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David Petraeus: I didn't quit over Libya

Ret. Gen. David Petraeus says his resignation from the CIA in the wake of an extramarital affair was not related to hearings concerning attacks on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, according to news reports.

He spoke, off-camera, with Kyra Phillips of HLN, who described their conversation Thursday, according to transcripts from CNN and HLN TV.

“In our first conversation, he had told me he had engaged in something dishonorable. He sought to do the honorable thing in response — and that was to come forward,” she said, according to a transcript from HLN TV. “He was very clear that he screwed up terribly — it was all his fault — even that he felt fortunate to have a wife who is far better than he deserves.”

Petraeus also told Phillips he didn’t leak any classified documents to Paula Broadwell, his ex-mistress who allegedly became the subject of an FBI probe when threatening emails, sent to a friend of Petraeus’s, were traced back to her.
“He insisted to me that he has never passed classified information to Paula Broadwell,” Phillips said, according to CNN. “He said this has nothing to do with Benghazi, and he wants to testify. He will testify.”

Phillips, who has interviewed Petraeus several times, added, “[He] has made it very clear that this was about an extramarital affair and not over classified information or Benghazi,” according to HLN.

Petraeus is expected to appear before the House Intelligence Committee on Friday in a closed-door session.



Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1112/83908.html#ixzz2CJzspUEc


What a bizarre twist. We went from a YouTube video...to a "spontaneous riot"...to a terrorist attack...back to a YouTube video...4 people dead...God knows how many more were killed overseas as our President spouted on and on that it was a YouTube video...sent out Rice to parrot the company line on 5...count them 5 news shows on a Sunday...then has the balls to take on the Press for even asking about this issue or his handling of Rice and those that want to have her twist in the wind...all the way to a general turned CIA head who had an affair! Guess he won't be running for the GOP ticket in '16...maybe the DNC though!

Is this the last straw for Eric Holder? Attorney General under pressure as it emerges he knew about Petraeus affair for MONTHS... but didn't tell Obama


Attorney General Eric Holder is under fire as questions emerge over why he did not tell Barack Obama that David Petraeus was having an affair with his biographer.

Holder was told by the FBI that they were investigating the relationship between the director of the CIA and Paula Broadwell in late summer, but appears not to have shared the information with anyone else.

The President did not find out about the scandal until Wednesday - just two days before Petraeus resigned - even though multiple senior politicians had apparently been aware of it for months.

The revelation that the Attorney General knew about Petraeus' infidelity could increase pressure on Obama to replace him when he puts together his Cabinet for the next four years.
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Out: Petraeus resigned on Friday November 9 citing an extramarital affair
The FBI started probing emails sent by Broadwell to Jill Kelley, a family friend of Petraeus, in May 2012, and soon discovered that she had been in a romantic relationship with the decorated former general.

Towards the end of the summer, they contacted Holder's office in order to seek the authority to interview Broadwell and Petraeus.

The Attorney General, a longtime ally of Obama, must have known about the affair from this point, but did not tell the President about it despite the possibility it could end the career of Petraeus, one of the most respected soldiers of his generation.

Conservatives - who have long opposed Holder over his role in the botched 'Fast and Furious' gun-running investigation - attacked the Attorney General over his silence.

'The idea that the White House didn't learn of this potential problem until Election Day, I just find incomprehensible,' John Bolton, former ambassador to the UN, told Fox News. 'Did the Attorney General sit on this information for two months?'

Republican congressman Jason Chaffetz added, 'Notification should have also gone to the President - immediately.'


Controversy: Eric Holder knew about the affair from late summer but did not tell the White House
White House officials learned of the scandal on Wednesday evening - the first time Obama had any inkling of the turmoil which was about to hit the CIA.

Petraeus met with the President on Thursday to offer his resignation, which was officially accepted on Friday.

Top members of Congress have also spoken of their anger at being kept in the dark over the affair - even though Republican leader Eric Cantor knew about it nearly two weeks before Petraeus quit.

Even the leaders of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees, who have worked closely with Petraeus in the past, were left to learn of the resignation from the news media.
In addition to their displeasure at being left in the dark until just hours before Petraeus made his very public announcement on Friday, members of Congress from both sides of the aisle are concerned that the timeline of the various notifications was purposefully slowed down to allow for some degree of a cover-up over Petraeus' scheduled testimony.

The timing of the Petraeus resignation and this week's Benghazi hearings means the two issues have, for now, become inextricably linked.

As CIA director, Petraeus is understood to have interviewed the CIA base chief and head of the CIA response team about what happened in Benghazi when Ambassador Chris Stevens, diplomat Sean Smith and CIA contractors Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods were killed.

Some Republicans have suggested there might be a cover-up over Benghazi or that the news was held back until after the election.


Senator Dianne Feinstein, a Democrat and chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, and Representative Mike Rogers, a Republican and chair of the House Intelligence Committee, have expressed their dismay at not having been informed earlier.
General Michael Hayden, former CIA chief, said the timing of the resignation was 'mysterious'. He told Fox News: 'Hanging out there is the requirement in law to keep the intelligence committees fully and currently informed about significant intelligence activity.

'It's not surprising that Senator Feinstein and Chairman Rogers have shown a lot of pique at not being let in on this a bit earlier.'

According to the FBI, their investigation began in the spring when Jill Kelley, described as an an unofficial 'social liaison' to the Joint Special Operations Command in Tampa, told a friend in the FBI that she had received harassing emails from another woman.

Kelley, who is Lebanese-born, and her husband Scott were friend of Petraeus, 60, and his wife Holly. The FBI investigation established that Broadwell, 40, a married mother of two, had sent the emails.
In monitoring Broadwell's emails, it was discovered that she was receiving emails of a sexual nature from a mysterious gmail account.

It was eventually discovered that the mysterious emails were from Petraeus, who admitted the affair.

On October 31st, however, and before anyone else on Capitol Hill or in the White House knew, the FBI friend of Kelley contacted Representative Dave Reichert regarding concerns about national security and asking for a member of the Republican congressional leadership.

Reichert directed the FBI man to Representative Eric Cantor, House Majority Whip, who spoke to him and then informed the FBI of the conversation.


Ronald Kessler, a Newsmax journalist, said he was informed of the affair and FBI investigation by an FBI source on October 10th. Petraeus and Broadwell were interviewed during the week of October 29th and both admitted their affair.

Broadwell was interviewed again on November 2nd, at which time the FBI is said to have concluded that no charges would be brought either for cyber stalking or security breaches.

Petraeus has told friends he did not have an affair with Kelley, 37, a mother of three. In a statement issued on Sunday, Kelley asked for privacy for her and her family and neither confirmed nor denied an affair.

Speaking on CBS, Senator Lindsey Graham, a personal and confidant of Petraeus, said: 'Well, if there's no effect of the affair on national security, I think we need to move on. But at the end of the day, the one thing that has to happen, in my view, is we've got to get to the bottom of Benghazi.

'I hate what happened to General Petraeus for his family and the families for those involved, but we have four dead Americans in Benghazi. We have a national security failure long in the making.

'I don`t see how in the world you can find out what happened in Benghazi before, during, and after the attack if General Petraeus doesn`t testify, so from my point of view, it`s absolutely essential that he give testimony before the Congress so we can figure out Benghazi.


He added: 'I would suggest that we have a joint select committee of House and Senate members and we do this together, not have three different committee going off in three different directions, so we can get to the bottom of it like we did in Watergate and Iran Contra. I think that would be smart for the Congress to combine resources.'

Just as with Watergate, the central issue over events surrounding Petraeus' resignation is crystallising into something similar to the one Senator Howard Baker of Tennessee famously asked during the Watergate hearings: 'What did the President know and when did he know it.'

Neither Robert Mueller, FBI director, not Eric Holder, attorney general, has commented on when they learned of the investigation. Both the FBI and Justice Department has said no one in the White House was told of the investigation until last week.

Rudy Giuliani, former New York mayor, compared what happened in Benghazi to Watergate and told Fox News it was essential Petraeus testified. Even though he is now a private citizen, Petraeus can be compelled to appear.

'The frustration is justified,' Giuliani said. 'And it's in the national interest. Now we're going to have a hearing next week, and the man who knows the facts, David Petraeus - he's the only man who can really tell us what the CIA knew, what they did, why they did it, how they did it. He's not going to testify.

'And this is a very convenient way to get the administration out of a very, very difficult situation. But is inevitable. This is like Watergate. This is inevitable. This is all going to come out.

'It may take a month, it may take five months, but this is all going to come out. And every single new cover-up they do just makes it much, much worse.'

Representative Peter King of New York, a member of the House Intelligence Committee, said on MSNBC that the FBI was 'derelict in its duty' when it failed to tell the White House immediately when it learned of Petraeus’s affair.

'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. Not to protect David Petraeus, but to protect the president.

'The fact is he is a key part of the president’s foreign policy team, maybe more than any other CIA director in recent times.
'He was going around the world negotiating various understandings and agreements, I’m aware of that.

'And 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 or certainly to the National Security Council. If not, the FBI was derelict in its duty.'
He added: 'This is a crisis, I believe, of major proportions. This is not the usual political thing. We’re not talking about the secretary of commerce or some under secretary somewhere.'

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2232054/David-Petraeus-scandal-Eric-Holder-knew-affair-months-did-tell-Barack-Obama.html


Damn YouTube!

Motives Questioned in F.B.I. Inquiry of Petraeus E-Mails

Is a string of angry e-mails really enough, in an age of boisterous online exchanges, to persuade the F.B.I. to open a cyberstalking investigation?

On Monday night, F.B.I. agents went to Paula Broadwell’s home in Charlotte, N.C., and were seen carrying away what several reporters at the scene said were boxes of documents.

Sometimes the answer is yes, law enforcement officials and legal experts said Monday — especially if the e-mails in question reflect an inside knowledge of the director of the Central Intelligence Agency.

That was true of the e-mails sent anonymously to Jill Kelley, a friend of the C.I.A. director, David H. Petraeus, which prompted the F.B.I. office in Tampa, Fla., to begin an investigation last June. The inquiry traced the e-mails to Mr. Petraeus’s biographer, Paula Broadwell, exposed their extramarital affair and led Friday to his resignation after 14 months as head of the intelligence agency.

On Monday night, F.B.I. agents went to Ms. Broadwell’s home in Charlotte, N.C., and were seen carrying away what several reporters at the scene said were boxes of documents. A law enforcement official, speaking on condition of anonymity because the case remains open, said Ms. Broadwell had consented to the search.

Some commentators have questioned whether the bureau would ordinarily investigate a citizen complaint about unwanted e-mails, suggesting that there must have been a hidden motive, possibly political, to take action. F.B.I. officials are scheduled to brief the Senate and House intelligence committees on Tuesday about the case.

But law enforcement officials insisted on Monday that the case was handled “on the merits.” The cyber squad at the F.B.I.’s Tampa field office opened an investigation, after consulting with federal prosecutors, based on what appeared to be a legitimate complaint about e-mail harassment.

The complaint was more intriguing, the officials acknowledged, because the author of the e-mails, which criticized Ms. Kelley for supposed flirtatious behavior toward Mr. Petraeus at social events, seemed to have an insider’s knowledge of the C.I.A. director’s activities. One e-mail accused Ms. Kelley of “touching” Mr. Petraeus inappropriately under a dinner table.

“There was a legitimate case to open on the facts, with the support of the prosecutors,” said the official who described the search at Ms. Broadwell’s home. He added, “They asked, does somebody know more about Petraeus than you’d expect?”

Ms. Kelley, a volunteer with wounded veterans and military families, brought her complaint to a rank-and-file agent she knew from a previous encounter with the F.B.I. office, the official also said. That agent, who had previously pursued a friendship with Ms. Kelley and had earlier sent her shirtless photographs of himself, was “just a conduit” for the complaint, he said. He had no training in cybercrime, was not part of the cyber squad handling the case and was never assigned to the investigation.

But the agent, who was not identified, continued to “nose around” about the case, and eventually his superiors “told him to stay the hell away from it, and he was not invited to briefings,” the official said. The Wall Street Journal first reported on Monday night that the agent had been barred from the case.

Later, the agent became convinced — incorrectly, the official said — that the case had stalled. Because of his “worldview,” as the official put it, he suspected a politically motivated cover-up to protect President Obama. The agent alerted Eric Cantor, the House majority leader, who called the F.B.I. director, Robert S. Mueller III, on Oct. 31 to tell him of the agent’s concerns.

The official said the agent’s self-described “whistle-blowing” was “a little embarrassing” but had no effect on the investigation.

David H. Laufman, who served as a federal prosecutor in national security cases from 2003 to 2007, said, “there’s a lot of chatter and noise about cybercrimes,” and most of it does not lead to an investigation. But he added, “It’s plausible to me that if Ms. Kelley indicated that the stalking was related to her friendship with the C.I.A. director, that would have elevated it as a priority for the bureau.”

Orin S. Kerr, a George Washington University law professor who specializes in computer crime issues, said it was “surprising that they would devote the resources” to investigating who was behind a half-dozen harassing e-mails.

“The F.B.I. gets a lot of tips, and investigating any one case requires an agent or a few agents to spend a lot of time,” he said. “They can’t do this for every case, and the issue is, why this one case?”

Still, Mr. Kerr — a trial attorney in the Justice Department’s computer crimes and intellectual property section from 1998 to 2001 — said it was likely that several factors, in addition to the Petraeus connection, made the complaint stand out. Ms. Kelley was fairly prominent in Tampa social circles and had previously had dealings with the F.B.I. agent who took her complaint.

Moreover, he said, the F.B.I. has been putting more resources into investigating cyberstalking crimes in recent years.

A government official clarified on Monday that F.B.I. agents’ first interview with Ms. Broadwell — at which she is said to have admitted having had an affair with Mr. Petraeus, and voluntarily allowed agents to search her computer — took place in September. An earlier account had put that interview during the week of Oct. 21.

Before Ms. Broadwell spoke to the F.B.I. agents, Mr. Petraeus had learned that she had sent offensive e-mails to Ms. Kelley and asked her to stop, another official said. By the time agents interviewed the C.I.A. director during the week of Oct. 28, he was aware of the cyberstalking investigation and readily acknowledged his affair with Ms. Broadwell, the official said.

Mr. Petraeus’s former colleagues in the Obama administration have said little about the circumstances preceding his resignation. But on Monday, Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta, the director of the C.I.A. before Mr. Petraeus, criticized the F.B.I. for not informing members of the Congressional intelligence committees of its investigation.

“As a former director of the C.I.A., and having worked very closely with the intelligence committees, I believe that there is a responsibility to make sure that the intelligence committees are informed of issues that could affect the security of those intelligence operations,” he said on a flight to Australia.

His remarks were similar to those by the Senate Intelligence Committee’s chairwoman, Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, on Sunday.

Mr. Petraeus’s former spokesman, Steve Boylan, told ABC’s “Good Morning America” on Monday that the C.I.A. director was “devastated” over the affair and its consequences.

“He deeply regrets and knows how much pain this causes his family,” he said.

Mr. Boylan, a retired Army colonel, said Holly Petraeus, Mr. Petraeus’s wife of 38 years, “is not exactly pleased right now.”

“Furious would be an understatement.”


http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/13/us/timeline-shows-fbi-discovered-petraeus-affair-in-summer.html?pagewanted=2&_r=0&pagewanted=all



Homeland Security? Patriot Act? Still sound like good ideas to anyone now?

yawn. Nothing to see here, move along.

Priceless. You just can't make this kind of stuff up.