Another one bites the dust
 

and another one gone ...

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CIA Director Petraeus quits: extramarital affair


FILE - In this June 23, 2011 file photo, then-CIA Director-desigate Gen. David Petraeus testifies on Capitol Hill in Washington. Petraeus has resigned because of an extramarital affair.


Fri, 09 Nov 2012 20:24:33 -0500
WASHINGTON (AP) — David Petraeus, the retired four-star general renowned for taking charge of the military campaigns in Iraq and then Afghanistan, abruptly resigned Friday as director of the CIA, admitting to an extramarital affair.

The affair was discovered during an FBI investigation, according to officials briefed on the developments. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to publicly discuss the matter. It was unclear what the FBI was investigating or when it became aware of the affair.

Petraeus' resignation shocked Washington's intelligence and political communities. It was a sudden end to the public career of the best-known general of the post 9/11 wars, a man sometimes mentioned as a potential Republican presidential candidate. His service was effusively praised Friday in statements from lawmakers of both parties.

Petraeus, who turned 60 on Wednesday, told CIA employees in a statement that he had met with President Barack Obama at the White House on Thursday and asked to be allowed to resign. On Friday, the president accepted.

Petraeus told his staffers he was guilty of "extremely poor judgment" in the affair. "Such behavior is unacceptable, both as a husband and as the leader of an organization such as ours."

He has been married for 38 years to Holly Petraeus, whom he met when he was a cadet at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y. She was the daughter of the academy superintendent. They have two children, and their son led an infantry platoon in Afghanistan.

Obama said in a statement that the retired general had provided "extraordinary service to the United States for decades" and had given a lifetime of service that "made our country safer and stronger." Obama called him "one of the outstanding general officers of his generation."

The president said that CIA Deputy Director Michael Morell would serve as acting director. Morell was the key CIA aide in the White House to President George W. Bush during the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.

"I am completely confident that the CIA will continue to thrive and carry out its essential mission," Obama said.

The Senate and House intelligence committees were briefed on Petraeus' resignation only after the news was reported in the media, said a congressional staffer, speaking anonymously because the staffer was not authorized to publicly discuss the sensitive briefings.

The resignation comes at a sensitive time. The administration and the CIA have struggled to defend security and intelligence lapses before the attack that killed the U.S. ambassador to Libya and three others. It was an issue during the presidential campaign that ended with Obama's re-election Tuesday.

The CIA has come under intense scrutiny for providing the White House and other administration officials with talking points that led them to say the Benghazi attack was a result of a film protest, not a militant terror attack. It has become clear that the CIA was aware the attack was distinct from the film protests roiling across other parts of the Muslim world.

Morell rather than Petraeus now is expected to testify at closed congressional briefings next week on the Sept. 11 attacks on the consulate in Benghazi.

For the director of the CIA, being engaged in an extramarital affair is considered a serious breach of security and a counterintelligence threat. If a foreign government had learned of the affair, the reasoning goes, Petraeus or the person with whom he was involved could have been blackmailed or otherwise compromised. Military justice considers conduct such as an extramarital affair to be possible grounds for court-martial.

Failure to resign also could create the perception for the rank and file that such behavior is acceptable.

At FBI headquarters, spokesman Paul Bresson declined to comment on the information that the affair had been discovered in the course of an investigation by the bureau.

Holly Petraeus is known for her work helping military families. She joined the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to set up an office dedicated to helping service members with financial issues.

Though Obama made no direct mention of Petraeus' reason for resigning, he offered his thoughts and prayers to the general and his wife, saying that Holly Petraeus had "done so much to help military families through her own work. I wish them the very best at this difficult time."

Petraeus, who became CIA director in September 2011, was known as a shrewd thinker and hard-charging competitor. His management style was recently lauded in a Newsweek article by Paula Broadwell, co-author of the biography, "All In: The Education of General David Petraeus."

The article listed Petraeus' "rules for living." No. 5 was: "We all make mistakes. The key is to recognize them, to learn from them, and to take off the rear view mirrors — drive on and avoid making them again."

Petraeus told his CIA employees that he treasured his work with them "and I will always regret the circumstances that brought that work with you to an end."

The director of national intelligence, James Clapper, said Petraeus' departure represented "the loss of one of our nation's most respected public servants. From his long, illustrious Army career to his leadership at the helm of CIA, Dave has redefined what it means to serve and sacrifice for one's country."

Other CIA directors have resigned under unflattering circumstances.

CIA Director Jim Woolsey left over the discovery of a KGB mole and director John Deutch left after the revelation that he had kept classified information on his home computer.

Before Obama brought Petraeus to the CIA, the general was credited with salvaging the U.S. war in Iraq.

"His inspirational leadership and his genius were directly responsible — after years of failure — for the success of the surge in Iraq," Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., said Friday.

President George W. Bush sent Petraeus to Iraq in February 2007, at the peak of sectarian violence, to turn things around as head of U.S. forces. He oversaw an influx of 30,000 U.S. troops and moved troops out of big bases so they could work more closely with Iraqi forces scattered throughout Baghdad.

Petraeus' success was credited with paving the way for the eventual U.S. withdrawal.

After Iraq, Bush made Petraeus commander of U.S. Central Command, overseeing all U.S. military operations in the greater Middle East, including Afghanistan and Pakistan.

When the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, was relieved of duty in June 2010 for comments in a magazine story, Obama asked Petraeus to take over in Kabul and the general quickly agreed.

In the months that followed, Petraeus helped lead the push to add more U.S. troops to that war and dramatically boost the effort to train Afghan soldiers and police.

House Homeland Security Chairman Peter King, R-N.Y., said he regretted Petraeus' resignation, calling him "one of America's most outstanding and distinguished military leaders and a true American patriot."

Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Dianne Feinstein also regretted the resignation but gave Morell high marks, too.

Morell had served as deputy director since May 2010, after holding a number of top roles, including director for the agency's analytical arm, which helps feed intelligence into the president's daily brief. He also worked as an aide to former CIA director George Tenet.

"I wish President Obama had not accepted this resignation," Feinstein said of Petraeus, "but I understand and respect the decision."

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I saw that guy, Patraeus.

And I saw the woman he had an affair with


He's gotta be one hell of a charming guy, coz, wow- he's not attractive. At all.

It's the power and prestige. Men at that age and rank don't need to look good. Of course, money helps.

So, okay - not all women engage and invest. They do most of the time, especially with males who are their peers. The ones who go after men with money, status, power - not so much. I see so many 50-something newly-divorced men around here who are delighted that women twenty, thirty years younger are coming on to them, and I shake my head. Do they really think those women want their hot bodies? Do they really think they'll have anything to say to each other in the morning? Or in a year or two after they've snagged the trophy wife or gf?

But those 50-something men won't even look at a woman their own age or close to it, someone who would have much more in common with them in terms of maturity and life experience - and just stage of life. But that doesn't seem to be a priority. And then you just watch the train wreck happen.

Fixed that for them.

I saw her picture too. She looked classy. She's ex-West Point, a Major in the Reserves, has two Masters degrees, and maybe a Phd. She's like the uber soccer mom.

So far out of all of the mistresses I've read about in various news stories over the years, she appears to have the best combination of looks, intelligence, poise.....

I agree with Trilby, Patraeus got the best out of the deal. Especially since she might lose her commission in the Reserves. Patraeus had maybe four more years in the CIA until the next administration.

I think his teeth are gross and to think of her KISSING that mouth makes me want to vom. The LEAST he could do is whiten those babies up for her.

Guess she's not so smrt after all. All these over/high achievers- in the end, some stupid thing like sex or teh gay sex gets 'em. Or a covertly recorded comment. :P:

dumb stuff we all did as teens, they, the Uber People, were too busy achieving to get messed up with (wrong boyfriend, dope, petty theft) and then once they get to the top and look around they think, "Is that all there is?" and then they go nuts.

that's my theory anyway. They never got the naughty teenager out of their system-they repressed it until they got to the top of the heap and then, like the herpes virus, it crawled out of the cauda equina and made them insane with lust.

I'm pretty sure he was banging the Lockheed Martian CEO that just got canned.

He was probably banging them both.

what a man, what a man, what a mighty fine man.

On huff post comments a lot of people are snarking on the double entendre of the books title ALL IN: the education of General Patraeus.

All in, indeed!

I just wonder if there's not more to this than what we're being told. The FBI outs this guy, so he has to resign right after the election? It all seems very Orwellian to me. :eyebrow:

Orwellian or Pussy Galore?

Men are slaves to sex. It's probably just that.

Straight man fucks woman shocker.

The issue is that he slept with the journalist co-authoring a biography of him. who is being accused of trying to illegally access his email. That is a HUGE national security issue - and brings shame or rage to many in the intel community, because affairs are a BIG TIME no-no when you could be in a position to be blackmailed by Bad Guys.

This.

I thought there might me more to it than just "girl meets boy." Girl meets boy who just happens to be head of the CIA and attempts hacking into his e-mail would be rather disturbing to the FBI and the rest. Without the e-mail thing, I bet the affair would have continued on the qt and Patraeus would still be head of the CIA. What on earth was that woman thinking?

Well, I'm S.O.L. on all those counts. Next?

I'm a 50 something man and have no interest at all in women young enough to be my daughter conceived during my high school prom. (Except Clodfobble until I found out how young she was, then, it was only for her amazing ability to parse the craziest posts and make them understandable.)

Essentially, I think I am un-marriageable due to marginal looks, meager income, and negligible power. I've got smarts and talent in spades but have yet to meet a woman of any age who is interested in those things in me. It's always all about the $ with women, & it's usually the younger, pretty ones who get the pick of the litter. As my friend's step dad told her on her 18th birthday, "There's two things that make the world go around; Money and Pussy. The money chases after the pussy and the pussy chases after the money."

Crass, but essentially accurate, I think.

I also base this on observations during a year worked as a portrait photographer for a dating service. The young, handsome well-mannered men with blue collar jobs got repeatedly snubbed, and the fat, short, balding, boorish lawyers, stockbrokers, doctors and bankers got more ass than a toilet seat.

The only really happy people with realistic expectations were the widows and widowers. For them to want to re-up after a get out of jail free card must have meant that they enjoyed marriage and loved their spouse.

To quote Henry Kissinger, "Power is the ultimate aphrodesiac."

Patraeus surely ended the military careers; thus, livelihoods of subordinates who were otherwise good soldiers, for the same reason that he only had to resign from a second career. If his extramarital affair occurred while he was on active duty, they should administratively move his retirement date back to that time, reduce his retirement pay accordingly, rescind his Honorable Discharge and give him a General Discharge, Under Other Than Honorable Conditions since that is most likely what he did to others.

No, you're not.



You are forgiven there. We ALL love Clodfobble in our own unique ways.

then you're fishing in the wrong pond. There's a LOT of ponds out there. Try the next one two towns over. Finding someone you can tolerate is hard work-why do you think I"m alone? 1) I'm lazy as hell 2) been there twice and a third time, whilst it doesn't embarrass my ex, DOES embarrass me 3) I've been alone for so long now that I've become a crone set in my crone-ish ways. But mostly, I'm lazy. It's too exhausting, esp. the sex, which I used to love but now, it's like, meh.

I like you, foot. I think you're funny and smrt and I hate most people (or find them fork-in-the-eye dull) but I LIKE you! :)

Cheer up. All those young girls with the high tits and sweet bums? they get old, too and if they haven't developed other skills....they'll be out on their ass as soon as someone younger and prettier and mostly dumber comes along.

What I'm mad about is that this Patraeus woman is really accomplished-and now she;s making other women journalists look suspect. Or she's a Russian spy.

Well played, Russia. Well played.

foot you're running with the wrong women. Find a little hippy gal, they're out there.

Thanks, Triller in maniller. I like you too, you're a peach.

Do you know I once was having a beer in Seattle at the Wharf and this fairly drunk guy who had just come back from working on the pipeline told me, "I'm gonna find me a spaced out hippy chick to wok me up some veggies."

I think I was most astounded that he, a) knew what a wok was and, b) was interested in eating veggies rather than meat and potatoes. It was that kind of place and he was that kind of guy.

I shall not judge a book by its cover.

A little old lady was sitting on a park bench in The Villages, a Florida Adult community.
A man walked over and sits down on the other end of the bench.
After a few moments, the woman asks, 'Are you a stranger here?'
He replies, 'I lived here years ago.'
'So, where were you all these years?'
'In prison,' he says.
'Why did they put you in prison?'
He looked at her, and very quietly said, 'I killed my wife.'
'Oh!' smiled the woman. 'So you're single...?!'

The General Patraeus scandal continues to grow ever more bizarre. Like he sent explicit e-mails to Paula Broadwell using his gmail account believing that it was a secure account??? The head of the CIA was that stupid? And then Broadwell, using an e-mail account she shares with her husband, sends threatening e-mails to Jill Kelley threatening Kelley to keep her hands off Broadwell's man? So Kelley complains to a friend in the FBI who responds by sending Kelley a picture of himself without a shirt (via e-mail of course). But as it turns out, the FBI guy's feelings are not reciprocated since Jill Kelley has the hots for General John Allen which the FBI discovered when they investigated Kelley's own e-mail accounts.

For those who haven't been following the story Allen is the senior four-star commander of U.S. and international troops in Afghanistan.
Or was, maybe. These are the people who are leading the war against terrorism? And they don't even understand the pitfalls of letting it all hang out in their e-mail accounts?

If this was a TV soap opera - Maybe Army Wives? No one would believe it for a second. The US Army is going to be a long time living this one down. :headshake

Somewhere on here I posted a video fo the denouement of Tootsie. It fits here as well.

I still remember Gingrich at Clinton's impeachment criticizing his affair while conducting his own. Of course Newt now parses this to explain that he was all about the perjury.



BTW, McCain had his own marital issues, and he also has a pretty solid reputation. Maybe we should simply have the FBI vet a pool of mistresses for high ranking members of the three branches of government.

Maybe foot can volunteer to be Elizabeth Warren's boy toy.:D

I'm hearing much the same things as in the rest of your post.
But with regards to the above portion, I've heard somewhat different perspectives.

One reporter says that Broadwell's email to Kelly was along the lines
having Kelly ending the flirtation or whatever it was with Gen. Allen.

This sort of made sense to me if Broadwell learned from Petreus
about the Kelly/Allen connection, and Broadwell was trying to fix something
she thought Petreus saw as a problem. Maybe ???

The other was that the "shirtless FBI pic" was sent to Kelly before that agent
knew about the Petreus/Broadwell affair. Again, Maybe ???
But then, maybe here you and I are saying the same thing.

yeah, what Sam said. What really bothers me is these people really didn't think these emails would get out into the public? And they are spies or spy-ish?

stupidstupidstupidstupidstupid!

Pussy is the real weapon, ladies. Use yours judiciously.

"Judiciously"? Screw that. Try freely, enthusiastically and often!

Figuring out the timeline of this sequence of follies can be difficult. I've read different things on different news websites plus whatever MSNBC/CNN may be reporting at the moment. I've seen both versions of just who Broadwell was threatening Kelley away from. :confused:

All I can say is that at the very least, all parties concerned should have cruised down to their local public library and created fake Hotmail accounts (and changed them often) in order to send all their various e-mails. Even that wouldn't have been fool proof (since fools were doing this), but it would have beat using a gmail account in your own name or an account shared with a spouse.

IMO, fooling around is not the problem, monumental stupidity on the part of the head of the CIA and a four star general in charge of the forces in Afghanistan is.

Wave upon wave of stupidity does not stop there. The FBI agent who originally was asked about 'inappropriate' emails decided the investigation (by others) was being covered up. It wasn't. The investigation has exposed so many questions that it took a long time. But that FBI agent decided it was a coverup. And reported what he knew to a wacko extremist Congressman Eric Cantor. Who took great glee at exposing the investigation and making political hay for self serving reasons.

Just about everyone remotely connected to this affair (including Tampa Bay socialites who did nothing wrong) are now painted with broad accusations of immorality or corruption.

I feel a little sorry for Broadwell. The paper this morning had a picture of her taken through the kitchen window of her brother's house as she had a glass of red wine to relax after making it through the gauntlet of reporters to get into the house.

This is what happens when a general listens to his privates. Just blame it on bush.

I feel worse for her and her brother's neighbors. They have to deal with the media gauntlet, the vehicles taking up parking space and street space, having people hanging around their lawns and sitting on their steps and everything and they did nothing more than live on the same street.

I don't feel sorry for either one of them. Esp. Jill Kelley.

TW- how can you say she's done nothing wrong? She's 3.6 million in debt! she created a charity and then looted it! She used her big-guy connections to try to get her psycho nut job twin sister custody and even the judge knew better. She's done some very, very wrong things. Why isn't her mercedes repossessed? Why is she still living in her 1.5 mil dollar home when any ordinary person would be out on their ass by now?

And Paula? Ok, she fell in love with the guy-when I look at pics of the two of them I can totally see it - she's always looking at him with goo-goo eyes. So. That happens. But her 14 year old self that had to harass a perceived threat (Jill) is laughable in a woman so utterly accomplished as she. And to use Email intimidation tactics? Any normal person would've put on her astronaut underwear, driven for 19 hours straight, put on a wig and black trench coat an confronted her in person!

then again, maybe I just have a heart of stone. A gargoyle heart. Like a doll's eye....black and rolling....no, wait....wrong movie.

Did she have an affair with Petraeus? That was the context. Other stuff is peripheral fodder that I will ignore until the hard facts are being reported. These peripheral stories are quite damning. But remain rumors. I don't pay attention to Entertainment Today or TMZ. Their stories, if true, will eventually be reported by hard news sources. And are unrelated to the CIA, Afghanistan, and other significantly more important issues.

It is a fact that many if not most charities are more likely profit centers for their administrators. What charitywatch.org was created to expose. These charities work because so many decide emotinally. She is prettty. She looks expensive. She sounds honest. So she must be. It amazes me that the majority are that gullible. Making fraud (she is accused of) so easy and routine.

She is far from being the only one doing this stuff. But my comments were not about routine fraud. My comments were about how this Petraeus affair is just throwing so many uninvolved third parties into a spotlight.

I'll wait for Bob Woodward to write the book. Right now, it sounds like a top selling fictional scandel. Almost nobody could write this stuff.

I have a 17 year old daughter whose high school drama(s) reads much like this whole 'affair'. :rolleyes:

Not to mention, half of Washington is sleeping with someone they're not married to...so this particular incident is newsworthy why?

it's not.

Initially the buzz was because Patraeus was supposed to testify on the Benghazi issue and resigned only a week before his appointment. Considering all the focus on that, I can see why it got the attention it did. But now it's more TMZ than anything else.

Reality TV is the current fad. A new and upcoming show will be called "Chase my Penis". Image. Join the "Penis of the Month" club. Collect bubble gum cards for each famous penis. Kid can aspire to be just like their new idol. I understand Netanyahu's penis will sell for more than a Joe DiMaggio card.

Ever since the Moral Magjority started covering up Greek statues, there has been this underground market for penis collector items. We have simply taken the penis out of the closet. Nobody wants to dance with Stars. Today, even Elmer Fudd goes hunting for pensis.

Petraeus plead guilty to a misdemeanor for giving classified secrets to his mistress, Paula Broadwell.
No jail time...only probation. A slap on the wrist and a warning to not do it again,
to someone who is no longer in the military or the government.

To whom do we owe: Thank you for your service to Petraeus ?, or Broadwell?