10 Nov 2012
Just 72 hours after the United States citizens reelected President Obama for the second term, the country’s most decorated four –star General David Holly Petraeus, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), tendered his resignation after FBI discovered that he was having an extra-marital affair with his biographer-mistress Paula Broadwell.
“After being married for over 37 years, I showed extremely poor judgment by engaging in an extramarital affair,” Petraeus said in his statement, expressing regret for his abrupt departure. “Such behavior is unacceptable, both as a husband and as the leader of an organization such as ours. This afternoon, the president graciously accepted my resignation.”
Six hours before his tendered his resignation, senior members of the congress was informed by intelligence community about the impending turn of events. It is learnt that one senior member wanted the four star-general to make the announcement immediately. President Obama was informed about his decision on Thursday.
In the bizarre twist of events, it’s understood that FBI stumbled across the “affair” when they were examining the four-star General’s computer after it was reported to have been “compromised”.
According to newspaper reports, the General allegedly fantasized of having sex under a desk and bombarded Broadwell, a married woman with thousands of emails even after Broadwell has strictly told the General she is no longer wants to continue the “affair”.
Some reports said the FBI begun investigations when he served in Afghanistan between 2010 and 2011 and they intercepted racy email exchange between the General and his biographer.
Just after he was sworn as the Director of CIA on September 6th, it is learnt that Broadwell decided to call it quits, but the General continued to pursue with some explicit and “sexy” emals.
Broad well, who researched the book ‘All In’ for three years, had extensive access to Petraeus in Afghanistan. Yet sources told NBC it is unlikely she will face criminal charges after the alleged hacking, stressing that Petraeus himself is under no investigation.
He first met Broadwell six years ago when he addressed students at Harvard University, where she is a researcher, and they eventually got to know each other better during mile-long runs.
Broadwell, who served in the military for more than a decade, lives in Charlotte, North Carolina with her radiologist husband, Dr. Scott Broadwell, and their two young sons, Lucien and Landon.
In the biography, Broadwell revealed she first met him during his visit to Harvard in spring 2006 when he was a Commander at Fort Leavenworth.
‘I was among the students invited by the school to meet with the general at a dinner afterward, because of my military background,’ she explained.
‘I introduced myself to then–Lieutenant General Petraeus and told him about my research interests; he gave me his card and offered to put me in touch with other researchers and service members working on the same issues.’
Broadwell added that this was not a one-off as he often ‘does a lot of mentoring’.
As she pursued her PhD in public policy in 2008, she contacted him to ask if she could interview him and they kept in touch via email.
‘A few months into my research, General Petraeus, who was then leading Central Command, invited me to go for a run with him and his team along the Potomac River during one of his visits to Washington,’ she wrote. ‘I figured I could interview him while we ran.’
She explained that, after earning varsity letters in cross-country and indoor and outdoor track, she wanted to test him to see if he could keep up with her as she interviewed him.
‘Instead it became a test for me,’ she said. ‘As we talked during the run from the Pentagon to the Washington Monument and back, Petraeus progressively increased the pace until the talk turned to heavy breathing and we reached a six-minute-per-mile pace. It was a signature Petraeus move.’
Promoting the book on The Daily Show with John Stewart in January, she insisted that these mile-long runs together were nothing out of the ordinary.
‘This is a typical mechanism for him to get to know young people,’ she said. ‘He’s done it throughout his life. That was the foundation of our relationship.’
In another often awkward radio interview in January, host Don Imus said that the pair must have ‘obviously’ liked each other.
She responded: ‘You know, as I said earlier, he has a number of mentees and that’s one thing that’s different when you compare him to other Senior Commanders.
‘But, yeah, we had a lot of rapport. I think some of that comes from a common ground of having gone to West Point [to the U.S. Military Academy].’
Of her reported rival, she added: ‘He is married to Holly Petraeus, who is a wonderful Military spouse and done so much for their children and for children of fallen soldiers, I respect her immensely.’
The book’s description explains Broadwell conducted research for three years and was ‘afforded extensive access by General Petraeus, his mentors, his subordinates and his longtime friends’. Its website adds Broadwell was embedded in Afghanistan with Petraeus for a year between July 2010 and 2011.
Broadwell graduated with honors from the U.S. Military Academy in West Point, and came top of her class in physical fitness. Petraeus also attended the academy and married his wife Holly there.
She has more than a decade of military service and nearly two decades of work in counterterrorism and counterinsurgency.
She is studying for her PhD at Kings College in London, and is also a research associate at Harvard University’s Center for Public Leadership. For her studies and the biography, she spent most of 2011 in Afghanistan as an embedded author.
As well as contributing to book chapters, appearing on television interviews and writing opinion pieces for The New York Times and the Boston Globe about leadership and women in defense, she has also worked as a model and demonstrator for KRISS, a .45 caliber machine gun manufacturer.
Last week, Broadwell wrote an article entitled ‘David Petraeus’s Rules for Living’ in Newsweek.
Indeed, one military source who has worked with Petraeus said that Broadwell’s attempts to ‘get her claws into’ the CIA chiefs were an open secret.
‘I’ve known her for a few years, probably five or six,’ said the source to BusinessInsider.com
‘When she started work on the bio she called me for background on one of the general’s previous deployments.
‘I probably gave her four hours or so, and we stayed in touch after that by email and an occasional phone call.
‘Over that time, she went from someone very likeable to a shameless self-promoting prom queen.
‘A very disturbing shift in how she carried herself. If she knew P4 was going to make an appearance at an event, she’d crash it without an invitation (she actually did this at the wedding of some close friends of mine) and photo bomb[ed] sic everyone there.
One read: ‘We all will make mistakes. The key is to recognize them and admit them, to learn from them, and to take off the rear view mirrors – drive on and avoid making them again.’
Petraeus had been sworn in as head of the CIA in September 2011 after serving as head of the coalition forces first in Iraq and then in Afghanistan.
President Obama accepted Petraeus’ resignation but described him as ‘one of the outstanding General officers of his generation’ as he added: ‘By any measure, through his lifetime of service David Petraeus has made our country safer and stronger.’
Deputy director Michael Morell will serve as acting head of the agency until a permanent replacement for Petraeus is appointed.
In his resignation letter addressed to CIA agents, Petraeus wrote that ‘such behavior is unacceptable’ for a senior administration official.
The fact of an affair would not in itself normally merit a resignation, unless the affair created a security risk, for instance if it was with a foreigner or a journalist. Blackmail would also be an issue, though publicly admitting the affair would prevent that.
An affair with a subordinate CIA employee might make a resignation almost inevitable – or it is possible that Petraeus stepped down because he felt his leadership and integrity had been compromised.
One of the most puzzling aspects of the resignation is its proximity to next week’s congressional hearings on Benghazi, which Petraeus has said he will not now attend, even though being out of office would not preclude his doing so.
Petraeus admitted he had shown ‘extremely poor judgment’ in the letter he sent to his CIA colleagues confirming that he was stepping down.
He added that it had been ‘the greatest of privileges’ to work at the agency, saying: ‘Teddy Roosevelt once observed that life’s greatest gift is the opportunity to work hard at work worth doing.’
Petraeus, 60, has been married to Holly, née Knowlton, since 1975, after they meet when he was a military cadet at West Point and she was the daughter of the academy’s superintendent.
When he was sworn in as director of the CIA by Vice President Joe Biden, Holly held the Bible on which he swore his oath of office.
Mrs Petraeus is head of the Office of Service member Affairs; a department of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau which is responsible for ensuring members of the military is not taken advantage of by banks and other financial businesses.
The official offered his resignation to Obama on Thursday, and the President accepted the offer on Friday.
Obama issued a statement thanking Petraeus for his ‘extraordinary service’, saying he had ‘served with characteristic intellectual rigor, dedication, and patriotism’.
Director of National Intelligence James Clapper had even stronger praise for Petraeus, describing him as ‘one of our nation’s great patriots’ as he added, ‘Dave has redefined what it means to serve and sacrifice for one’s country.’
Clapper continued: ‘Whether he was in uniform leading our nation’s troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, or at CIA headquarters leading the effort to generate intelligence used to keep our nation safe, Dave inspired people who had the privilege of working with him.’
Dianne Feinstein, a Democratic senator from California who is chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said: ‘I wish President Obama had not accepted this resignation, but I understand and respect the decision.’
She added: ‘I wanted him to continue. He was good, he loved the work and he had a command of intelligence issues second to none.’
Peter King, the Republican who chairs the House Committee on Homeland Security, said: ‘General Petraeus is one of America’s most outstanding and distinguished military leaders and a true American patriot.’
The President added: ‘Going forward, my thoughts and prayers are with Dave and Holly Petraeus, who has done so much to help military families through her own work. I wish them the very best at this difficult time.’
The resignation comes at an awkward time for the President, who is beginning to put together his team for his second term in the wake of his re-election on Tuesday.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has already declared her plans to step down in January, while Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta is expected to follow some time in 2013.
Petraeus’ departure leaves another vacancy for a key position in the national security establishment.
Morell, who has served as the agency’s deputy director for two and a half years, will be one of the frontrunners to take over on a permanent basis – former CIA director George Tenet was promoted from deputy in the same way after the resignation of John Deutch in 1996.
He is a long-serving analyst who has twice been a witness to history, travelling with George W. Bush on the day of the September 11 attacks and sitting in the White House situation room with Barack Obama during the mission to kill Osama Bin Laden in May last year.
Petraeus was in charge of the CIA at the time of the terror attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi on September 11 of this year, a raid in which ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans were killed and which has become a political disaster for the Obama administration.
The former CIA director was due to address a congressional hearing on the attack next week, which could raise suspicions that the timing of his resignation was politically motivated.
He will no longer be present at the hearing, which will instead grill Morell on the agency’s failings in allowing four Americans to die during the assault on the consulate and a CIA compound.
Despite his close working relationship with Obama and other Democratic officials, Petraeus was spoken of as a possible running mate for Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney this year.
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