drugs, weapons and people throughout South America, Central America and the Caribbean.

[...]

But perhaps most important to Trump, Kelly is an expert on Latin America — and he is decidedly not one of Obama’s guys.

[...]

And he spoke to Congress in very stark terms about the perceived vulnerability of America’s borders.

[...]

[One] source close to Kelly said the general has “better relationships in Latin American than the State Department does.”

  Military Times

Yeah, that's probably not hard to do.

Actually, Kelly seems like a good fit for DHS. But this concerns me:

“Unless confronted by an immediate, visible, or uncomfortable crisis our nation's tendency is to take the security of the Western Hemisphere for granted,” the general wrote in prepared remarks for the Senate Armed Services Committee. “I believe this is a mistake.”

Tempered perhaps by this:

Beyond his call to build a wall, Trump has promised to impose an aggressive crackdown on illegal immigration. When asked about those plans earlier this year, Kelly told Military Times that while he supports enhanced border security, that alone won’t address the underlying reasons people flee Latin America en masse.

[...]

"Obviously, some form of control whether it's a wall or a fence. But if the countries where these migrants come from have reasonable levels of violence and reasonable levels of economic opportunity, then the people won’t leave to come here.”

In his final statement to Congress as the head of Southern Command, Kelly addressed the role of human-rights education and training, calling it essential to U.S. objectives not only in Latin America but wherever America seeks to gain influence. Governments should be accountable to their citizens, he said.

Let's hope he thinks that about our government.

On drugs:

The immigration crisis that peaked in 2014, when tens of thousands of women and children streamed to the U.S.-Mexico border, was the direct result of the surge in drug-related violence gripping Central America, Kelly told Congress at the time. And Americans' demand for those drugs was to blame, he said.

[...]

Kelly is fiercely opposed to illegal and recreational use of drugs, though he makes some exception where there is emerging evidence to suggest medical benefits may exist. Notably, marijuana has shown some promise in mitigating the anxiety some military personnel face as a result of post traumatic stress. Kelly is OK with that. But he opposes widespread legalization of pot, saying it undermines efforts to curtail the distribution of hardcore drugs like heroin, methamphetamine and cocaine.

[...]

“We know how to influence people. I just don’t think we have any kind of a drug-cessation program to speak of. Consequently, the drugs are imported and consumed. I think if Americans understood that doing a little blow on the weekend — on a college campus or here on Capitol Hill — isn’t harmless, if they understood what it’s doing to Honduras or El Salvador, or what it was doing to Colombia, I think they’d responsibly realize that this is not a good thing.”

Perhaps General Kelly's greatest flaw is to overestimate Americans' concern for Latin American countries.

"I've learned that, in many cases, people say ‘I want ground truth’ and they don’t really mean it. There are warts all over this organization, as there are in many organizations, but you just have to tell truth to power and let the chips fall where they may. I know a lot of people may read that, if you put it in your story, and say 'easy for him; he’s a four-star.' But I would say some of the most challenging periods in my life, as a Marine officer, have been fairly recently, where you get into that civilian-military thing and the truth is not always welcome. It can cause some heartburn when you get a call from certain people in Washington who say 'it’s probably not a good idea to go down that road anymore.' But I say 'hey, that’s the truth. I'm at a congressional hearing, and they asked me a question. What am I going to do, lie?'"

Ask Clapper.

So, that's three generals in the administration, so far.

 

Perhaps with Petraeus, who's still dangling in the wings.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE

It's Okay If You're in Power

The investigation that led CIA Director David Petraeus to resign and ultimately plead guilty to a criminal charge of mishandling classified information also uncovered evidence that he discussed highly classified information with journalists, according to a court document obtained Tuesday by POLITICO.

[...]

"During the conversation, Petraeus requested that information he provided be attributed to a 'defense official familiar with Petraeus's activities,'" Wehner wrote. "Petraeus was concerned about the sensitivity of the information he was providing, and wanted to ensure the information was not attributed to him because it would come out after he was confirmed as director of the CIA."

[...]

Some of the new disclosures might benefit Clinton by making Petraeus' conduct seem more problematic than previously known, but many facts about both episodes remain murky.

  Politico

Really? Petraeus passing classified information is worse than Hillary's careless and unlawful handling of government information, so that's beneficial to her? Jesus.

 America is already great.

For him and her both.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

No Surprise

The US defense secretary, Ash Carter, has decided not to impose further punishment on David Petraeus, a former US military commander and CIA director who admitted sharing classified information with his lover, according to a letter seen by Reuters.

[...]

Known as “black books,” the binders that Petraeus shared with Broadwell contained classified information including identities of covert officers, code word information, war strategy, intelligence capabilities, diplomatic talks and information from high-level White House National Security Council meetings, according to court records.

[...]

n April, the retired four-star general was sentenced to two years of probation and fined $100,000 but was spared prison time after pleading guilty to mishandling classified information.

  Guardian

Somehow I don't think that would work for you or me. Or Edward Snowden.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Get Out Your Score Cards

The former commander of U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan has been quietly urging U.S. officials to consider using so-called moderate members of al Qaeda’s Nusra Front to fight ISIS in Syria, four sources familiar with the conversations, including one person who spoke to Petraeus directly, told The Daily Beast.

[…]

The idea that the U.S. would, 14 years later, work with elements of al Qaeda’s Syrian branch was an irony too tough to stomach for most U.S. officials interviewed by The Daily Beast. They found Petraeus’s notion politically toxic, near-impossible to execute, and strategically risky.

  Daily Beast

But not at all out of the question.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

More on the Petraeus Deal

[L]ast year, after a five-year standoff with federal prosecutors, Stephen Kim, a former State Department official, pleaded guilty to one count of violating the Espionage Act when he discussed a classified report about North Korea with Fox News reporter James Rosen in 2009. Kim did not hand over a copy of the report — he just discussed it, and nothing else — and the report was subsequently described in court documents as a “nothing burger” in terms of its sensitivity. Kim is currently in prison on a 13-month sentence.

“The issue is not whether General Petraeus was dealt with too leniently, because the pleadings indicate good reason for that result,” said Abbe Lowell, who is Kim’s lawyer. “The issue is whether others are dealt with far too severely for conduct that is no different. This underscores the random, disparate and often unfair application of the national security laws where higher-ups are treated better than lower-downs.”

In 2013, former CIA agent John Kiriakou pleaded guilty to violating the Intelligence Identities Protection Act by disclosing the name of a covert CIA officer to a freelance reporter; he was sentenced to 30 months in jail. Kiriakou’s felony conviction and considerable jail sentence — for leaking one name that was not published — stands in contrast to Petraeus pleading guilty to a misdemeanor without jail time for leaking multiple names as well as a range of other highly-sensitive information.

Kiriakou, released from prison earlier this year, told The Intercept in an emailed statement, “I don’t think General Petraeus should have been prosecuted under the Espionage Act, just as I don’t think I should have been prosecuted under the Espionage Act. Yet only one of us was. Both Petraeus and I disclosed undercover identities (or confirmed one, in my case) that were never published. I spent two years in prison; he gets two years probation.”

  The Intercept

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

What's the Punishment for Passing Classified Documents?

You know the answer to that. It depends on who you are.

David H. Petraeus, the best-known military commander of his generation, has reached a plea deal with the Justice Department and admitted providing his highly classified journals to a mistress when he was the director of the C.I.A.

[...]

He is eligible for up to one year in prison but prosecutors will recommend a sentence of probation for two years and a $40,000 fine.

[...]

[T]he deal also ends two years of uncertainty and allows Mr. Petraeus to focus on his lucrative post-government career as a partner in a private equity firm and a worldwide speaker on national security issues.

  NYT

Well, that is just rich, isn’t it? If you’re Edward Snowden and you pass classified material to journalists for the public good and to report illegal activity, you are charged with espionage and endangering national security and forced into exile. If you’re David Petraeus, war hero, and you pass classified material to your mistress to include in a biography she’s writing about you for personal gain, you’re given probation and allowed to collect huge fees for talking about national security.

“The broader nation needs his advice, and I think it’s been evidence that people still want to hear from him,” said Michael E. O’Hanlon, a senior fellow with the Brookings Institution. “People are forgiving and know he made a mistake. But he’s also a national hero and a national resource.”

[...]

In the days after Mr. Petraeus resigned in 2012, Mr. Obama appeared to clear him of any significant wrongdoing. At Mr. Obama’s first news conference after being re-elected, the president said he had no evidence that Mr. Petraeus had disclosed classified information “that in any way would have had a negative impact on our national security.”

So that’s the criterion, is it? Whether the disclosure has a negative impact on our national security? Hmmmm. What negative impact on our national security has occurred as a result of the disclosures provided by Edward Snowden?

 ...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Best of Luck to Ray McGovern

Ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern goes on trial today.

Recap:

Former CIA analyst Ray McGovern, who was arrested by New York City police [in October 2014] to prevent him from attending a speech by retired Gen. and ex-CIA Director David Petraeus, told me the day before that he was planning to ask a question during the Q-and-A.

[...]

But the 75-year-old McGovern was blocked from entering the event at the 92nd Street Y, was roughly put under arrest, and was held overnight in jail. He described his ordeal in an interview with RT, saying “I was warned as soon as I got to the ticket-taker, ‘Ray, you’re not welcome here.’”

[...]

He was hauled off to a local precinct and charged with resisting arrest, criminal trespass and disorderly conduct.

[...]

McGovern, who was suffering from a shoulder injury, said he was caused sharp pain by being forcefully handcuffed. “If you’ve seen the footage, you can see me screaming in pain as they try to pin my left wrist around behind my back,” McGovern told RT.

  Robert Parry

Yesterday, Ray penned a letter to General Petraeus. It is both interesting and enlightening. I doubt Petraeus read it. But you can.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

He's Suffered Enough

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) urged the Department of Justice not to bring criminal charges against former CIA Director David Petraeus over his handling of classified information.

"This man has suffered enough in my view," Feinstein said on CNN's "State of the Union" on Sunday, explaining why she doesn't think Attorney General Eric Holder should seek an indictment.

Petraeus "made a mistake," added the senator, who is vice chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. "But … it's done, it's over. He's retired. He's lost his job. How much does the government want?"

  HuffPo

I don't know.  Maybe you should ask Ed Snowden.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

I Don't Believe It

The F.B.I. and Justice Department prosecutors have recommended bringing felony charges against retired Gen. David H. Petraeus for providing classified information to his former mistress while he was director of the C.I.A., officials said, leaving Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. to decide whether to seek an indictment that could send the pre-eminent military officer of his generation to prison.

[...]

The Justice Department investigation stems from an affair Mr. Petraeus had with Paula Broadwell, an Army Reserve officer who was writing his biography, and focuses on whether he gave her access to his C.I.A. email account and other highly classified information. F.B.I. agents discovered classified documents on her computer after Mr. Petraeus resigned from the C.I.A. in 2012 when the affair became public.

  NYT

Why now?

Petraeus denies he gave Broawell information, so I don’t know whether that means he’s willing to go to trial and say she seduced him in order to steal access.

Eric Holder still calls the shots at the moment. I’ll believe action against Petraeus when I see it.

Who's Afraid of Ray McGovern?

75-year-old [ex-CIA anylist Ray] McGovern was blocked from entering [an event featuring retired Gen. David Petraeus], was roughly put under arrest, and was held overnight in jail. He described his ordeal in an interview with RT, saying “I was warned as soon as I got to the ticket-taker, ‘Ray, you’re not welcome here.’”

[...]

He was hauled off to a local precinct and charged with resisting arrest, criminal trespass and disorderly conduct. He said he spent the night on a stainless steel cot.

[...]

McGovern, who was arrested by New York City police on Thursday night to prevent him from attending a speech by retired Gen. and ex-CIA Director David Petraeus, told me the day before that he was planning to ask a question during the Q-and-A.

McGovern, who writes regularly for Consortiumnews.com, compared his goal in New York to his famous questioning of then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in Atlanta in 2006 when McGovern pressed Rumsfeld on false statements he had made about Iraq’s WMD and ties to al-Qaeda.

[...]

McGovern told RT that he had planned to ask Petraeus, who was responsible for training the Iraqi army, about his failure to train those forces sufficiently to stand up to a recent offensive by the Islamic State.

  Robert Parry: Consortium News

Apparently the venue was not a free speech zone.

I believe this is a good definition of a political prisoner.

You can read that whole article for details about Petraeus’ hand in the disastrous decisions by both Bush and Obama that has been the Iraq quagmire.

 ...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

The Petraeus Investigation - Continued

Major media, including NPR, made the David Petraeus scandal to be about prurient interests. Even Glenn Greenwald has made it to be about that when he thinks “the real scandal” is Petraeus prosecuting Obama's drone war. I have been waiting for someone to actually give us the story about why the FBI were investigating him in the first place, and to pick up the thread of Paula Broadwell's claims that we still have secret detention centers in Libya. Finally, the Washington Post is putting some of it together.

A federal investigation of how David H. Petraeus’s biographer obtained numerous classified records is focusing on whether the retired general’s staff gave her sensitive documents at his instruction, according to federal officials familiar with the inquiry.

Petraeus aides and other high-ranking military officials were often tasked by Petraeus and other top commanders to provide military records and other documents to Paula Broadwell for her work as Petraeus’s biographer, former staff members and other officials told The Washington Post.

[...]

Petraeus and Broadwell have told FBI investigators that Petraeus did not provide her with classified information, law enforcement officials said. Attorneys for the two declined to respond to specific questions for this article, as did Broadwell’s spokeswoman, Dee Dee Myers of the Glover Park Group. FBI officials also declined to comment.

[...]

Broadwell turned over her computer to the FBI in late summer, and agents discovered that it contained low-level classified material. On Nov. 12, the FBI searched her home in Charlotte and carried away additional evidence that she had classified documents, law enforcement officials said.

The documents have been described as sensitive but relatively benign. Officials who have been briefed on them said they were mostly schedules and PowerPoint presentations classified as “secret.”

[...]

One former Defense Department official said that when staff members at the International Security Assistance Force headquarters in Kabul questioned Broadwell’s access to certain classified records, she assured them that Petraeus had approved her seeing the material.

[...]

Those close to Petraeus’s inner circle said Broadwell could have easily collected classified briefing materials distributed during meetings that were not supposed to leave the secure facilities where such conferences take place. Because of her unusual status, she probably would not have been subject to a search when leaving military offices, they said.

[...]

A former colleague of Broadwell’s told The Post last week that he received a disk from Broadwell that contained documents marked “secret,” including schedules for Petraeus and other high-ranking officers and military PowerPoints.

The level of sensitivity of the records Broadwell obtained is unclear. President Obama said at a news conference last week that he had seen no evidence that the release of these records “in any way would have had a negative impact on our national security.”

But even low-level classified records typically cannot be kept on someone’s personal computer or in their home.

  WaPo

Obviously, however, all the way up to the Commander in Chief, Broadwell and Petraeus are being covered. If there is an investigation, Obama has just cleared them pre-trial (sort of like he declared Bradley Manning guilty pre-trial, only the reverse). Whatever happened to  “I can't discuss the case while it's under investigation”?

On Nov. 12, FBI agents searched Broadwell’s Charlotte home while she was with her family in Washington. They removed dozens of boxes of records as well as computer disks and multiple central processing units, which store the deeper memories of desktop computers. Broadwell has been cooperating with the investigation.

Two days after the FBI search at her home, the Army suspended Broadwell’s [“top secret”] security clearance.

Business Insider says it is “apparently common for clearances to be suspended during investigations.”

I'm still waiting for someone to pick up the trail of the possible secret detention centers.

No Surprise Here

Former CIA director David H. Petraeus told Congress on Friday that the Sept. 11 attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi, Libya, was clearly an act of terrorism, but he did not resolve the question of when the agency reached that conclusion, according to law­makers who attended the closed-door sessions.

Several members of the House and Senate intelligence committees who heard Petraeus’s testimony said that he indicated he believed immediately after the incident that it was a terrorist attack. That appeared to conflict with testimony he gave them three days after the attack, when he said it appeared to have begun as a “spontaneous” assault that was overtaken by “extremists.”

  WaPo

I don't suppose anyone asked him about the Broadwell claim that the CIA has people in secret detention centers in Libya.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

All Americans Are the Same

So what do you expect? So says a Talib official.

A stony-faced Taliban official burst into laughter at the mention of the Petraeus affair during an interview with AFP in northwest Pakistan this week.

“What a bastard! But all Americans are the same, it’s nothing new,” the official said, who did not want to be named.

The Islamists dealt harshly with adulterers during their brutal 1996-2001 rule in Afghanistan, dishing out public floggings for offenders.

The traditional moral code of the Pashtuns, the main ethnic group the Taliban draw their members from, also demands severe punishment for adulterers.

“From a Pashtun point of view, Petraeus should be shot by relatives from his mistress’s family,” the Taliban official explained.

“From a sharia point of view, he should be stoned to death.”

  Raw Story

Really? How come all we ever see in reports of adulterers in those countries is that the woman was stoned to death?  In fact, I've even seen reports of women suffering brutal punishments for being raped.  I have never seen a report of the man being punished. Are they just not reporting it?   Did I miss that the floggings were dealt out to the men as well?  Must have.

More Hogwallop

Republicans have criticised [UN ambassador Susan] Rice for going on a round of Sunday talk shows five days after the September 11 attack on the US diplomatic mission in Benghazi and saying that preliminary information suggested it was the result of protests over an anti-Muslim film rather than a premeditated strike.

[...]

Obama said: "For them to go after the UN ambassador who had nothing to do with Benghazi, and was simply making a presentation based on intelligence that she had received, and to besmirch her reputation is outrageous."

[...]

Asked why, if Rice had nothing to do with Benghazi, she was sent on the talk shows to give the administration's point of view, White House spokesman Tommy Vietor told Reuters news agency: "It made sense to have Ambassador Rice, one of our most senior diplomats, speak about the critical work our diplomats do every day. "Ambassador Rice was also uniquely qualified to speak about the broader unrest in the region at the time."

  alJazeera

Uniquely? How about the President? The Secretary of State? The Secretary of Defense? The ambassadors to the region even?

So let me see if I can make some simple statements that clear that up: Ambassador Rice  (who really did have nothing to do with Benghazi) was sent out in front of the guns to tell the lie in hopes that no one would find out why the attacks really happened, and at least to keep the president or his spokesman, his secretaries of state and defense (anyone who DID have something to do with Benghazi) from being caught in the lie, and to take the fall if the truth did come out.  And/OR our intelligence is now so bad that we actually didn't have a clue and she was sent out to give those who should have known a cover.

And now we know that Petraeus' lover had classified documents on her computer that she somehow got without his assistance (if they are both to be believed), and that she was telling people the CIA still has detention centers – which Obama claims to have shut down - from which the Benghazi attackers were trying to retrieve detainees.

The House Intelligence Committee announced on Wednesday night that Petraeus would testify behind closed doors on Friday morning about Benghazi.

A little added benefit of Petraeus' resignation: his testimony will be given behind closed doors. The public hearing will include his replacement.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Really? They Didn't Notice That?

 

An ABC News affiliate in Denver says that while attempting to report on the resignation of former CIA Director David Petraeus, the station mistakenly aired a photoshopped version of his mistress’ book with the raunchy title “All Up In My Snatch.”

KMGH-TV producer Deb Stanley told Raw Story that the wrong book cover had been “mistakenly picked up off the Internet” and aired during their 5 p.m. broadcast on Monday. Instead of displaying the actual book cover of Paula Broadwell’s Petraeus biography, “All In,” KMGH-TV aired the parody cover, “All Up In My Snatch.”

  Raw Story

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Petraeus Upate

Surprise. There really is more to the story.....

Paula Broadwell, the biographer whose affair with Petraeus led to his abrupt resignation Friday, alleged that the [Benghazi] assault, in which US ambassador Christopher Stevens was killed, was an attempt to free men being detained in a covert CIA annex. Speaking last month at the University of Denver, Broadwell further alleged that Petreaus knew about the secret holding cells.

[...]

In an answer to a question reading the CIA chief’s handling of the incident, the biographer said: “Now, I don’t know if a lot of you heard this, but the CIA annex had actually, um, 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.”

She added: “The challenging thing for General Petraeus is that in his new position, he’s not allowed to communicate with the press. So he’s known all of this – they had correspondence with the CIA station chief in, in Libya. Within 24 hours they kind of knew what was happening.”

The comments were recorded and posted in a YouTube clip which has since been taken down.

On Monday, the CIA was quick to shoot down Broadwell’s claims.

“Any suggestion that the agency is still in the detention business is uninformed and baseless,” agency spokesman Preston Golson said.

  Raw Story

I'm sure. I'm sure.

There it is.  After all, didn't our president tell us that there are no more secret CIA holding cells?

Aaaaaaaaaand...the net sweep has caught another general.

And this just breaking...

F.B.I. agents interviewed Ms. Broadwell for the first time the week of Oct. 21, and she acknowledged the affair, a government official briefed on the matter said. She also voluntarily gave the agency her computer. In a search, the agents discovered several classified documents, which raised the additional question of whether Mr. Petraeus had given them to her. She said that he had not. Agents interviewed Mr. Petraeus the following week. He also admitted to the affair but said he had not given any classified documents to her.

  NYTimes

No, dears. This is not just about a sexual affair.

Although, it appears that the FBI agent Jill Kelly sicced on Paula Broadwell had sent "shirtless photos" of himself to Kelly at some previous point.  Lawsy, Miss Scarlet.

It's Gonna Be Another Long Four Years

UPDATE: I'm going to change my remark that the FBI would have had to have a court order to say they MAY have to - I'm not at all sure. Warrantless wiretapping and data mining is part of our loss of civil liberties under Bush and Obama.  But it does appear that the DOJ knew about the investigation last summer.


Nutjob and House Homeland Security Chair Peter King thinks Obama knew about the Petraeus affair. I'm inclined to agree.   King's right that the FBI would have had to get a court order to look at the emails and if Eric Holder knew – which he undoubtedly did – Obama knew. They didn't want this coming out until after the election, and in that case, I'd think the FBI had to be complicit there. Well, the fact that the director of the FBI supposedly didn't tell Obama is either total bullshit or grounds for his retirement, too.

Let's face it. Obama knew.

Rep. Peter King (R-NY) criticized the FBI’s handling of the investigation of the extramarital affair that resulted in CIA Director David Petraeus’ resignation. “To have someone out there in such a sensitive position who the FBI thought perhaps could have been compromised or was under the scope of an FBI investigation who may or may not have been having an affair at the time, that, to me had to have been brought to the president, certainly to the National Security Council,” King told MSNBC host Joe Scarborough Monday. “If not, the FBI was derelict in its duty.”

[...]

“This is a crisis, I believe, of major proportions,” King said. “This is not your usual political thing — we’re not talking about a Secretary of Commerce or some undersecretary somewhere.”

[...]

According to CNN [...] at least one FBI employee told Rep. Dave Reichert (R-WA) and House majority leader Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA) about the probe last month.

[...]

The New York Times reported Monday that FBI and Justice Department officials were notified about the investigation into the affair as far back as last summer, but did not push the issue further up the chain of command in part because worries over possible security breaches “did not appear to be justified.”

  Raw Story

So now the FBI and DOJ make that decision? It's my understanding that when a spy organization wants to compromise intelligence security, one of the tricks in their bag is to get a woman into the target's bed. Doesn't that automatically count as a possible breach?

And back up.  Two Republicans knew last month and didn't say anything???  Why didn't the Republican party want this to come out before the election?

Maybe this whole thing really is about nothing more than a very unwise – to say the least – affair, but I wouldn't bet your life on it.

I'd advocate disbanding the CIA if all the players wouldn't just melt into one of our other fascist agencies. Might as well have them fighting each other instead. It may at least hamper their murderous and corrupt schemes both domestic and international.

Petraeus Affair, Part 2

FBI officials said the congressional committees weren't informed until Friday, one official said, because the matter started as a criminal investigation into harassing emails allegedly sent by [biographer/affair partner Paula] Broadwell to [ Jill Kelley, 37, who lives in Tampa, Fla., and serves as an unpaid social liaison to MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, where the military's Central Command and Special Operations Command are located.]

Concerned that emails Petraeus exchanged with Broadwell raised the possibility of a security breach, the FBI brought the matter up with him directly, according to the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to publicly discuss the investigation.

  Yahoo

I can't tell yet whether this is supposed to be the official story about why the FBI was investigating Petraeus, and if so, whether it's a smoke screen for whatever they really were investigating.  Possibly we'll never know.

And, having just watched a documentary purporting to show George H.W. Bush's involvement in the assassination of John Kennedy (something I'm not finding all that difficult to believe), I'm left to wonder why people have such a difficult time with the idea of conspiracy but no problem with the idea of cover-up, when they're the same thing, just on different ends of an event.

And when oh when will people in and near sensitive positions learn that emails don't stay private? How stupid is Paula Broadwell?

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.