Scandal widens; US general's emails 'flirtatious'

WASHINGTON (AP) — The sex scan­dal that led to CIA Direc­tor David Petraeus’ down­fall widened Tues­day with word the top U.S. com­man­der in Afghanistan is under inves­ti­ga­tion for thou­sands of alleged “inap­pro­pri­ate com­mu­ni­ca­tions” with another woman involved in the case. Some of the mate­r­ial was “flir­ta­tious,” an offi­cial said.

Even as the FBI pre­pared a time­line for Con­gress about the inves­ti­ga­tion that brought to light Petraeus’ extra­mar­i­tal affair with his biog­ra­pher, Paula Broad­well, Defense Sec­re­tary Leon Panetta revealed that the Pen­ta­gon had begun an inter­nal inves­ti­ga­tion into emails between Gen. John Allen and a Florida woman involved in the case.

Some of the 20,000-plus pages of doc­u­ments and emails between Allen and Tampa socialite Jill Kel­ley were “flir­ta­tious,” accord­ing to a senior defense offi­cial who spoke on con­di­tion of anonymity because he wasn’t autho­rized to dis­cuss the case pub­licly. It wasn’t imme­di­ately clear who wrote the flir­ta­tious notes — Allen, Kel­ley or both.

Allen suc­ceeded Petraeus as the top Amer­i­can com­man­der in Afghanistan in July 2011, and his nom­i­na­tion to become the next com­man­der of U.S. Euro­pean Com­mand and the com­man­der of NATO forces in Europe has now been put on hold, as the scan­dal seemed cer­tain to ensnare another acclaimed mil­i­tary figure.

In a White House state­ment early Tues­day, National Secu­rity spokesman Tommy Vietor said Pres­i­dent Barack Obama has held Allen’s nom­i­na­tion at Panetta’s request. Obama, the state­ment said, “remains focused on fully sup­port­ing our extra­or­di­nary troops and coali­tion part­ners in Afghanistan, who Gen. Allen con­tin­ues to lead as he has so ably done for over a year.”

It was Broadwell’s threat­en­ing emails to Kel­ley, a Petraeus fam­ily friend, that led to the FBI’s dis­cov­ery of com­mu­ni­ca­tions between Broad­well and Petraeus indi­cat­ing they were hav­ing an affair. Petraeus acknowl­edged the affair when he resigned from the CIA post on Friday.

In the lat­est rev­e­la­tions, a Pen­ta­gon offi­cial trav­el­ing with Panetta to Aus­tralia said “inap­pro­pri­ate com­mu­ni­ca­tions” — 20,000 to 30,000 pages of emails and other doc­u­ments from Allen’s com­mu­ni­ca­tions with Kel­ley between 2010 and 2012 — are under review. The offi­cial would not say whether they involved sex­ual mat­ters or whether they are thought to include unau­tho­rized dis­clo­sures of clas­si­fied infor­ma­tion. He said he did not know whether Petraeus is men­tioned in the emails.

Allen has denied wrong­do­ing. He was due to give Panetta a rec­om­men­da­tion soon on the pace of U.S. troop with­drawals in 2013. If Allen was found to have had an affair with Kel­ley, he could face charges of adul­tery, which is a crime under the Uni­form Code of Mil­i­tary Justice.

The deci­sion by the FBI to hand off the Allen infor­ma­tion to the mil­i­tary seems to indi­cate the issue is not one involv­ing the han­dling of clas­si­fied infor­ma­tion, but rather some other issue.

The Petraeus case has sparked an uproar in Con­gress, with law­mak­ers com­plain­ing they should have been told ear­lier about the probe that has roiled the intel­li­gence and mil­i­tary establishment.

Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., chair­man of the House Home­land Secu­rity Com­mit­tee, called the lat­est rev­e­la­tions in the case “a Greek tragedy.”

“It’s just tragic,” King said Tues­day on NBC’s “Today” show. “This has the ele­ments in some ways of a Hol­ly­wood movie or a trashy novel.”

The issue of what the FBI knew, when it noti­fied top Obama admin­is­tra­tion offi­cials, and when Con­gress was told, has brought crit­i­cism from law­mak­ers, who say they should have been told earlier.

The White House wasn’t informed of the FBI inves­ti­ga­tion that involved Petraeus until Nov. 6, Elec­tion Day, although agents began look­ing at Petraeus’ actions months ear­lier, some­time dur­ing the sum­mer. Sen­ate Intel­li­gence Com­mit­tee chair­woman Dianne Fein­stein, D-Calif., com­plained that she first learned of the mat­ter from the media late last week, and con­firmed it in a phone call to the then-CIA direc­tor on Friday.

That was the same day Obama accepted Petraeus’ res­ig­na­tion, and the 60-year-old retired Army gen­eral, who headed U.S. mil­i­tary oper­a­tions in Iraq and Afghanistan before tak­ing charge of the CIA, acknowl­edged an affair with Broad­well, and expressed regret.

Defend­ing the noti­fi­ca­tion tim­ing, a senior fed­eral law enforce­ment offi­cial pointed Mon­day to long­stand­ing poli­cies and prac­tices, adopted fol­low­ing abuses and mis­takes that were uncov­ered dur­ing the Nixon administration’s Water­gate scan­dal of the early 1970s. The Jus­tice Depart­ment — of which the FBI is part — is sup­posed to refrain from shar­ing detailed infor­ma­tion about its crim­i­nal inves­ti­ga­tions with the White House.

The FBI also looked into whether a sep­a­rate set of emails between Petraeus and Broad­well might involve any secu­rity breach. That will be a key ques­tion Wednes­day in meet­ings involv­ing con­gres­sional intel­li­gence com­mit­tee lead­ers, FBI deputy direc­tor Sean Joyce and CIA deputy direc­tor Michael Morell.

A fed­eral law enforce­ment offi­cial, speak­ing on con­di­tion of anonymity to dis­cuss details of the inves­ti­ga­tion, said the FBI had con­cluded rel­a­tively quickly — and cer­tainly by late sum­mer at the lat­est — that there was no secu­rity breach. Absent a secu­rity breach, it was appro­pri­ate not to notify Con­gress or the White House ear­lier, this offi­cial said.

Extra­mar­i­tal affairs are viewed as par­tic­u­larly risky for intel­li­gence offi­cers because they might be black­mailed to keep the affair quiet. For mil­i­tary per­son­nel, adul­tery is a crime under the Uni­form Code of Mil­i­tary Justice.

Accord­ing to two fed­eral law enforce­ment offi­cials, the FBI ini­tially began a crim­i­nal inves­ti­ga­tion of unsigned, harass­ing emails that were sent, begin­ning last May, to Kel­ley, a Tampa socialite. She and her hus­band, Scott, were long­time friends of Petraeus and his wife, Holly. FBI agents traced the alleged cyber harass­ment to Broad­well and dur­ing that process dis­cov­ered she was exchang­ing inti­mate mes­sages with a pri­vate Gmail account. Fur­ther inves­ti­ga­tion revealed that account belonged to Petraeus, under an alias.

Petraeus and Broad­well appar­ently used a trick, known to ter­ror­ists and teenagers alike, to con­ceal their email traf­fic, one of the law enforce­ment offi­cials said.

Rather than trans­mit­ting emails to the other’s inbox, they com­posed at least some mes­sages and instead of trans­mit­ting them, left them in a draft folder or in an elec­tronic “drop­box,” the offi­cial said. Then the other per­son could log onto the same account and read the draft emails there. This avoids cre­at­ing an email trail that is eas­ier for out­siders to inter­cept or trace.

Agents later told Petraeus that Broad­well sent emails warn­ing Kel­ley to stay away from the gen­eral and car­ry­ing a threat­en­ing tone.

Friends and for­mer staff mem­bers of Petraeus told The Asso­ci­ated Press that he has assured them his rela­tion­ship with Kel­ley was pla­tonic, although Broad­well appar­ently saw her as a roman­tic rival. They said Petraeus was shocked to learn last sum­mer of Broadwell’s emails to Kelley.

Petraeus also denied to these asso­ciates that he had given Broad­well any sen­si­tive mil­i­tary information.

FBI agents who con­tacted Petraeus told him that sen­si­tive, pos­si­bly clas­si­fied doc­u­ments related to Afghanistan were found on her com­puter, the general’s asso­ciates said. He assured inves­ti­ga­tors they did not come from him, and he mused to his asso­ciates that they were prob­a­bly given to her on her report­ing trips to Afghanistan by com­man­ders she vis­ited in the field there.

One asso­ciate also said Petraeus believes the doc­u­ments described past oper­a­tions and had already been declas­si­fied, although they might have still been marked “secret.”

Broad­well had high secu­rity clear­ances as part of her for­mer job as a reserve Army major in mil­i­tary intel­li­gence. But those clear­ances are only in effect when a sol­dier is on active duty, which she was not at the time she researched the Petraeus biography.

The FBI con­cluded there was no secu­rity breach.

Nev­er­the­less, FBI agents con­ducted a search of Broadwell’s Char­lotte, N.C., home on Mon­day. And the crim­i­nal inves­ti­ga­tion con­tin­ued into the emails to Kel­ley, includ­ing whether Petraeus had any hand in them. At that point in late sum­mer, FBI Direc­tor Robert Mueller and even­tu­ally Attor­ney Gen­eral Eric Holder were noti­fied that agents had uncov­ered what appeared to be an extra­mar­i­tal affair involv­ing Petraeus.

Broad­well and Petraeus have each been ques­tioned by FBI agents twice in recent weeks, with both acknowl­edg­ing the affair in sep­a­rate inter­views. The FBI’s most recent inter­views with Broad­well and with Petraeus both occurred dur­ing the week of Oct. 29, days before the elec­tion, one of the law enforce­ment offi­cials said. The FBI noti­fied Obama’s direc­tor of national intel­li­gence, James Clap­per, of the inves­ti­ga­tion on Tues­day, Nov. 6 — Elec­tion Day.

In another twist, an FBI agent who was a friend of Kel­ley and who passed along infor­ma­tion from her to the agents who con­ducted the inves­ti­ga­tion, was sub­se­quently told by his supe­ri­ors to steer clear of the case because they grew con­cerned that the agent had become obsessed with the inves­ti­ga­tion, a fed­eral law enforce­ment offi­cial said. Before the case involv­ing Petraeus got under way, the agent had sent Kel­ley shirt­less pho­tos of him­self, accord­ing to this offi­cial, who spoke on con­di­tion of anonymity to dis­cuss the investigation.

Broad­well co-authored a biog­ra­phy titled “All In: The Edu­ca­tion of Gen­eral David Petraeus,” pub­lished in Jan­u­ary. She wrote that she met Petraeus in the spring of 2006 while she was a grad­u­ate stu­dent at the Kennedy School of Gov­ern­ment at Har­vard and she ended up fol­low­ing him on mul­ti­ple trips to Afghanistan as part of her research.

Petraeus, 60, told one for­mer asso­ciate he began an affair with Broad­well, 40, a cou­ple of months after he became CIA direc­tor in Sep­tem­ber 2011. They mutu­ally agreed to end the affair four months ago, but they kept in con­tact because she was still writ­ing a dis­ser­ta­tion on his time com­mand­ing U.S. troops over­seas, the asso­ciate said.

Petraeus told for­mer staffers and friends that he had reg­u­larly vis­ited the Kel­leys’ home over­look­ing Tampa Bay. Kel­ley, 37, served as a sort of social ambas­sador for U.S. Cen­tral Com­mand, host­ing par­ties for the gen­eral when Petraeus was com­man­der there from 2008-10.

Jill Kel­ley reg­u­larly kept in touch with Petraeus when he became com­man­der of the Afghanistan war effort, the two exchang­ing near-daily emails and instant mes­sages, two of his for­mer staffers said. But those mes­sages were exchanged in accounts that his aides mon­i­tored as part of their duties and were not roman­tic in tone, the staffers said.

Petraeus and his fam­ily are dev­as­tated over the affair — espe­cially Mrs. Petraeus, who “is not exactly pleased right now” after 38 years of mar­riage, said Steve Boy­lan, a friend and for­mer Petraeus spokesman who spoke to him over the weekend.

Broad­well, mar­ried with two young sons, has not returned phone calls or emails seek­ing comment.

Posted by Matt Echelberry on Nov 13 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.