Petraeus shocked to hear of emails, associates say

KIMBERLY DOZIER

PETE YOST

Asso­ci­ated Press

TAMPA, Fla. — CIA Direc­tor David Petraeus was shocked to learn last sum­mer that his mis­tress was sus­pected of send­ing threat­en­ing emails warn­ing another woman to stay away from him, for­mer staff mem­bers and friends told The Asso­ci­ated Press Monday.

Petraeus told these asso­ciates his rela­tion­ship with the sec­ond woman, Tampa socialite Jill Kel­ley, was pla­tonic, though his biographer-turned-lover Paula Broad­well appar­ently saw her as a roman­tic rival. Retired Gen. Petraeus also denied to these asso­ciates that he had given Broad­well any of the sen­si­tive mil­i­tary infor­ma­tion alleged to have been found on her com­puter, say­ing any­thing she had must have been pro­vided by other com­man­ders dur­ing report­ing trips to Afghanistan.

The asso­ciates spoke on con­di­tion of anonymity because they weren’t autho­rized to pub­licly dis­cuss the mat­ters, which could be part of an FBI investigation.

Petraeus, who led U.S. mil­i­tary efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan, resigned his CIA post Fri­day, acknowl­edg­ing his extra­mar­i­tal affair with Broad­well and express­ing deep regret.

New details of the inves­ti­ga­tion that brought an end to his sto­ried career emerged as Pres­i­dent Barack Obama hunted for a new CIA direc­tor and mem­bers of Con­gress ques­tioned why the months-long probe was kept quiet for so long.

Kel­ley, the Tampa woman, began receiv­ing harass­ing emails in May, accord­ing to two fed­eral law enforce­ment offi­cials. They, too, spoke only on con­di­tion of anonymity because they were not autho­rized to speak pub­licly about the mat­ter. The emails led Kel­ley to report the mat­ter, even­tu­ally trig­ger­ing the inves­ti­ga­tion that led Petraeus to resign as head of the intel­li­gence agency.

FBI agents traced the alleged cyber harass­ment to Broad­well, the offi­cials said, and dis­cov­ered she was exchang­ing inti­mate mes­sages with a pri­vate gmail account. Fur­ther inves­ti­ga­tion revealed the 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 to trace.

Broad­well had co-authored a biog­ra­phy titled “All In: The Edu­ca­tion of Gen­eral David Petraeus,” pub­lished in Jan­u­ary. In the pref­ace, she said 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.

But the con­tents of the email exchanges between Petraeus and Broad­well sug­gested to FBI agents that their rela­tion­ship was inti­mate. The FBI con­cluded rel­a­tively quickly — by late sum­mer at the lat­est — that no secu­rity breach had occurred, the two senior law enforce­ment offi­cials said. But the FBI con­tin­ued its inves­ti­ga­tion into whether Petraeus had any role in the harass­ing emails.

Petraeus, 60, told one for­mer asso­ciate he began an affair with Broad­well, 40, a cou­ple of months after he became the direc­tor of the CIA late last year. 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.

FBI agents con­tacted Petraeus, and he was told that sen­si­tive, pos­si­bly clas­si­fied doc­u­ments related to Afghanistan were found on her com­puter. 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. The FBI con­cluded there was no secu­rity breach.

One asso­ciate also said Petraeus believes the doc­u­ments described past oper­a­tions and had already been declas­si­fied, although they might have still been marked as “secret.” Broad­well had high secu­rity clear­ances on her own as part of her job as a reserve Army major work­ing for 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.

Dur­ing a talk last month at the Uni­ver­sity of Den­ver, Broad­well raised eye­brows when she said the CIA had detained peo­ple at a secret facil­ity in Beng­hazi, Libya, and the Sept. 11 attack on the U.S. Con­sulate and CIA base there was an effort to free those prisoners.

Obama issued an exec­u­tive order in Jan­u­ary 2009 strip­ping the CIA of its author­ity to take pris­on­ers. The move meant the CIA was for­bid­den from oper­at­ing secret jails across the globe as it had under Pres­i­dent George W. Bush.

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

Broad­well did not say who told her about CIA activ­i­ties in Libya. The video of Broadwell’s speech was viewed on YouTube.

A Petraeus asso­ciate said the retired gen­eral was shocked to find out about Broadwell’s emails to Kel­ley. Petraeus was not shown the mes­sages, but inves­ti­ga­tors told him the emails told Kel­ley to stay away from the gen­eral in a threat­en­ing tone.

Petraeus told for­mer staffers and friends that he was friends with Kel­ley and her sur­geon hus­band, Scott, and reg­u­larly vis­ited their brick home with impos­ing white columns over­look­ing Tampa Bay.

Jill 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 2008–2010.

A photo shows Petraeus and his wife, Holly, with the Kel­leys and Jill’s iden­ti­cal twin sis­ter Natalie Khawam in the Kel­leys’ front yard, decked out in party beads with a pirate flag in the back­ground. Khawam, is a Tampa lawyer who works on health care fraud and whistle­blow­ers cases, accord­ing to her Linkedin pro­file, which was removed from the pro­fes­sional net­work­ing site Mon­day. The sis­ters — hard to dif­fer­en­ti­ate in the pic­ture with their match­ing long dark locks and black dresses — also com­peted in a cook-off filmed for a Food Net­work show called “Food Fight” in 2003.

Jill Kel­ley reg­u­larly kept in touch with then-Gen. Petraeus when he became com­man­der of the Afghan war effort, the two exchang­ing near-daily emails and instant mes­sages, two of his for­mer staffers say. 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.

Kel­ley did not answer the door at her Tampa home Mon­day morn­ing, and later left her home by car with­out talk­ing to reporters. The Kel­leys hired Abbe Low­ell, a Wash­ing­ton lawyer who has rep­re­sented well-known clients includ­ing lob­by­ist Jack Abramoff and for­mer pres­i­den­tial can­di­date John Edwards, and released a state­ment Sun­day through a Washington-based cri­sis man­age­ment firm that she and her fam­ily had been friends with the Petraeus fam­ily for five years and wanted to respect their privacy.

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.

“Furi­ous would be an under­state­ment,” Boy­lan told ABC’s “Good Morn­ing Amer­ica.” The cou­ple has two adult chil­dren, includ­ing a son who led an infantry pla­toon in Afghanistan as an Army lieutenant.

Broad­well is mar­ried with two young sons and lives in Char­lotte, N.C. She has not returned phone calls or emails seek­ing comment.

As the crim­i­nal inves­ti­ga­tion con­tin­ued into the emails to Kel­ley, 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, said one of the law enforce­ment officials.

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.

Clap­per called Petraeus that night and urged him to resign. Clap­per informed the White House late Wednes­day, and aides informed the pres­i­dent Thurs­day morn­ing, before Petraeus came to per­son­ally hand in his res­ig­na­tion letter.

Some mem­bers of Con­gress are ques­tion­ing why they weren’t told sooner. Demo­c­ra­tic Sen. Dianne Fein­stein of Cal­i­for­nia, who heads the Sen­ate Intel­li­gence Com­mit­tee, said she wants to inves­ti­gate why she had to find out from news reports Friday.

But there were at least a cou­ple of mem­bers of Con­gress who heard inklings of the affair before the elec­tion. Repub­li­can Rep. Dave Reichert of Wash­ing­ton state received a tip from an FBI source that the CIA direc­tor was involved in an affair in late Octo­ber. Reichert arranged for an asso­ciate of his source at the FBI to call House Major­ity Leader Eric Can­tor on Sat­ur­day, Oct. 27, accord­ing to Can­tor spokesman Rory Cooper.

Cooper told The Asso­ci­ated Press Mon­day that Can­tor noti­fied the FBI’s chief of staff of the con­ver­sa­tion but did not tell any­one else because he did not know whether the infor­ma­tion from a per­son he didn’t know was credible.

“Two weeks ago, you don’t want to start spread­ing some­thing you can’t con­firm,” Cooper said.

The FBI responded by telling Cantor’s office that it could not con­firm or deny an inves­ti­ga­tion, but assured the leader’s office it was act­ing to pro­tect national secu­rity. Cooper said Can­tor believed that if the infor­ma­tion was accu­rate and national secu­rity was affected, the FBI would, as oblig­ated, inform the con­gres­sional intel­li­gence com­mit­tees and oth­ers, includ­ing House Speaker John Boehner.

One of the law enforce­ment offi­cials who spoke to the AP said long-standing Jus­tice Depart­ment pol­icy and prac­tice is not to share infor­ma­tion from an ongo­ing crim­i­nal inves­ti­ga­tion with any­one out­side the depart­ment, includ­ing the White House and Con­gress. The offi­cial said national secu­rity must be involved to notify Capi­tol Hill, and that was not the case in the Petraeus matter.

Petraeus’ affair with Broad­well will be the sub­ject of meet­ings Wednes­day involv­ing con­gres­sional intel­li­gence com­mit­tee lead­ers, FBI deputy direc­tor Sean Joyce and CIA Deputy Direc­tor Michael Morell.

Petraeus had been sched­uled to appear before con­gres­sional com­mit­tees on Thurs­day to tes­tify about the Beng­hazi attack that killed four Amer­i­cans, includ­ing U.S. Ambas­sador Chris Stevens. Morell is expected to tes­tify in place of Petraeus.

Fein­stein and oth­ers didn’t rule out the pos­si­bil­ity that Con­gress will try to com­pel Petraeus to tes­tify about Beng­hazi at a later date, even though he’s relin­quished his job.

Defense Sec­re­tary Leon Panetta, asked about Petraeus’ res­ig­na­tion on Mon­day, said it saw it as a “very sad sit­u­a­tion to have him end his career like that.” Panetta was CIA direc­tor prior to Petraeus.

“I think he took the right step” by resign­ing, Panetta added.

Posted by AP News on Nov 12 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.