I hope this tawdry business didn't keep Petraeus from completing his important Powerpoint presentations.
Petraeus sex'n'menaces webmail trail leads to NATO A'stan general
The top US Army commander in Afghanistan has been dragged into an investigation that led to the resignation of former CIA Director David Petraeus over an extramarital affair. General John Allen faces allegations of allegedly inappropriate communication with Jill Kelley, a central figure in the unfolding scandal. Kelley is a …
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Tuesday 13th November 2012 17:53 GMT Destroy All Monsters
What can you expect from a Prez that comes from Illinois?
"The agent is under investigation by the Office of Professional Responsibility over his conduct, which violated instructions by his superiors to leave the case alone"
"Professional Responsibility" is now "STFU, arsehole".
Obama's America - Even more smelley than Dubya's.
I wonder how many concrete shoes were handed out that we didn't hear about.
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Wednesday 14th November 2012 09:48 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: The haters are out again...
Strange indeed that the findings of an FBI investigation were published so openly. So for CIA, everything has to be really really secret, and when some tiny details leak out the FBI bravely leap into action. Then when they find some largely irrelevant but damaging dirt on the boss of the CIA it immediately is shared with the press.
Yet I see no press discussion of the implied politicking between the two organisations, that there has been a deliberate attempt to discredit Petraeus, nor any suggestion that the powers that be will attempt to find out who leaked the FBI findings to the press.
Have I got the wrong end of this?
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Wednesday 14th November 2012 10:00 GMT James Micallef
Re: The haters are out again...
Petraus just lucked in that the tensions in Iraq were dying down when he took over, and tribal leaders withdrew their support for Al Qaeda. The tactics might have helped but clearly were only a small part of the big picture since the exact same tactics clearly did not work in Afghanistan.
Petraus was being spun by teh US as a big military success because they simply can't admit what a complete omnishambles their conduct of operations in Iraq (and Afghanistan) was.
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Wednesday 14th November 2012 09:55 GMT James Micallef
Missing an important point
The story is missing an important and rather crucial point. The FBI, on the strength of a 'harassing email' complaint made by a woman, went on to delve into the email accounts of another woman, extract information about another email account, from this trace her relationship with an anonymous lover, and from there trace that the identity of that lover was Gen Petraus, ALL WITHOUT A WARRANT.
This is where the warrantless wiretapping has led. There was no reason 'a priori' for the FBI to believe that this was a particularly important case, they only followed it up in detail because Kelly had contacts within the FBI. So you can bet your bottom dollar that right at this moment, the FBI could be digging around into the communications of hundreds or even thousands of people, without a warrant, simply "to do a mate a favour"
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Monday 19th November 2012 06:34 GMT Michael Wojcik
Re: Missing an important point
This is where the warrantless wiretapping has led.
Well, more or less, broadly speaking; though really "wireless wiretapping" isn't an accurate term to cover all the extensions of the police state, or even just the erosions of privacy, in the US since 2001 and the start of the Global War On An Emotion.
And even prior to that, it's likely the FBI would have pried into the email accounts; they just would have been somewhat more limited in what they could legally do with what they found. (But they're old hands at taking illegal action.)
What might be more worrisome in this case is that Petraeus & Broadwell apparently thought their "email dead drop" scheme was something more than kid-sister security. He was head of the damn CIA, and that's how he protected a career-destroying secret. Either he couldn't perform the simplest of security assessments under a realistic threat model, or he couldn't perform a rational cost/benefit analysis. Either way it's disturbing.
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Wednesday 14th November 2012 17:37 GMT marc anton
BetrayUs
Isn't Petraus wellknown for years as BetrayUs? I think I read it first in TheReg, when he took over the Afgan command. In Biden was always dubbed as BiteUs...
Obviously people - even in "the wild", vulgo the public - did know the "special" character of those guys quite well, and for that without the FBI's help...
As the saying goes, fish mostly stinks from the head!
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Biting the hand that feeds IT
