Sur­prised, Dave, that you did­n’t men­tion that Petraeus was felled on 11/9, and that Beng­haz­i’s 9/11 may play a role in all of this.

Clear­ly Mueller did play a role in this. His FBI nor­mal­ly does­n’t inves­ti­gate e‑mail harass­ment between pri­vate cit­i­zens. Recall that any links to Petraeus were alleged­ly unknown at the onset of the inves­ti­ga­tion.

I agree that end­ing Petraeus’ polit­i­cal career before it began was like­ly the goal. Many oth­er side-goals can be accom­plished through this vehi­cle, also.

The entire sto­ry begs for dis­be­lief: A shirt­less FBI agent opens an inves­ti­ga­tion into 6 “semi-harass­ing” e‑mails between pri­vate cit­i­zens. The “vic­tim” is sev­er­al mil­lion dol­lars in debt, prime lever­age for an oper­a­tion. The “harass­er” has a video from a Col­orado lec­ture post­ed in which she divulges a secret CIA prison was inside the Libyan embassy.

And the vic­tim was not only a “last-of-the-GOP-mod­er­ates” who might have been pres­i­dent. Might Petraeus have been an unwant­ed fire­wall between democ­ra­cy and a final overt mil­i­tary coup? Of course, we know that can’t hap­pen here.

And the strange tim­ing of it. And the curi­ous note that Repub­li­can House Major­i­ty Leader Eric Can­tor was appar­ent­ly aware of it WEEKS before the Exec­u­tive Branch.

Let’s not over­look the numer­ous gen­er­als who have also been tak­en down this year. One week before Petraeus, Brig. Gen Jef­frey Sin­clair resigned due to an extra­mar­i­tal affair. Then Gen­er­al John Allen, on the verge of being named head of NATO in Europe, is removed.

When the U.S. sees this hap­pen in Rus­sia or oth­er “less­er” nations, we call this a “purge”.

Final­ly, a pho­to­graph as food for thought:

http://www.buzzfeed.com/jtes/karl-rove-and-paula-broadwell-took-a-photo-togethe

R. Wil­son–

Gave kudos to your obser­va­tions vis a vis 9/11/11/9 in a com­ment on your com­ment on FTR #744.

This is def­i­nite­ly an op. And in my post, I won­dered about purg­ing mod­er­ate officers–some who might be opposed to the impo­si­tion of mar­tial law/fascism.

Best,

Dave

Remem­ber “Ser­pen­t’s Walk.”

Turns out, Jill Kel­ley has some big debts. (Not sure about Mrs. Broad­well).

Sim­ple fol­ly and poten­tial lever­age. Both use­ful.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/nov/15/jill-kelley-personal-debt-national-security

FWIW, If any­thing, Paula Broad­well’s birth­day is Novem­ber 9.
Michael Mor­rel­l’s father was a retired blue col­lar work­er for Chrysler and his moth­er might have had an Aus­tri­an name, so, not much there.

Hi Dave.

Pleased to see some new posts.

Indeed, the above men­tion of Michael Mor­rell is inter­est­ing. Espe­cial­ly giv­en the fact that he became Act­ing Direc­tor of the Cen­tral Intel­li­gence Agency on Novem­ber 9, 2012. I’m not nor­mal­ly one for date-based con­spir­a­cies, but that is of course the date for the ‘Ger­man Day Of Des­tiny’.

Whilst the pic you have list­ed for Mor­rell looks very Ger­man­ic indeed, it looks like a dif­fer­ent per­son to the Mor­rell on the CIA web­site, who is 70% bald and beard­ed, and about 20 years old­er.

Agree about attacks on the BBC. How­ev­er, the BBC is full of ene­mies of Britain that need purg­ing, so atten­tion on BBC’s behav­iour is good. How­ev­er, pae­do alle­ga­tions are direct­ed at Thatch­er’s aides, in an attempt to stain the pro-Brit, anti-EU cen­tre right.

Which is iron­ic, being that for­eign intel­li­gence have been using pae­do net­works to con­trol some of the pow­er cen­tres that have done the most dam­age to Britain (not men­tion­ing any names, Mr Ted Heath who vis­it­ed Haut De La Garenne).

I hearti­ly dis­agree regard­ing Netanyahu. Attempts to stain him as a nazi are deplorable. He was very impor­tant in out­ing the nazi UN DG Wald­heim, and Wald­heim’s op to remove war­crimes files that point­ed to him, from the UN archives. The under­ground Reich HATE Netanyahu.

Scratch that about Mor­rell pic, it has van­ished!

Anoth­er google con­firms your pic ;)

Some back­ground info on Grayson P. Wolfe, the ex-hus­band of Jill Kel­ley’s twin sis­ter Natal­ie. Small world indeed:

TPM Editor’s Blog
Wow, Small World
Josh Mar­shall Novem­ber 13, 2012, 10:37 PM

One of the odd sub­plots in the Petraeus sto­ry is the deci­sion of Gens. Petraeus and Gen. Allen to inter­vene in the intense cus­tody dis­pute between Jill Kelley’s sis­ter Natal­ie and her estranged hus­band Grayson P. Wolfe. Wolfe turns out to be a for­mer Bush admin­is­tra­tion offi­cial who worked in Coali­tion Pro­vi­sion­al Author­i­ty in Bagh­dad (Bremer’s out­fit) open­ing Iraq up to pri­vate sec­tor invest­ment.

From Wolfe’s bio at his new com­pa­ny Akka­di­an Pri­vate Ven­tures …

Between Jan­u­ary and August 2004, Wolfe served as Man­ag­er of the Pri­vate Sec­tor Devel­op­ment Office of the Coali­tion Pro­vi­sion­al Author­i­ty in Bagh­dad, Iraq. In this capac­i­ty he was direct­ly respon­si­ble for imple­ment­ing a wide range of ini­tia­tives to attract for­eign direct invest­ment and pro­vide financ­ing to Iraqi com­pa­nies. Dur­ing this time, Wolfe worked exten­sive­ly on the ground with senior Iraqi and Kur­dish offi­cials, and with the Min­istries of Finance, Trade and Oil.

Mor­rel­l’s Father;

“Joseph S. Morell, 89, passed away Sun­day, April 1, 2012.
He was born in Akron and was a Cuya­hoga Falls area res­i­dent since 1923. He retired from Chrysler Motor Com­pa­ny and was an avid pho­tog­ra­ph­er and wood­work­er. Grate­ful thanks to Tra­di­tions at Bath Rd. for their care even though he was only there for a short time.
He was pre­ced­ed in death by his par­ents, Joseph and Eliz­a­beth (Beck) Morell; wife, Irene (Harango­zo) Morell in 2005; and sis­ters, EVA FUCHS and ELIZABETH DIERKER.”

@LarryFW–A cou­ple of points: IF, and I mean IF, my gut sense about Mor­rell is true, the offi­cial record about his father is not par­tic­u­lar­ly rel­e­vant.

First, intel­li­gence agen­cies rou­tine­ly cre­ate “leg­ends” for clan­des­tine oper­a­tives, sleep­ers in par­tic­u­lar. The same would have been done for Mor­rell. The Third Reich took great pains to cre­ate leg­ends for the oper­a­tives to be implant­ed for future use.

Sec­ond­ly, the large Ger­man-Amer­i­can pop­u­la­tion in this coun­try har­bored a huge Fifth Col­umn move­ment, cen­tered large­ly around the Ger­man-Amer­i­can Bund and the Steuben Soci­ety. This Fifth Col­umn worked close­ly with
Third Reich intel­li­gence.

I rec­om­mend you read some of the books on my web­site, Under Cov­er and The Nazis Go Under­ground, in par­tic­u­lar.

Thanks for fol­low­ing this web­site.

Best,

Dave

@GW–I also noticed the dif­fer­ence in the “offi­cial” pho­tos of Mor­rell and the pho­to on this site.

Don’t know what the expla­na­tion is, past a point, but it is inter­est­ing.

With regard to Netanyahu and the Israeli right–the Likud sent a rep­re­sen­ta­tive, Udi Cohen, to the nation­al con­ven­tion of the Allian­za Nationale–the suc­ces­sor to Mus­solin­i’s fas­cists.

His father was the per­son­al sec­re­tary to Vladimir Jabotin­sky, the head of the Betar.

The late Paul Man­ning, pro­tege and col­league of Edward R. Mur­row, came to the con­clu­sion that the Bor­mann group had effec­tive con­trol in Israel.

I’m reluc­tant­ly com­ing to the same con­clu­sion. Netanyahu may have worked against Wald­heim but he active­ly sup­port­ed Mitt Rom­ney.

Trust me, GW, Mitt Rom­ney is a flat-out Nazi. I know far more about this than I can dis­cuss in this forum. The GOP has been effec­tive­ly tak­en over by the Under­ground Reich.

I rec­om­mend the Man­ning text for fur­ther ref­er­ence on the Israeli sit­u­a­tion.

My asso­ciate John Lof­tus, as well as ele­ments of Israeli intel­li­gence, have uncov­ered “Jews” who were actu­al­ly Nazis, their leg­ends hav­ing been pro­vid­ed by engravers impris­oned at the Alt Aussee con­cen­tra­tion camp. Some of them may be influ­enc­ing Netanyahu as well. I do not negate Israel’s neces­si­ty to defend itself, but anoth­er “Oper­a­tion Cast Lead” at this point plays right into the hands of Israel’s ene­mies, par­tic­u­lar­ly the Under­ground Reich’s proxy war­riors in the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood.

I also sug­gest that you and your asso­ciates exam­ine Amer­i­ca’s polit­i­cal assas­si­na­tions. At the core of these con­spir­a­cies one finds Nazis–domestic old guard from the WWII peri­od, rem­nants of the Fifth Col­umn, neo-Nazis, and Gehnlen/ABN/Bormann imports.

When I return to the air­waves, I’d like to do some inter­views with the Ger­many Watch folks–yourself, and Sarah Moore, in par­tic­u­lar.

Keep up the great work,

Dave

As Josh Mar­shall puts it, “It’s like a Salahi lev­el oper­a­tion, but with the added twist of deep access to top gen­er­als at the Unit­ed States most crit­i­cal mil­i­tary com­mand (Cent­com) and oppor­tunis­tic hob­nob­ing with pols.”

Yep.

Let’s hope some the par­al­lels between this sto­ry and the Salahi soap opera remain intact because a Kelley/Khawan guber­na­to­r­i­al run in Flori­da could be price­less.

Inter­est­ing fun fact about the FBI agent Fred­er­ick Humphries: He’s the guy that caught al-Qae­da oper­a­tive Ahmed Ressam in 1999, pre­vent­ing a plan to bomb LAX on New Years Eve:

Details emerge about ‘shirt­less FBI agent’ in Petraeus scan­dal
FBI Agent Fred­er­ick Humphries and his rep­re­sen­ta­tives defend his actions in the case that led to the CIA direc­tor’s res­ig­na­tion.

By Shashank Ben­gali, Los Ange­les Times

Novem­ber 15, 2012, 6:14 p.m.

DOVER, Fla. — He’s been dubbed the “shirt­less FBI agent” — a rogue inves­ti­ga­tor so smit­ten with a pret­ty socialite that he sent her a bare-chest­ed pho­to of him­self and pur­sued her com­plaint about harass­ing emails all the way to Con­gress.

The facts emerg­ing about Fred­er­ick Humphries — until now per­haps the least-known fig­ure in the David H. Petraeus adul­tery scan­dal — offer a dif­fer­ent por­trait.

The chain reac­tion ini­ti­at­ed by Humphries con­tin­ued Thurs­day, as Defense Sec­re­tary Leon E. Panet­ta ordered a review of ethics train­ing for Pen­ta­gon brass and the CIA began an “explorato­ry” inves­ti­ga­tion into the con­duct of Petraeus, the agen­cy’s for­mer direc­tor.

Humphries, a vet­er­an counter-ter­ror­ism inves­ti­ga­tor who helped foil the 1999 plot to bomb Los Ange­les Inter­na­tion­al Air­port, trig­gered the inves­ti­ga­tion that led to Petraeus’ res­ig­na­tion by report­ing threat­en­ing emails received by Tam­pa, Fla., socialite Jill Kel­ley to col­leagues in the FBI’s cyber-crime unit.

...

In his first inter­view since his iden­ti­ty became pub­lic, Humphries acknowl­edged to the Seat­tle Times that he sought out Rep. Dave Reichert, a Repub­li­can from Wash­ing­ton state, through his for­mer boss, retired Seat­tle FBI Spe­cial Agent in Charge Char­lie Mandi­go. His motives weren’t polit­i­cal, Humphries said, declin­ing to elab­o­rate.

As for that pho­to, Humphries did send a shirt­less image to Kel­ley, with whom he and his wife occa­sion­al­ly social­ized in Tam­pa. But it was­n’t a flir­ta­tious ges­ture by a man in love, his rep­re­sen­ta­tives say. It was a joke pho­to sent to Kel­ley and oth­ers, includ­ing a reporter, in 2010 — two years before the inves­ti­ga­tion began — show­ing Humphries bare-chest­ed and bald along­side two tar­get dum­mies that had a strik­ing resem­blance to him.

“Which One’s Fred?” read the cap­tion, the Seat­tle Times report­ed Thurs­day.

...

A for­mer Army cap­tain from Wash­ing­ton state, Humphries had per­haps the sig­na­ture moment of his career in 1999, just two years after he joined the FBI, when he was based in Seat­tle. He detect­ed an Alger­ian accent in a man who had claimed to be from Mon­tre­al as the man was ques­tioned for dri­ving in from Cana­da with chem­i­cals and tim­ing devices in his trunk. That man turned out to be Al Qae­da oper­a­tive Ahmed Ressam, who was plan­ning to bomb LAX at the turn of the mil­len­ni­um.

@R. Wil­son and Rob Coogan–

I doubt there will be a wider war, UNLESS Israel can’t go it alone mil­i­tar­i­ly, or if it is attacked by oth­er coun­tries there.

This may hap­pen, but I’ll have to see it.

The U.S. sim­ply can­not man­age anoth­er war in the Mid­dle East or any­where else at this time.

The troops are exhaust­ed and our econ­o­my bad­ly strained. Anoth­er major war would do incal­cu­la­ble dam­age to this coun­try. That would please the Under­ground Reich enor­mous­ly. For that rea­son alone, it might hap­pen, but I guar­an­tee you there are pow­er­ful forces in this coun­try that oppose such action.

Per today’s “New York Times,” (11/17/2012) the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion believes a ground inva­sion will ben­e­fit Hamas.

I GUARANTEE that it will. I believe that is the point. It will also ben­e­fit the Islamists and their allied anti-Semi­tes around the world, not to men­tion the Under­ground Reich.

Israel is dam­ag­ing itself enor­mous­ly, at the moment. The Israelis have no PR sense and will pay a very heavy price in polit­i­cal cap­i­tal for this.

On the sub­ject of Wes­ley Clark. In a word–he’s not cred­i­ble. I used to like him, but he has deep, deep con­nec­tions with Balkan Islamists, the mon­sters of the Koso­vo Lib­er­a­tion Army in par­tic­u­lar.

On the sub­ject of PNAC–it is an impor­tant group, but its impor­tance has been great­ly exag­ger­at­ed.

It is sim­ply one body for­mu­lat­ing pol­i­cy, and there is noth­ing that they advo­cate, includ­ing the devel­op­ment of eth­no-spe­cif­ic, genet­i­cal­ly-engi­neered bio­log­i­cal weapons have been artic­u­lat­ed bet­ter and elsewhere–see FTR #606.

One crit­i­cal thing that has escaped com­ment from the lis­ten­ers is a point I ham­mered home in FTR #‘s 560 and 561.

When war either threat­ens or takes place in the Mid­dle East, PAY ATTENTION TO THE PRICE OF OIL. It soars, ben­e­fit­ing the oil pro­duc­ing states and the petro­le­um com­pa­nies.

The glob­al econ­o­my, how­ev­er, suf­fers, as does the earth­’s pop­u­la­tion.

For an exam­i­na­tion of my prog­nos­ti­ca­tions on the future of Israel, the Jews etc., check out one of my videoed lec­tures on “The First Refuge of a Scoundrel.” In my dis­cus­sion of the fas­cist ele­ment in the Zion­ist move­ment, I laid out what I think will hap­pen.

It is on the flash dri­ve con­tain­ing all of my life’s work.

You can order that by fol­low­ing the link at the top of the Home page of this web­site..

Best,

Dave

I spec­u­late that Israel is com­ing to terms with the fact that they can­not project a war against Iran, so they are doing what they can before Iran can lever­age the pow­er it will get when and if they do build nuclear weapons.

See­ing how they do here, they will prob­a­bly do what­ev­er they can before either they strike or decide that they can­not strike Iran and destroy their nuclear pro­gram.

I’d vote that “the Petreus Affair” is a deep CIA action to remove Petreus from pok­ing his nose in too deep to that which he is not vet­ted by our “shad­ow gov­ern­ment” to know. Par­tic­u­lar­ly in light of this Broad­well, what a name, seems to get around a hell of a lot, and is chum­my with Rove.

Also it is absolute­ly bizarre how on all the left-wing blog sites the rats come out of the wood­work to bash Israel against all evi­dence and rea­son, defend­ing the Pales­tini­ans.

I think this is part of a larg­er attempt to dupe left­ies to fol­low­ing the herd into an asso­ci­a­tion, bad jack­et­ing — if I’m using that term cor­rect­ly — the left and Lib­er­als with the tinge of ter­ror­ism, mak­ing it eas­i­er to respond vio­lent­ly and exag­ger­at­ed­ly to any left lean­ing move­ments which will be brand­ed like by McCarthy, but labeled as ter­ror­ists instead of Com­mu­nists.

All peo­ple’s move­ments are either com­mu­nis­tic or ter­ror­is­tic and need to be made war on since it’s impos­si­ble to refute their log­ic and democ­ra­cy.

What a very sad time for this coun­try.

Dave,

Regard­ing this com­ing escha­ton (a word I favor over apoc­a­lypse, since the lat­ter lit­er­al­ly just means ‘rev­e­la­tion’) how does Barack Oba­ma’s vic­to­ry against Rom­ney fac­tor into the shad­ow gov­ern­men­t’s (or under­ground reich) plans? Does it delay, alter or spoil them? Since Rom­ney is a Nazi, then it seems obvi­ous to me that the PTB would have want­ed him to be the guy to get into office but Rom­ney failed to do that, even with the use of elec­tron­ic elec­toral rig­ging (as I believe it was used). Or, does a sec­ond term for Oba­ma mean they have some­thing worse than Rom­ney in store for us in the future? For exam­ple, a Tea Par­ty reac­tionary Pres­i­dent who wins in 2016 after Oba­ma’s 2nd term fails to res­ur­rect our ail­ing econ­o­my? I’m try­ing to fig­ure out from what you know how and if Barack Oba­ma win­ning has effect­ed their plans? I vot­ed for Barack Oba­ma but I was total­ly shocked that he won, I was cer­tain Rom­ney would win because, as you’ve not­ed before, the media cease­less­ly attacked Oba­ma, radio is almost entire­ly anti-Oba­ma, etc.

@Rob..I agree. Sev­er­al years ago I read an essay from an AEI con­trib­u­tor which was innocu­ous on its face, but chill­ing in its impli­ca­tions. The author was gnash­ing his teeth over the fact that in many coun­tries there still exist­ed parcels of land that were con­sid­ered com­mon prop­er­ty and had had no for­mal title or deed for cen­turies, so could not be bought or sold. In the author’s mind this sit­u­a­tion severe­ly retard­ed devel­op­ment poten­tials for such coun­tries, since the land was exclud­ed from being used as sure­ty for inter­na­tion­al loans. In effect, these coun­tries were some­what cush­ioned from max­i­mum indebt­ed­ness and that irri­tat­ed the author.

There is no start­ing point for talk­ing to peo­ple who think like this.

@Jay–I answered your ques­tions in the FTR series about “Bad­jack­et­ting Oba­ma”, done between O’s elec­tion in 2008 and his inau­gu­ra­tion in 2009, and then ampli­fied it in the long FTR series about “the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood.”

You, and many oth­er lis­ten­ers, need to start doing the req­ui­site home­work.

Might want to use the link at the top of the front page of the web­site to get the flash dri­ve con­tain­ing all of my life’s work.

Best,

Dave

@Jay: There’s no ques­tion, indeed, that Rom­ney was their favorite guy. But this year’s elec­tion just could­n’t be stolen, the turnout was just too large in too many cru­cial swing states.

Dave, does, how­ev­er, have a good point; there has indeed been some bad­jack­et­ing going on, and you may wish to search “Oba­ma bad­jack­et­ing” on this site at some point.

@Brux: Sad thing is, I’ve noticed that too. There are indeed a num­ber of well-mean­ing peo­ple who are get­ting suck­ered by cer­tain malev­o­lent forces out there.

Some things to con­sid­er regard­ing the tim­ing of this scan­dal:
First, the trig­ger for this whole thing appears to be the emails sent by Paula Broad­well to Jill Kel­ley (and at least one email sent by Broad­well to Gen­er­al John Allen, see below), so it’s note­wor­thy that Broad­well — a res­i­dent of Char­lotte, North Car­oli­na — was talked out of being the GOP’s Sen­ate can­di­date by Petraeus. That could­n’t have made made peo­ple hap­py, includ­ing Broad­well appar­ent­ly. If you’re get­ting court­ed for a GOP sen­ate bid you’re clear­ly hang­ing out with the wrong crowd:

Time
Nation­al Secu­ri­ty
Spy­fall

By Bar­ton Gell­man
Nov. 15, 2012

Paula Broad­well stepped off the stage at the Aspen Secu­ri­ty Forum on July 28, fresh from crit­i­ciz­ing the news media for heed­less dis­clo­sure of secrets. The after­noon pro­gram of sem­i­nars was packed with admi­rals, gen­er­als and Cab­i­net chiefs, but Broad­well had press­ing busi­ness else­where. She ducked out of the con­fer­ence, slipped into run­ning shorts and jogged off in search of a once-in-a-­life­time birth­day present.

Broad­well and CIA Direc­tor David Petraeus had fall­en into an extra­mar­i­tal affair after years of close con­tact as biog­ra­ph­er and sub­ject. Born two days and 20 years apart, they had big bench­marks approaching—his 60th, her 40th—and Broad­well was look­ing for a suit­ably momen­tous gift. As she had tweet­ed proud­ly a few days before, Broad­well had a date for a “1v1 run with Lance Arm­strong.” What she did not men­tion was her plan to recruit Arm­strong for a sur­prise birth­day bike ride with the fit­ness-mad Petraeus. If all went as she planned, the retired four-star gen­er­al would ride into his sev­enth decade along­side cycling’s great­est star.

That par­tic­u­lar ride was not to be. By then, though they did not know it yet, dis­grace was bear­ing down on all three of them. Tam­pa socialite Jill Kel­ley, alarmed by a series of dis­turb­ing e‑mails from some­one self-iden­ti­fy­ing as “kelley­patrol,” had filed an FBI com­plaint in May. Elec­tron­ic meta­da­ta pin­point­ing the times and places and IP address­es asso­ci­at­ed with Kelley’s hid­den cor­re­spon­dent iden­ti­fied Broad­well as the author. Inves­ti­ga­tors scooped up giga­bytes of con­tent from her oth­er accounts—some under Broadwell’s name, oth­ers under alias­es. As FBI agents sift­ed through the harass­ing e‑mails, they found dis­cus­sion of the move­ments and activ­i­ties of high-lev­el mil­i­tary officials—and of Petraeus. “So that sparked the inter­est of the inves­tiga­tive agen­cies,” says a law-enforce­ment offi­cial. Some of the exchanges were sex­u­al­ly charged. By that point the impli­ca­tions extend­ed far past a domes­tic dis­pute into the high­est reach­es of nation­al secu­ri­ty.

...

“The Elec­tion Played No Role”
By the time Petraeus got to the CIA, Broad­well had been work­ing close­ly with him for years. Her sug­ary ­biog­ra­phy of him, titled All In, came out in Jan­u­ary 2012. She allowed her­self more free­dom than most to use nick­names for Petraeus that oth­ers might not have cho­sen to write down: Dan­ger­ous Dave, even Peach­es. But she was care­ful to posi­tion her­self as a seri­ous biog­ra­ph­er, not a fan. In a Feb­ru­ary appear­ance with celebri­ty inter­view­er Arthur Kade, she vol­un­teered, unprompt­ed, “You know, it’s not a hagiog­ra­phy. I’m not in love with David Petraeus, but I think he does present a ter­rif­ic role mod­el for young peo­ple, for exec­u­tives, for men and women.” For­mer Petraeus aide and Army Brigadier Gen­er­al Peter DeLu­ca thinks he under­stands what hap­pened. “The guy is supergift­ed, superde­ter­mined, super­com­mit­ted. He’s the clos­est thing most of us have ever met to a super­man, but he’s still a man.”

Nor was Broad­well with­out a larg­er plan. After run­ning with Lance Arm­strong in July, she vol­un­teered her secret pur­pose to at least six new acquain­tances at the Aspen con­fer­ence. That evening, over drinks, she told a small group that she had been argu­ing with her men­tor about the direc­tion of her career. Repub­li­can mon­ey­men, she said, had approached her about a Sen­ate run in North Car­oli­na. She was tempt­ed. Petraeus, she said in an irri­tat­ed tone, reject­ed the idea out of hand. What was her posi­tion, he asked, on abor­tion? Cli­mate change? Gun con­trol? Gay mar­riage? Tax cuts? Social Secu­ri­ty vouch­ers? Her answers, he told her, would not fit either par­ty, and she should not sell her­self out.

...

Issu­ing “don’t sell out” advice to a poten­tial GOP Sen­ate can­di­date may not have improved Petraeus’s image amongst the ‘deciders’. That sort of nix­es a poten­tial 2016 GOP pres­i­den­tial run. The FBI was first alert­ed by Kel­ley about the e‑mails in May (although it may have been in June of ear­ly July accord­ing to this arti­cle), so giv­en Broad­well’s GOP Sen­ate ambi­tions I’m not too sur­prised they did­n’t spring this before the elec­tion. A poten­tial GOP Sen­ate can­di­date trig­ger­ing this kind of elec­toral stunt could have eas­i­ly back­fired. Going pub­lic with this sto­ry days after the elec­tion, on the oth­er hand, ensured that we would­n’t even have a week of post-elec­toral news cov­er­age with­out a new Beng­hazi-relat­ed scan­dal hit­ting the news cycle. From a dirty-tricks stand­point that’s not bad.

Anoth­er inter­est­ing fun-fact: both Paula Broad­well and Jill Kel­ley have doc­tor hus­bands named Scott. Scott Kel­ley ran a small can­cer char­i­ty with ques­tion­able expen­di­ture and unclear fund­ing sources(a pay­off or mon­ey-laun­der­ing vehi­cle?). Scott Broad­well is an alleged “Adven­ture junkie” that was also in the mil­i­tary (Scott and Paula met while they were sta­tioned in Ger­many). Accord­ing to the arti­cle below, Paula Broad­well is also described as hav­ing worked in mil­i­tary-intel­li­gence and an expert in counter-ter­ror­ism. Recall that the shirt­less FBI agent, Fred­er­ick Humphries, was a Tam­pa-based counter-ter­ror­ism expert. Humphries was also a long-term friend of the Kel­ley’s. The Petraeus fam­i­ly also appear to have fre­quent­ly social­ized with Kel­leys so you have to won­der if Broad­well and Humphries were ever cross­ing paths before this giv­en that Broad­well has appar­ent­ly been shad­ow­ing Petraeus for years. Broad­well includ­ed a case-study of Petraeus in her PhD thesis(He’s on her the­sis com­mit­tee). She’s also stud­ied Ara­bic in Jor­dan (Jill Kel­ley report­ed­ly name dropped the King of Jor­dan). It’s one spooky love Pen­ta­gon:

Char­lotte Observ­er
Char­lotte author chron­i­cles Gen. Petraeus’ war career
Char­lot­te’s Paula Broad­well, a coun­tert­er­ror­ism expert, turns her dis­ser­ta­tion into biog­ra­phy.

By Pam Kel­ley
pkelley@charlotteobserver.com
Post­ed: Tues­day, Jan. 24, 2012

As her new biog­ra­phy of one of Amer­i­ca’s best-known liv­ing gen­er­als goes on sale today, Char­lot­te’s Paula Broad­well adds anoth­er accom­plish­ment to her resume — big-time writer.

Broad­well, a coun­tert­er­ror­ism expert, is author of “All In: The Edu­ca­tion of Gen­er­al David Petraeus.”

She lives in Dil­worth with her hus­band, radi­ol­o­gist Scott Broad­well, and their sons. For the next few weeks, how­ev­er, you’re more like­ly to find her in the nation­al media. She was sched­uled today for an ear­ly-morn­ing inter­view on “Fox and Friends.” In com­ing days, look for her on CNN, Nation­al Pub­lic Radio and “The Dai­ly Show with Jon Stew­art.”

...

To report the sto­ry, Broad­well, 39, vis­it­ed Afghanistan six times, spend­ing a total of three months there. She embed­ded with com­bat troops and inter­viewed Petraeus for hours, often dur­ing runs they took togeth­er. She went on patrols, saw ene­my fire, got sick dur­ing heli­copter rides. And she loved it.

Dis­ser­ta­tion to book

So how did a Dil­worth mom score this assign­ment?

The answer begins at West Point. Broad­well, who grew up in North Dako­ta, grad­u­at­ed from the U.S. Mil­i­tary Acad­e­my, also Petraeus’s alma mater. She has worked in mil­i­tary intel­li­gence, lived in mul­ti­ple coun­tries and spe­cial­ized in coun­terin­sur­gency, coun­tert­er­ror­ism and geopo­lit­i­cal analy­sis.

She met Petraeus in 2006 when he spoke at Har­vard’s Kennedy School of Gov­ern­ment, where she was a grad­u­ate stu­dent. When she told him about her research inter­ests, he hand­ed her his card and offered his help. “He real­ly cares about men­tor­ing,” she says.

Lat­er, with his coop­er­a­tion, she began a doc­tor­al dis­ser­ta­tion that includ­ed a case study of his lead­er­ship.

At the time, he had com­mand­ed the troop surge in Iraq that had pulled the coun­try from the brink of civ­il war. In June 2010, when Pres­i­dent Barack Oba­ma tapped him to take charge in Afghanistan for what would become Petraeus’ final com­mand, Broad­well knew the time was right to par­lay her dis­ser­ta­tion into a biog­ra­phy.

Soon, she had an agent and a con­tract from Pen­guin Press. To help orga­nize and write the book, she teamed with The Wash­ing­ton Post’s Ver­non Loeb. Broad­well proved to be an “absolute­ly intre­pid” reporter, Loeb says, dic­tat­ing from air­ports, fill­ing up his email inbox and deliv­er­ing “this fire hose of infor­ma­tion.”

Loeb sus­pects the medi­a’s inter­est in their book stems at least a bit from Broad­well her­self. It’s auda­cious, he says, “that she even attempt­ed this. Here she has two young kids, a hus­band who’s a doc­tor, and yet ... she’s writ­ing a book of this mag­ni­tude and hard­ly break­ing a sweat.”

An insid­er’s view

A major in the Army Reserve, Broad­well says she was com­fort­able in Afghanistan.

“I was back with my bud­dies, troop­ers I’d served with, my mil­i­tary fam­i­ly,” she says. “I had stud­ied Ara­bic in the Mid­dle East. I stud­ied in Jor­dan. It did­n’t feel that much dif­fer­ent.”

Broad­well talked about her book recent­ly dur­ing an inter­view in her liv­ing room while her sons, ages 4 and 6, played near­by. She cred­its her hus­band, moth­er and oth­er fam­i­ly mem­bers, along with friends and neigh­bors, for pro­vid­ing the child care that allowed her time away to do research.

...

Broad­well, mean­while, will be on a book tour for sev­er­al months. She’ll donate 20 per­cent of hard-copy sales to non­prof­it groups that help serve wound­ed vet­er­ans and their fam­i­lies.

She has sent Petraeus a copy of her book. Often, she says, he does­n’t read about him­self. But she’ll hear more from the gen­er­al. After her book tour, she’ll fin­ish her doc­tor­ate. Petraeus is one of her dis­ser­ta­tion advis­ers.

a

Also note, accord­ing to the below arti­cle excerpt, that Broad­well spoke of the dif­fi­cul­ties of start­ing a fam­i­ly while when she and her hus­band were both on active duty and sta­tioned in Den­ver. The above arti­cle says she met Petraeus in 2006 when he gave a speech at the Har­vard’s Kennedy School of gov­ern­ment where she was a grad stu­dent. That means she relo­cat­ed from Cam­bridge to Den­ver some time during/after 2006 because her eld­sts on is 6. She also left Har­vard in 2008 and resumed her PhD work at King’s Col­lege London(that is one con­fus­ing time­line: study­ing at Har­vard while in Den­ver and then switch­ing to King’s Col­lege Lon­don after mov­ing to Char­lotte in 2009). It would be inter­est­ing to know if the ref­er­ences to Broad­well’s work in mil­i­tary intel­li­gence in the above arti­cle were ref­er­ences to active duty intel­li­gence work or if the “mil­i­tary intel­li­gence” is a ref­er­ence to her PhD work(Petraeus’s devel­op­ment of a counter-insur­rgency doc­trine). At least one of the anony­mous emails sent by Broad­well was sent to Gen­er­al Allen that he for­ward­ed to Kel­ley(who had sent a small num­ber of ‘flir­ta­tious’ emails to Jill Kel­ley). You know you have a strange sto­ry on your hands involv­ing peo­ple that lived high­ly unusu­al lives when all of the addi­tion­al info that leaks out only adds to the con­fu­sion:

Paula Broad­well puts on show of sol­i­dar­i­ty with her hus­band: Petraeus mis­tress and her part­ner arm in arm on night out for first time since scan­dal brokel
Paula Broad­well and her hus­band Scott were seen arm in arm on Sat­ur­day night after return­ing from an evening out of her broth­er’s $2.3 mil­lion home in Wash­ing­ton D.C.
This is the first time the pair have been seen togeth­er in pub­lic since the news of her affair with for­mer CIA Direc­tor David Petraeus broke

By James Nye

PUBLISHED: 01:12 EST, 18 Novem­ber 2012 | UPDATED: 01:49 EST, 18 Novem­ber 2012

Linked arm-in-arm, Paula Broad­well and her hus­band Scott were seen togeth­er yes­ter­day evening for the first time since the news broke of her affair with shamed for­mer CIA Direc­tor David Petraeus.

Arriv­ing at her broth­er’s home in the Mount Pleas­ant sub­urb of Wash­ing­ton D.C. in a black SUV, the two put on what was a clear show of sol­i­dar­i­ty as they marched from the garage to the back door of the $2.3 mil­lion prop­er­ty.

Since the scan­dalous rev­e­la­tions sur­round­ing his wife first sur­faced just over a week ago, Scott Broad­well has been con­spic­u­ous for his absence and his appear­ance last night indi­cates that he is stand­ing by the West Point Grad­u­ate.

...

Friends and fam­i­ly of the pair told reporters in the wake of the affair rev­e­la­tions that the Broad­well’s had built a hap­py home in Char­lotte, North Car­oli­na, where they live with their two sons, Lucien 6, and Lan­don, 4.

The radi­ol­o­gist works at a hos­pi­tal in the south­ern city and the 43-year-old and his wife ‘love to do Cross­fit, run, ski and surf togeth­er.’ accord­ing to a biog­ra­phy of Paula Broad­well pub­lished by the Uni­ver­si­ty of Den­ver,

In Jan­u­ary, while pro­mot­ing her now fat­ed biog­ra­phy of David Petraeus, Paula Broad­well told the Char­lotte Observ­er that she met Scott in Ger­many and described them both as ‘adven­ture junkies.’

At an alum­ni event for the Uni­ver­si­ty of Den­ver in Octo­ber, Broad­well said it was ‘very dif­fi­cult to start a fam­i­ly’ when the two of them were on active duty.

‘We had decid­ed before we got mar­ried that every oth­er move would be the oth­er person’s choice, since we are both very career-ori­ent­ed,’ said Paula Broad­well at the event. accord­ing to the Dai­ly Beast

‘And he chose Col­orado, he chose Den­ver.’

They moved into their $800,000 two-sto­ry brick home in Char­lot­te’s Dil­worth sub­urb in 2009 and Scott became an employ­ee of Char­lotte Radi­ol­o­gy at the same time.

In the Jan­u­ary inter­view with the Char­lotte Observ­er Broad­well said that when she was abroad with Petraeus in Afghanistan, Scott and her moth­er took care of their two sons.

Scott Broad­well and his wife have also been involved in a num­ber of groups that work to ben­e­fit vet­er­ans of the armed forces.

...

It also emerged today that Broad­well sent an email anony­mous­ly to Gen­er­al John Allen, who has been accused of swap­ping thou­sands of ‘inap­pro­pri­ate’ emails with Kel­ley. It was traced back to Petraeus’ mis­tress and he dis­cussed it with Kel­ley, it is claimed.

..

Anoth­er point to con­sid­er, regard­ing the tim­ing of all this, is that this hit just days after a Pen­ta­gon report pro­vid­ed by Cen­tral Com­mand (which is based in Tam­pa) and Joint Chief was released that increased the esti­mates to 75,000 for the num­ber of US troops need­ed for a Syr­i­an ground inva­sion with the expressed mis­sion of secur­ing chem­i­cal weapons. That’s up from an August esti­mate of “as many as 50,000 or 60,000”. And this does­n’t include things like “peace-keep­ing” or “nation build­ing”. If the mil­i­tary’s lead­er­ship is active­ly posi­tion­ing itself to oppose a ground inva­sion that could be putting a large fac­tions of the cur­rent top brass right in the cross-hairs of the oli­garchs and their min­ions. And with reports of Hezbol­lah bases near­by the chem­i­cal weapons sites and the takeover of the Syr­i­an resis­tance by Mus­lim Broth­er­hood/al-Qae­da affil­i­ates, it will also be inter­est­ing to see if we have a “oh no, the weapons were stolen by [Group X] and tak­en to [Coun­try Y], so now we have to invade there too” moment. Oba­ma has pub­li­cal­ly stat­ed that he would con­sid­er an inva­sion to secure those sites in the event that any “move­ment” of the com­pounds is detect­ed so a sce­nario involv­ing “loose chems” could be a means of forc­ing anoth­er ground inva­sion. It’s a sce­nario that can start off as a rel­a­tive­ly small inva­sion and grow from there so there could be a lot of appeal to that approach for ensnar­ing the US in war one last time and destroy­ing the mil­i­tary’s remain­ing human cap­i­tal. Don’t for­get that US mil­i­tary has­n’t just acquire casu­al­ties over the past decade. It also has the most com­bat expe­ri­ence of any mil­i­tary force in the world as a con­se­quence of these wars and that’s going to last for a while, whether or not the US eco­nom­i­cal­ly implodes. If there’s a strong desire on the part of the glob­al far-right/Un­der­ground Reich to lim­it the abil­i­ty of the US to “force project” with ground inva­sions over­seas in the next 10–20 years, lit­er­al­ly killing off that com­bat expe­ri­ence could be one of the medi­um/­long-term objec­tives of anoth­er Mid­dle East war.

An addi­tion­al thing to con­sid­er in any sce­nario involv­ing the US inter­ven­ing in a war between Israel and any of its neigh­bors: If the war does­n’t involve the US and Israel ends up los­ing it, the Chris­t­ian Zionist/Dominionist con­tin­gent in the US mil­i­tary might go berserk. That would­n’t be good.

Final­ly, Way to go BiBi: You’ve man­age to make Mohammed Mor­si look like Mr. Rea­son­able. *facepalm*

And now we learn that Ahmed Jaabari had alleged­ly just been giv­en a draft of a per­ma­nent peace plan and the Israeli gov­ern­ment knew of this and went ahead with the assas­si­na­tion any­ways. This is once again a reminder that far-right sucks every­where because it wants war and con­flict every­where:

Israeli Peace Activist: Ahmed Jabari, Assas­si­nat­ed Hamas Leader, Received Draft Of Gaza Truce Agree­ment Short­ly Before Death

Post­ed: 11/16/2012 2:30 am EST Updat­ed: 11/19/2012 5:41 pm EST

An Israeli peace activist has come for­ward with a block­buster claim about the assas­si­na­tion of Hamas leader Ahmed Jabari that, if true, would rep­re­sent a major twist in the recent esca­la­tion of con­flicts between Israeli and Pales­tin­ian forces.

Ger­shon Baskin, who has report­ed­ly medi­at­ed between Israel and Hamas in the past, told Haaretz on Thurs­day that Jabari, at the time of his death, had just received a draft of a “per­ma­nent truce agree­ment with Israel.”

Per Haaretz:

Hours before Hamas strong­man Ahmed Jabari was assas­si­nat­ed, he received the draft of a per­ma­nent truce agree­ment with Israel, which includ­ed mech­a­nisms for main­tain­ing the cease-fire in the case of a flare-up between Israel and the fac­tions in the Gaza Strip. This, accord­ing to Israeli peace activist Ger­shon Baskin, who helped medi­ate between Israel and Hamas in the deal to release Gilad Shalit and has since then main­tained a rela­tion­ship with Hamas lead­ers.

Baskin told Haaretz on Thurs­day that senior offi­cials in Israel knew about his con­tacts with Hamas and Egypt­ian intel­li­gence aimed at for­mu­lat­ing the per­ma­nent truce, but nev­er­the­less approved the assas­si­na­tion.

“I think that they have made a strate­gic mis­take,” Baskin said, an error “which will cost the lives of quite a num­ber of inno­cent peo­ple on both sides.”

Jabari was killed in a sur­gi­cal airstrike on Wednes­day as part of a larg­er Israeli offen­sive in Gaza. “This is an oper­a­tion against ter­ror tar­gets of dif­fer­ent organ­i­sa­tions in Gaza,” an Israeli spokes­woman said at the time.

Called Oper­a­tion “Pil­lar of Defence,” the offen­sive dashed hopes of progress toward a truce between Israel and Hamas that might have end­ed months of roil­ing ten­sions and vio­lence in the region.

...

Grant­ed, the peace plan could have been a BS ploy with no seri­ous intent behind it, but we’ll nev­er know now since Netanyahu decid­ed to pre­emp­tive­ly blow up the puta­tive peace nego­tia­tor.

Also, note that it isn’t just the Likud­niks serv­ing up this peace poi­son-pill.

When your oppo­nents are folks like this, occu­py­ing the moral high ground is gen­er­al­ly one of the more effec­tive approach­es to con­flict management...unless, of course, you pre­emp­tive­ly blow it up. *facepalm*

Wow, I had to sit and take a few very deep breaths. Then sit back and won­der why so many peo­ple still believe the BULL SH‑T lie that the USA is a FREE coun­try... NOTHING could be fur­ther from the truth. EDUCATION is the answer, but guess what?? Knowl­edge is the FIRST thing “they” want to cut, WHY? Because if you don‘t have the knowledge,you are igno­rant of the facts. Here is some­thing to ask your­self: Why do so many peo­ple die from can­cer?? ANSWER: Because it is PLANNED to be that way....... If YOU do the research you will find out the truth!!

http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2012/11/jill-kelley-paula-broadwell-made-repeat-visits-to-obama-white-house/

Jill Kel­ley & Paula Broad­well made repeat vis­its to the Oba­ma White House...

For what it’s worth, for the record, whether one views this as more bad­jack­et­ing — or as anoth­er strange vis­it along the lines of Jeb & Pop­py’s many vis­its to Oba­ma’s White House.

A cou­ple more tid­bits about Broad­well’s back­ground and ambi­tions:
First, back in Jan­u­ary, Broad­well was doing a num­ber of TV inter­views to pro­mote her biog­ra­phy of Petraeus. It now report­ed that she was also try­ing to pro­mote her career more direct­ly by try­ing to get a per­ma­nent tv spot (so this would have pre­ced­ed her GOP Sen­ate-run offer in July). As one anony­mous source described it: “Some­thing seemed off. She was creepy”. There’s also a video of Broad­well giv­ing a speech where “My longterm goal had always been to become nation­al secu­ri­ty advi­sor”. So the pic­ture that’s emerg­ing about Broad­well is that she was will­ing to take very big risks and desired posi­tions of pow­er, influ­ence, and pos­si­bly celebri­ty sta­tus. Curi­ouser and curi­ouser...

Hell hath no fury like a fas­cist media empire scorned:

Roger Ailes report­ed­ly urged David Petraeus to run for pres­i­dent in 2011

Bob Wood­ward reports on record­ed con­ver­sa­tion in which a Fox News ana­lyst relayed offer from Ailes and Rupert Mur­doch
Ed Pilk­ing­ton in Wash­ing­ton

guardian.co.uk, Tues­day 4 Decem­ber 2012 13.39 EST

It has long been evi­dent to observers of the right-wing Fox News chan­nel that its cre­ator and cur­rent chair­man, Roger Ailes, likes to play king­mak­er with­in the Repub­li­can par­ty. Why else would he have employed no few­er than five poten­tial pres­i­den­tial can­di­dates as his on-air con­trib­u­tors?

But until this moment it was not ful­ly appre­ci­at­ed just how lit­er­al­ly he takes the role. Cour­tesy of an old-fash­ioned scoop from that doyen of scoop-meis­ters, Bob “Water­gate” Wood­ward of the Wash­ing­ton Post, we now know the extra­or­di­nary lengths the TV exec­u­tive is pre­pared to go to influ­ence the elec­toral process.

Wood­ward reveals that in 2011 Ailes dis­patched a Fox News ana­lyst to Afghanistan in a secret mis­sion to try to con­vince the then-com­man­der of US forces there, Gen­er­al David Petraeus, to enter the race for Repub­li­can pres­i­den­tial nom­i­na­tion. Had Petraeus not rebuffed the invi­ta­tion, and agreed to run, Ailes him­self was ready to stand down from his 16-year reign at Amer­i­ca’s dom­i­nant cable news net­work in order to man­age Petraeus’s pres­i­den­tial cam­paign.

Wood­ward fur­ther reveals that Rupert Mur­doch, chair­man of News Cor­po­ra­tion which owns the Fox News net­work, would have been will­ing to fund the gen­er­al’s White House bid had he decid­ed to stand.

The dis­cus­sion behind Wood­ward’s sto­ry takes place in the then-gen­er­al’s office in Kab­ul some time in ear­ly 2011, before Petraeus has accept­ed the job as CIA direc­tor from which he resigned last month in the wake of the scan­dal over his affair with his biog­ra­ph­er. On one side of the table is Petraeus, on the oth­er Kath­leen McFar­land, a Fox News nation­al secu­ri­ty ana­lyst who is act­ing as Ailes’s envoy.

McFar­land begins by promis­ing Petraeus absolute dis­cre­tion, say­ing that Ailes’s “deal with me was that I was only sup­posed to talk to you – and he is a lit­tle para­noid, so believe me.” How­ev­er, the 90-minute con­ver­sa­tion was record­ed, and a dig­i­tal copy of it some­how made its way into Wood­ward’s hands.

“I’ve got some­thing to say to you direct­ly from Roger Ailes,” McFar­land is cap­tured say­ing on the record­ing that has been post­ed in edit­ed form on the Wash­ing­ton Post web­site. “I’m not run­ning,” Petraeus snaps back.

McFar­land, a Pen­ta­gon advis­er to the Rea­gan admin­is­tra­tion, does not take no for an answer. The next time Petraeus is in New York, she says, he should come and “chat to Roger and Rupert Mur­doch”, to which Petraeus, for whom this con­ver­sa­tion is clear­ly not the first of its kind, replies: “Rupert’s after me as well.”

“Tell him if I ever ran … ” Petraeus laugh­ing­ly says as the meet­ing is wrap­ping up. “I’d take him up on his offer. He said he would quit Fox.”

McFar­land says that “the big boss” would “bankroll” the cam­paign – a clear ref­er­ence to Mur­doch. “The big boss is bankrolling it. Roger’s going to run it. And the rest of us are going to be your in-house.”

The Fox News chief tried to make light of the record­ing in a tele­phone inter­view with Wood­ward on Mon­day. “It was more of a joke, a wiseass way I have,” he said, before going on in time-hon­oured fash­ion to blame the mes­sen­ger – in this case McFar­land.

“She was way out of line. It’s some­one’s fan­ta­sy to make me a king­mak­er. It’s not my job.”

...

The Petraeus plot thick­ens:

WhoWhat­Why
EXCLUSIVE – Petraeus: the Plot Thick­ens
By Dou­glas Lucas and Russ Bak­er on Feb 5, 2013

Was the ambi­tious Gen­er­al David Petraeus tar­get­ed for take-down by com­pet­ing inter­ests in the US military/intelligence hierarchy—years before his abrupt down­fall last year in an adul­tery scan­dal?

Pre­vi­ous­ly unre­port­ed doc­u­ments ana­lyzed by WhoWhat­Why sug­gest as much. They pro­vide new insight into the scan­dalous extra­mar­i­tal romance that led to Petraeus’s res­ig­na­tion as CIA direc­tor in Novem­ber after sev­er­al years of rapid rise—going from a lit­tle-known gen­er­al to a prospec­tive pres­i­den­tial can­di­date in a stun­ning­ly brief time frame.

Among oth­er rev­e­la­tions the doc­u­ments show that:

-Petraeus was sus­pect­ed of hav­ing an extra­mar­i­tal affair near­ly two years ear­li­er than pre­vi­ous­ly known.

-Petraeus’s affair was known to for­eign inter­ests with a stake in a rag­ing pol­i­cy and turf bat­tle in which Petraeus was an active par­ty.

-Those pro­vid­ing the “offi­cial” nar­ra­tive of the affair—and an analy­sis of why it led to the unprece­dent­ed removal of America’s top spy­mas­ter— have been less than can­did with the Amer­i­can peo­ple.

...

That tracks with pub­lic dis­cus­sions of region­al pol­i­cy. But what is the inter­est of Strat­for in Yemen, besides gen­er­at­ing con­tent for its sub­scrip­tion newslet­ters? Accord­ing to its inter­nal emails, in 2010 the pri­vate intel­li­gence firm was pro­vid­ing cus­tom analy­sis on Yemen for its clients Nation­al Oil­well Var­co (a Hous­ton-based multi­na­tion­al which builds oil rigs), and Hunt Oil (for more on Ray Hunt—a mem­ber of Pres­i­dent George W. Bush’s For­eign Intel­li­gence Advi­so­ry Board—and his Mid­dle East­ern oper­a­tions, includ­ing in Iraqi Kur­dis­tan, see this.) Email ID 5300460, sent May 23, 2011, shows Stratfor’s work for Hunt Oil includ­ed cre­at­ing a data­base of inci­dents of vio­lence, with pre­cise infor­ma­tion such as GPS coor­di­nates. This is yet anoth­er reminder that where polit­i­cal strug­gles play out, the pur­suit of prof­it can­not be far afield.

...

This should be inter­est­ing: The source of the last year’s leak to the New York Times about the larg­er pro­gram that cre­at­ed the Stuxnet virus was a retired four star gen­er­al that devel­oped and over­saw the now-escaped Stuxnet pro­gram. He was appoint­ed vice-chair­man of the Joint Chiefs of staff in 2007 and was favored to become chair­man of the Joint Chiefs in 2011 but at the last minute it appears that ques­tions were raised about ‘how he over­saw his staff’ fol­low­ing an inves­ti­ga­tion into impro­pri­eties involv­ing a female aide (which he was lat­er cleared of). Repub­li­cans also report­ed referred to him as “Oba­ma’s gen­er­al” and he was passed up for Jack Dempsey in 2011. It was going to take one heck of a back sto­ry to out-crazy the Snow­den-leak saga. This one just might do it:

James Cartwright, Retired Gen­er­al, Tar­get­ed In Leak Probe: Reports

By PETE YOST 06/27/13 10:34 PM ET EDT, AP

WASHINGTON — A for­mer vice chair­man of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is under inves­ti­ga­tion for alleged­ly leak­ing clas­si­fied infor­ma­tion about a covert cyber­at­tack on Iran’s nuclear facil­i­ties, accord­ing to media reports.

Retired Marine Gen. James “Hoss” Cartwright has been told he is a tar­get of the probe, NBC News and The Wash­ing­ton Post report­ed Thurs­day. A “tar­get” is some­one a pros­e­cu­tor or grand jury has sub­stan­tial evi­dence link­ing to a crime and who is like­ly to be charged.

...

In June 2012, the New York Times report­ed that Cartwright was a cru­cial play­er in the cyber oper­a­tion called Olympic Games, start­ed under Pres­i­dent George W. Bush.

Bush report­ed­ly advised Pres­i­dent Barack Oba­ma to pre­serve Olympic Games.

Accord­ing to the Times, Oba­ma ordered the cyber­at­tacks sped up, and in 2010 an attack using a com­put­er virus called Stuxnet tem­porar­i­ly dis­abled 1,000 cen­trifuges that the Ira­ni­ans were using to enrich ura­ni­um.

Con­gres­sion­al lead­ers demand­ed a crim­i­nal probe into who leaked the infor­ma­tion, and Oba­ma said he had zero tol­er­ance for such leaks. Repub­li­cans said senior admin­is­tra­tion offi­cials had leaked the details to bol­ster the pres­i­den­t’s nation­al secu­ri­ty cre­den­tials dur­ing the 2012 cam­paign.

The Times said Cartwright was one of the cru­cial play­ers who had to break the news to Oba­ma and Vice Pres­i­dent Joe Biden that Stuxnet at one point had escaped onto the Inter­net.

An ele­ment of the pro­gram acci­den­tal­ly became pub­lic in the sum­mer of 2010 because of a pro­gram­ming error that allowed it to escape Iran’s Natanz plant and sent it out on the Inter­net, the Times report­ed. After the worm escaped onto the Inter­net, top admin­is­tra­tion offi­cials met to con­sid­er whether the pro­gram had been fatal­ly com­pro­mised.

Oba­ma asked if the pro­gram should con­tin­ue, and after hear­ing the advice of top advis­ers, decid­ed to pro­ceed.

Cartwright, a four-star gen­er­al, was cleared in Feb­ru­ary 2011 of mis­con­duct involv­ing a young aide. An anony­mous accuser had claimed Cartwright act­ed inap­pro­pri­ate­ly dur­ing a 2009 over­seas trip on which the aide trav­eled as a mil­i­tary assis­tant. Sev­er­al sources con­firmed that the for­mer aide was a young woman.

The Pen­ta­gon inspec­tor gen­er­al quick­ly cleared Cartwright of the most seri­ous alle­ga­tions, which involved claims that he may have had an improp­er phys­i­cal rela­tion­ship with the woman. The report did find that Cartwright mis­han­dled an inci­dent in which the aide, drunk and vis­i­bly upset, vis­it­ed his Tbil­isi, Geor­gia, hotel room alone and either passed out or fell asleep on a bench at the foot of his bed. Cartwright denied any impro­pri­ety and was lat­er cleared of all wrong­do­ing.

Cartwright, once con­sid­ered the lead­ing can­di­date to become Joint Chiefs of Staff chair­man, resigned from the mil­i­tary in August 2011.

NBC said Cartwright did not respond to request for com­ment and that his attor­ney, for­mer Oba­ma White House coun­sel Greg Craig, said he had no com­ment.

Also note that Cartwright has become one of the more out­spo­ken and cred­i­ble oppo­nents of the drone pro­gram, warn­ing against trans­fer­ring more drone oper­a­tions from the CIA to the mil­i­tary:

The New York Times
As New Drone Pol­i­cy Is Weighed, Few Prac­ti­cal Effects Are Seen
By MARK MAZZETTI and SCOTT SHANE
Pub­lished: March 21, 2013

CHICAGO — Under grow­ing pres­sure to bring greater trans­paren­cy and account­abil­i­ty to its use of tar­get­ed killing, the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion is strug­gling to trans­form a pro­gram that was con­ceived under pres­sure, has oper­at­ed in a secre­tive and often hap­haz­ard man­ner and has left the Unit­ed States increas­ing­ly iso­lat­ed even from its allies.

For months, Pres­i­dent Oba­ma and his aides have promised they will move to break down the wall of secre­cy and work with Con­gress to cre­ate a more last­ing legal frame­work for the drone strikes. But the only pro­pos­al to sur­face so far — an admin­is­tra­tion plan, not yet approved, to grad­u­al­ly move some drone oper­a­tions that are now run by the C.I.A. to the mil­i­tary — may have lit­tle prac­ti­cal effect, at least in the short term.

That only under­scores the prob­lem the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion faces in try­ing to insti­tu­tion­al­ize a pro­gram that nation­al secu­ri­ty offi­cials believe will be at the cen­ter of Amer­i­can war­fare for years to come, while pla­cat­ing a grow­ing cho­rus of crit­ics chal­leng­ing the tar­get­ed killing pro­gram on legal, moral and prac­ti­cal grounds.

In recent months, the crit­i­cism from human rights activists, Unit­ed Nations offi­cials and some friend­ly for­eign gov­ern­ments has been joined by a num­ber of for­mer senior Amer­i­can mil­i­tary and intel­li­gence offi­cials who argue that the costs of the drone pro­gram might exceed its ben­e­fits. In the lat­est exam­ple, Gen. James E. Cartwright, the for­mer vice chair­man of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and a favored advis­er dur­ing Mr. Obama’s first term, expressed con­cern in a speech here on Thurs­day that America’s aggres­sive cam­paign of drone strikes could be under­min­ing long-term efforts to bat­tle extrem­ism.

“We’re see­ing that blow­back,” Gen­er­al Cartwright, who is retired from the mil­i­tary, said at the Chica­go Coun­cil on Glob­al Affairs. “If you’re try­ing to kill your way to a solu­tion, no mat­ter how pre­cise you are, you’re going to upset peo­ple even if they’re not tar­get­ed.”

Gen­er­al Cartwright also expressed skep­ti­cism about the draft pro­pos­al to trans­fer some drone oper­a­tions to the mil­i­tary, say­ing that he wor­ried about a “blur­ring of the line” between sol­diers and spies if the Pen­ta­gon was put in charge of drone oper­a­tions in sov­er­eign coun­tries “out­side a declared area of hos­til­i­ty.” He said that if there are prob­lems with the drone pro­gram, mov­ing it “from one part of the gov­ern­ment to anoth­er” would not nec­es­sar­i­ly solve them.

Cur­rent­ly, the Pen­ta­gon has respon­si­bil­i­ty for drones in Afghanistan, Soma­lia and in Yemen, where the C.I.A. also runs a sep­a­rate pro­gram. Because the pro­pos­al being exam­ined by the Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil would most like­ly leave drone oper­a­tions in Pak­istan under the C.I.A., the prac­ti­cal impact of such a move in the short term would appear to be quite lim­it­ed. To date, the vast major­i­ty of Amer­i­can drone strikes and oth­er kinds of tar­get­ed coun­tert­er­ror­ism strikes out­side con­ven­tion­al wars have been car­ried out in Pak­istan, where the C.I.A. oper­ates on its own — 365 strikes, by the count of the Bureau of Inves­tiga­tive Jour­nal­ism in Lon­don, com­pared with about 45 in Yemen and a hand­ful in Soma­lia.

...

It’s also worth not­ing that Cartwright was appar­ent­ly an not espe­cial­ly liked by senior offi­cers, includ­ing Gen­er­al Petraeus, who believed Cartwright went behind their backs to cozy up to the White House and reject the con­sen­sus advise of the mil­i­tary and Defense Sec­re­tary Robert Gates:

The New York Times
Gen­er­al Is Cleared of Sex Accu­sa­tions
By THOM SHANKER
Pub­lished: Feb­ru­ary 23, 2011

WASHINGTON — The Marine Corps offi­cer who has been called Pres­i­dent Obama’s favorite gen­er­al — and one con­sid­ered a lead­ing can­di­date for chair­man of the Joint Chiefs of Staff — was inves­ti­gat­ed and cleared of accu­sa­tions that he had a sex­u­al rela­tion­ship with a sub­or­di­nate, accord­ing to doc­u­ments released Wednes­day.

The Pen­ta­gon inspec­tor gen­er­al ruled out any improp­er liai­son between the gen­er­al, James E. Cartwright, the vice chair­man of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and a young female offi­cer who served as his mil­i­tary aide.

But inves­ti­ga­tors ques­tioned Gen­er­al Cartwright’s judg­ment and com­mand style in deal­ing with the aide and rec­om­mend­ed admin­is­tra­tive action for two less­er infrac­tions: fail­ure to dis­ci­pline a sub­or­di­nate and fos­ter­ing an undu­ly famil­iar rela­tion­ship.

...

The inquiry exam­ined events in ear­ly 2009. Two years lat­er, Gen­er­al Cartwright is emerg­ing as a like­ly front-run­ner to replace Adm. Mike Mullen when he retires as chair­man of the Joint Chiefs of Staff on Oct. 1.

Gen­er­al Cartwright, a Marine Corps fight­er pilot who is among the Pentagon’s experts on com­put­er-net­work war­fare and mis­sile defense, was described by the jour­nal­ist Bob Wood­ward in his book, “Obama’s Wars,” as the president’s favorite gen­er­al.

But dur­ing the con­tentious review process that led to a new White House strat­e­gy for Afghanistan and Pak­istan, senior offi­cers — includ­ing Admi­ral Mullen and Gen. David H. Petraeus — were report­ed to have felt that Gen­er­al Cartwright went behind their backs to align him­self too close­ly with Vice Pres­i­dent Joseph R. Biden Jr. and oth­ers in the White House against the con­sen­sus advice of the mil­i­tary and Defense Sec­re­tary Robert M. Gates.

...

It does­n’t look like there’s going to be a short­age of pos­si­ble motives for the orig­i­nal leak or its even­tu­al pros­e­cu­tion.

Was David Petraeus the source of clas­si­fied doc­u­ments found on Paula Broad­well’s com­put­er? That’s what the FBI and Jus­tice Depart­ment are assert­ing:

The New York Times
F.B.I. and Jus­tice Dept. Said to Seek Charges for Petraeus

By MICHAEL S. SCHMIDT and MATT APUZZOJAN. 9, 2015

WASHINGTON — The F.B.I. and Jus­tice Depart­ment pros­e­cu­tors have rec­om­mend­ed bring­ing felony charges against David H. Petraeus, con­tend­ing that he pro­vid­ed clas­si­fied infor­ma­tion to a lover while he was direc­tor of the C.I.A., offi­cials said, leav­ing Attor­ney Gen­er­al Eric H. Hold­er Jr. to decide whether to seek an indict­ment that could send the pre-emi­nent mil­i­tary offi­cer of his gen­er­a­tion to prison.

The Jus­tice Depart­ment inves­ti­ga­tion stems from an affair Mr. Petraeus had with Paula Broad­well, an Army Reserve offi­cer who was writ­ing his biog­ra­phy, and focus­es on whether he gave her access to his C.I.A. email account and oth­er high­ly clas­si­fied infor­ma­tion.

F.B.I. agents dis­cov­ered clas­si­fied doc­u­ments on her com­put­er after Mr. Petraeus resigned from the C.I.A. in 2012 when the affair became pub­lic.

Mr. Petraeus, a retired four-star gen­er­al who served as com­man­der of Amer­i­can forces in both Iraq and Afghanistan, has said he nev­er pro­vid­ed clas­si­fied infor­ma­tion to Ms. Broad­well, and has indi­cat­ed to the Jus­tice Depart­ment that he has no inter­est in a plea deal that would spare him an embar­rass­ing tri­al. A lawyer for Mr. Petraeus, Robert B. Bar­nett, said Fri­day he had no com­ment.

The offi­cials who said that charges had been rec­om­mend­ed were briefed on the inves­ti­ga­tion but asked for anonymi­ty because they were not autho­rized to dis­cuss it.

Mr. Hold­er was expect­ed to decide by the end of last year whether to bring charges against Mr. Petraeus, but he has not indi­cat­ed how he plans to pro­ceed. The delay has frus­trat­ed some Jus­tice Depart­ment and F.B.I. offi­cials and inves­ti­ga­tors who have ques­tioned whether Mr. Petraeus has received spe­cial treat­ment at a time Mr. Hold­er has led a crack­down on gov­ern­ment offi­cials who reveal secrets to jour­nal­ists.

The pro­tract­ed process has also frus­trat­ed Mr. Petraeus’s friends and polit­i­cal allies, who say it is unfair to keep the mat­ter hang­ing over his head. Sen­a­tor John McCain, Repub­li­can of Ari­zona, wrote to Mr. Hold­er last month that the inves­ti­ga­tion had deprived the nation of wis­dom from one of its most expe­ri­enced lead­ers.

“At this crit­i­cal moment in our nation’s secu­ri­ty,” he wrote, “Con­gress and the Amer­i­can peo­ple can­not afford to have his voice silenced or cur­tailed by the shad­ow of a long-run­ning, unre­solved inves­ti­ga­tion marked by leaks from anony­mous sources.”

Since his res­ig­na­tion from the C.I.A. on Nov. 10, 2012, Mr. Petraeus has divid­ed his time between teach­ing, mak­ing lucra­tive speech­es and work­ing as a part­ner in one of the world’s largest pri­vate-equi­ty firms, Kohlberg Kravis Roberts.

Mr. Hold­er has said lit­tle pub­licly about the inves­ti­ga­tion. The F.B.I. direc­tor, James B. Comey, asked by reporters in Decem­ber why it was tak­ing so long, said: “I can’t say. I mean, I guess I could say, but I won’t say.”

Marc Rai­mon­di, a Jus­tice Depart­ment spokesman, declined to com­ment on the inves­ti­ga­tion.

At a news con­fer­ence short­ly after Mr. Petraeus resigned, Pres­i­dent Oba­ma said he had no evi­dence that Mr. Petraeus had dis­closed clas­si­fied infor­ma­tion “that in any way would have had a neg­a­tive impact on our nation­al secu­ri­ty.”

“We are safer because of the work that Dave Petraeus has done,” Mr. Oba­ma said, refer­ring to his career in gov­ern­ment. “And my main hope right now is — is that he and his fam­i­ly are able to move on and that this ends up being a sin­gle side note on what has oth­er­wise been an extra­or­di­nary career.”

But inves­ti­ga­tors con­clud­ed that, whether or not the dis­clo­sure harmed nation­al secu­ri­ty, it amount­ed to a sig­nif­i­cant secu­ri­ty breach in the office of one of the nation’s most trust­ed intel­li­gence lead­ers. They rec­om­mend­ed that Mr. Petraeus face charges, say­ing low­er-rank­ing offi­cials had been pros­e­cut­ed for far less.

...