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Petraeus Scandal Explained Unless Some Other Rabbit Comes out of the Works

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Then-Gen. David Petraeus with then-Lt. Gen. John Allen, both of whom are implicated. US Navy Chief Petty Officer Joshua Treadwell/Flickr/ 
Read on for essential background to this astonishing and confusing saga. Click here for the latest, or jump to these recent updates:
The start of this crazy scandal:
Last Friday, David Petraeus—a retired Army general revered for his roles in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars—resigned as director of the Central Intelligence Agency after revealing that he'd had an affair with his biographer, Paula Broadwell. It soon emerged that the FBI had been investigating Petraeus' paramour for months, eventually stumbling across their relationship.
Wait—who did what, now?
Petraeus, who at different points in the past decade oversaw the Iraq War, Afghanistan, and the CIA's drone program, engaged in an affair with Broadwell, an Army Reserve officer and commentator on military affairs. The two met in 2006, when Petraeus addressed Broadwell and her graduate school colleagues at Harvard. Two years later, she began a Ph.D. in war studies and started to compose a book-length analysis of Petraeus' wartime leadership. He eventually granted her unfettered access, including lodgings on his Kabul base when he took control of the war in Afghanistan in 2010. 
Broadwell's access continued after Petraeus retired from the Army and took over at the CIA in late summer of 2011. Her research culminated in an glowing biography titled All In: The Education of David Petraeus, which was released earlier this year. According to news reports, sources close to Petraeus insist that the affair began after he left the Army; if it began before then, he (and Broadwell) could potentially be prosecuted for adultery under the military's legal codes.
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How did all this come to light?
According to the Wall Street Journal, the affair was discovered several months ago by FBI agents investigating harassment allegations against Broadwell. She reportedly used an anonymous email account last May to send threatening emails to a Florida woman, Jill Kelley. Kelley is a family friend of Petraeus who volunteers as an event planner at MacDill Air Force base, the Tampa installation where Petraeus was based when he ran the US Central Command from 2008-10. The emails reportedly accused Kelley, 37, of an inappropriate relationship with Petraeus. Kelley voiced her concerns to a personal friend who was an FBI agent, according to the New York Times, and the FBI began an investigation of the emails.
That inquiry quickly led agents to suspect Broadwell of sending the messages, and they secured a warrant to search her personal email, discovering intimate details of her affair with Petraeus. By late summer, they had learned that the CIA director had been using a Gmail account under a pseudonym to communicate with Broadwell, and they informed Attorney General Eric Holder and FBI Director Robert Mueller of the probe. Law enforcement officers began to investigate whether any sensitive or classified information had passed between the two lovers. (According to the Journal, federal agents are obligated by Justice Department policy not to share information with Congress and the White House on criminal investigations until they are completed.)
In late October, FBI officials interviewed Broadwell and Petraeus, and both separately admitted to the affair, though they stressed that they hadn't shared any classified data. Satisfied, the agents briefed James Clapper, the director of national intelligence and a friend of Petraeus, on the probe at 5 p.m. on November 6, Election Day. Clapper reportedly advised Petraeus to resign the next day. President Obama was informed of the matter Thursday, and Petraeus offered his resignation in the Oval Office. Obama accepted it the following day.
Is this part of an Obama administration conspiracy to cover up what happened in Benghazi?
Probably not, although the timing has prompted a full-blown eruption in the right-wing fever swamp, as this New Republic compilation shows. Here's a sample tweet of the Petraeus-Benghazi hysteria from conservative pundit Laura Ingraham:
Petraeus was slated to testify before a congressional panel later this week on what the CIA knew about the September 11 attack on US installments in the Libyan city of Benghazi, which resulted in the death of US Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other American personnel. Now Petraeus reportedly will not be testifying; acting CIA Director Michael Morell will go in his place.
There is, however, an odd Libya-related twist in the story: In late October, Broadwell gave a lecture at the University of Denver in which she asserted that the CIA "had taken a couple of Libyan militia members prisoner and they think that the attack on the consulate was an effort to try to get these prisoners back." She added, "That's still being vetted." It's possible that she had gotten this info from Petraeus—she noted in the same breath that "the challenging thing for General Petraeus is that in his new position he's not allowed to communicate with the press. So he's known all of this." The CIA, however, denies that it ever held any prisoners at Benghazi. The CIA could be expected to deny such an assertion even if it was true. Hence it's unclear whether Broadwell was sharing privileged intelligence or merely passing on bum info from another source, though Fox News today reported that her assertion might have some credence.
What is Petraeus so famous for, anyway?
Perhaps no single American came out of the "war on terror" with as stellar a public reputation as David Petraeus, a Princeton Ph.D. whom the media credited with "saving" the debacle in Iraq, revolutionizing the military, and giving interviews while running six-minute miles at age 60. But the general cultivated much of this legendary status with shrewd moves—distancing himself from negative news and strategic setbacks, limiting media access to only preferred journalists, and taking credit for popular wartime trends. Military officers and reporters perpetuated what some are in hindsight calling the "cult of Petraeus," one that was used by successive presidential administrations to give their own strategic decisions greater sway with the public.
"[A]ll the profiles, stage-managed and controlled by the Pentagon's multimillion dollar public relations apparatus, built up an unrealistic and superhuman myth around the general that, in the end, did not do Petraeus or the public any favors," writes Buzzfeed's Michael Hastings, whose reporting got Afghanistan War General Stanley McChrystal fired two years ago and who has been critical of Petraeus in the past.
Who is Paula Broadwell?
Broadwell, 40, is a married mother of two, a fitness fanatic who graduated from West Point (Petraeus' alma mater) and holds an Army Reserve commission as an intelligence officer. She has two master's degrees and is currently working towards a doctorate in war studiesfrom King's College London. A successful writer and lecturer, Broadwell has garnered criticism for her sunny portrayal of the military's operations in Afghanistan while working there with Petraeus. Most notably, in 2011 she praised the actions of a Petraeus subordinatewho ordered the complete leveling of a village called Tarok Kolache, offering chilling before-and-after photos as evidence of the operation's success.
Joshua Foust, an expert on Afghan counterinsurgency with the American Security Project, wrote months before the affair was revealed that Broadwell's take on Tarok Kolache invalidated her bio of Petraeus. "[W]hen the one tiny bit of Broadwell's story that I'm aware of is riddled with such half-truths, spin, and outright deception about what really happened, how can I possibly trust her and her co-author to tell the rest of David Petraeus' career (and his vaunted leadership skills) honestly?" he stated last February.
Nevertheless, in their zeal to sympathize with Petraeus, the media and military officers are now pushing a negative portrayal of Broadwell as an unbalanced femme fatale. One unnamed officer close to Petraeus said the biographer "got her claws into him," conservative blogger Robert Stacy McCain has called her "The Slut Paula Broadwell," and even the Washington Post made hay of Broadwell's supposed "tight shirts and pants," concluding that Petraeus "let his guard down" around the younger woman.
What's the big deal? Washington bigwigs cheat all the time. Why should Petraeus lose his job over it?
There is still the possibility that Broadwell got previously secret CIA info via her relationship with Petraeus. (See the Benghazi-related question above for more details on those allegations.) But even if that's not the case, it's an astonishing breach for the man hired as America's top secret-keeper. As the editors of Wired's Danger Room blog put it, "not only did Petraeus conduct an affair that could conceivably open up the CIA director to blackmail, he exhibited poor data security, setting up a pseudonymous email account to correspond with his paramour—one that the FBI easily traced back to him using the breadcrumb trails of Gmail metadata."
Does this have anything to do with that New York Times advice column?
Soon after news of Petraeus' resignation broke last week, rumors spread that Broadwell's husband, a prominent North Carolina doctor, had written a letter to Chuck Klosterman's "The Ethicist" column published in the July 13 issue of the New York Times Magazine. "My wife is having an affair with a government executive. His role is to manage a project whose progress is seen worldwide as a demonstration of American leadership," the letter's author wrote, seeking advice on how to discuss the affair with his wife.
Tantalizing though it may be, the letter is unrelated to Broadwell, according to Times Magazine editor Hugo Lindgren. The Ethicist column "is NOT about the Petraeus affair, based on our factchecking," Lindgren tweeted last Saturday night. "Strange, I know." (For his part, Klosterman gives some more background on the letter here.)
So the FBI can read your email based on a harassment complaint?
One eyebrow-raising aspect of the case is that, based on Kelley's complaints about harassing emails, the FBI undertook a sophisticated probe of the address from which the emails originated, traced that account to Broadwell, and secured a warrant to investigate her other email accounts. (Though Mother Jones' Kevin Drum points out that the 1986 Electronic Communications Privacy Act permits federal agents to surveil your transmissions even without a warrant.) As Business Insider's Nicholas Carlson puts it:
The lesson (other than that you should not have an affair and that you should not spend lots of time alone with someone you find attractive) is one all of us already know, but everyone seems to forget: Your emails are not as private as you think, and as soon as you send them, they exist forever, waiting to be discovered by someone you do not want reading them. The same goes for your text messages, by the way. Just ask Tiger Woods.
Kelley's volunteer role as an event organizer at MacDill Air Force base hardly qualified her for routine federal protections, so it's unlikely that the FBI ever would have tracked down her email harasser if she hadn't had a friend in the bureau. Perhaps the lesson is not to cross anyone who's got those kinds of connections.
UPDATE, 12:00 a.m. EST, Tuesday, November 13: In a twist straight out of a Coen brothers movie, it now appears that the FBI agent who originated the inquiry is being investigated for his own bizarre actions. As the Wall Street Journal first reported, the as-yet-unnamed agent took up Kelley's complaint with an ardor partly explained by the fact that he had previously sent her pictures of himself, shirtless.
The FBI agent who started the case was a friend of Jill Kelley, the Tampa woman who received harassing, anonymous emails that led to the probe, according to officials. Ms. Kelley, a volunteer who organizes social events for military personnel in the Tampa area, complained in May about the emails to a friend who is an FBI agent. That agent referred it to a cyber crimes unit, which opened an investigation. However, supervisors soon became concerned that the initial agent might have grown obsessed with the matter, and prohibited him from any role in the investigation, according to the officials. One official said the agent in question sent shirtless photos to Ms. Kelley well before the email investigation began, and FBI officials only became aware of them some time later. Eventually, supervisors told the agent he was to have nothing to do with the case, though he never had a formal role in the investigation, the official said.
But it gets worse. According to the New York Times, that agent later went above his superiors and brought the issue to Congress, perhaps because of his political convictions:
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. [Emphasis added]
The FBI's questionable performance to date did not stop it from searching Broadwell's house this evening.
UPDATE 2, 1:21 a.m. EST, Tuesday, November 13: In a truly Pentagon-rocking development, the Washington Post reports that the scandal has now engulfed Marine General John R. Allen, the commander of US and NATO troops in Afghanistan.
According to a senior U.S. defense official, the FBI has uncovered between 20,000 and 30,000 pages of "potentially inappropriate" emails between Allen and Jill Kelley, a 37-year-old Tampa woman whose close friendship with Petraeus ultimately led to his downfall. Allen, a Marine, succeeded Petraeus as the top allied commander in Afghanistan in July 2011. The FBI first notified the Pentagon of its investigation into Allen’s communications with Kelley on Sunday evening, according to the senior defense official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss details of the ongoing case. In response, Pentagon chief Leon E. Panetta referred the investigation to the Defense Department's Inspector General for further review, according to a statement released by Panetta early Tuesday as he was traveling to Australia. [Emphasis added]
Where to begin? Allen had been tapped by the White House to take over as chief of the military's European Command and NATO's Supreme Allied Commander. That's likely not happening now. And then there's the scandal itself. If the allegations of an affair between Allen and Kelley turn out to be true, is it likely that Broadwell knew of it? And that Kelley knew who the harrassing emails she received likely came from? And was "shirtless agent" (as he's now called on Twitter) just a dupe in what sounds like something out of a Days of Our Lives or Gossip Girl episode? All we know is what started out as a love triangle has now got so many sides we can't even call it a love pentagon. Love dodecahedron? Developing…
UPDATE 3, 10:14 a.m. EST, Tuesday, November 13: Defense Secretary Leon Panetta released a statement late last night confirming that the FBI "referred to the Department of Defense a matter involving General John Allen, Commander of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan." Panetta kicked that "matter" over to the military's inspector general for further action; in the meantime, he stated, Allen would keep his job in Afghanistan, though he "delayed" the general's pending promotion to Europe and requested "that the Senate act promptly" on the nomination of Allen's proposed replacement in Afghanistan, the presumably inappropriate-email-free Marine Gen. Joseph Dunford.
The Washington Post, meanwhile, updated its story on Allen this morning, quoting an unnamed official at US Central Command as saying Allen and Kelley had exchanged "a few hundred emails over a couple of years" when Allen was stationed there, mostly "about routine stuff"—and "nowhere near" the 20,000 to 30,000 messages reported by the FBI. "He's never been alone with her," the senior official said. "Did he have an affair? No." Kelley was well-known for throwing parties that included senior leadership at the base.
However, AP reporter Kasie Hunt reports on Twitter this morning that there may be more than meets the eye to Allen's emails:
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