The abrupt resignation of CIA director David Petraeus was brought about by anonymous threatening e-mails that a woman “close to him” received, according to reports from multiple sources on Saturday. Initial reports suggested the FBI discovered that Mr. Petraeus was having the extramarital affair _ which led to his abrupt departure Friday _ after becoming concerned about a security breach involving his e-mails.
But U.S. officials said Saturday that Paula Broadwell, the woman with whom Mr. Petraeus was having the affair, sent the threatening e-mails to another woman who was so frightened that she approached the FBI for protection and for help tracking the sender. The identity of the female recipient and her connection with Ms. Broadwell were not immediately known. Ms. Broadwell, a 40-year-old graduate of the U.S. Military Academy and an Army Reserve officer, is co-author of a highly flattering biography of Mr. Petraeus, the 60-year-old retired four-star general, who earned acclaim for his leadership of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Officials said the sexual nature of Ms. Broadwell’s e-mails led investigators to conclude the Mr. Petraeus and Ms. Broadwell were having an affair and that Ms. Broadwell perceived the other woman as a threat to her relationship with Mr. Petraeus.
Mr. Petraeus has been married for 38 years to Holly Petraeus, the daughter of the West Point superintendent when he was a student at the New York school.
After realizing there was no security breach, Justice Department officials did not know how to handle the situation, The Washington Post reported. A senior intelligence official told the newspaper that the department notified James Clapper, the director of national intelligence, on Tuesday about the affair and that Mr. Clapper advised Mr. Petraeus to resign.
A senior government official told Reuters on Saturday that no evidence has turned up suggesting Mr. Petraeus had become vulnerable to espionage or blackmail. At this point, it appears unlikely that anyone will be charged with a crime as a result of the investigation, the official said.
Other officials noted earlier that extramarital affairs involving senior intelligence community officials have traditionally been a source of great concern because of the potential of blackmail and are therefore normally considered to be a serious offence. They said any attempt by Mr. Petraeus to stay on in these circumstances could have sent the wrong message that such behaviour was now acceptable.
The New York Times reported Saturday that the woman who complained about the harassing messages from Ms. Broadwell was not a family member or in the government. It quoted unnamed officials as saying the nature of the other woman’s relationship with Mr. Petraeus was not immediately known. But the officials said the two women seemed to be competing for Mr. Petraeus’ loyalty, if not his affection.
Mr. Petraeus, 60, assumed his role as CIA director in September, 2011, after retiring from his military command role in Afghanistan where he is known for adding a surge of U.S. troops to the war, changing the way troops battle insurgents, and boosting efforts to train Afghan soldiers and police to fight the Taliban. He had achieved similar success earlier in Iraq.
Members of Congress said Saturday they want answers to questions about the affair that led to Mr. Petraeus’ resignation.
House intelligence committee chairman Mike Rogers, a Republican from Michigan, and ranking member Dutch Ruppersberger, a Democrat from Maryland, will meet Wednesday with FBI deputy director Sean Joyce, and CIA acting director Michael Morell to ask questions, including how the investigation came about, according to a senior congressional staffer who spoke anonymously because he was not authorized to discuss the investigation publicly.
Ms. Broadwell, who is married with two young sons, has not responded to multiple e-mails and phone messages, according to The Associated Press. Ms. Broadwell planned to celebrate her 40th birthday party in Washington this weekend, with many reporters invited. But her husband e-mailed guests to cancel the event late Friday.
AP also reported that CIA officers long had expressed concern about Ms. Broadwell’s unprecedented access to the director. She frequently visited the spy agency’s headquarters in Langley, Va., to meet Mr. Petraeus in his office, accompanied him on his punishing morning runs around the CIA grounds and often attended public functions as his guest, according to two former intelligence officials.
As a military intelligence officer in the Army Reserve, Ms. Broadwell had a high security clearance, which she mentioned at public events as one of the reasons she was well suited to write Mr. Petraeus’ story.
But her access was unsettling to members of the secretive and compartmentalized intelligence agency, where husbands and wives often work in different divisions, but share nothing with each other when they come home because they don’t “need to know.”
Here are five key things about the affair and the other players involved, compiled by The Globe and Mail.
The investigation:
Rumours about an affair had followed the general for several years, according to current and former U.S. military officials, but the facts came to light following an investigation into security breaches by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
The FBI was alerted that Ms. Broadwell may have had access to Mr. Petraeus’ e-mails. The agency began to monitor Ms. Broadwell’s e-mails, and that’s when the affair was discovered, according to officials who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity.
Law enforcement officials told The Washington Post that the inquiry began several weeks ago, at least, and that Mr. Petraeus was interviewed by investigators about two weeks ago. Investigators initially thought they were dealing with a “routine harassment case,” The Washington Post learned, until they traced some e-mails to a private account belonging to Mr. Petraeus.
The White House was notified about the affair on Wednesday – one day after President Barack Obama’s re-election – but the President himself did not hear about it until Thursday morning when Mr. Petraeus met with him, asking for permission to resign.
Mr. Obama accepted the resignation on Friday afternoon and released a statement saying Mr. Petraeus had provided “extraordinary service to the United States for decades” with “intellectual rigour, dedication and patriotism.” He credited Mr. Petraeus with making the United States “safer and stronger.”
A congressional staffer spoke to the Associated Press on the condition of anonymity to say that the Senate and House intelligence committees were briefed on Mr. Petraeus’ resignation only after the news broke out in the media.
Two anonymous law enforcement officials told the Washington Post that an investigation into the affair will likely not result in charges of criminal wrongdoing by Mr. Petraeus or Ms. Broadwell.
The unfortunate timing:
After the Sept. 11 attacks on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi which killed four people, including the American ambassador to Libya, the White House Administration and the CIA came under attack for possible lapses in intelligence and security.
CIA officials were accused of advising administration officials to say the Benghazi attack was a film protest, and not a militant terror attack, despite knowing that the attack was not connected to anti-Muslim film protests taking place in other parts of the Middle East.
Mr. Petraeus was supposed to testify on the attacks at closed congressional briefings next week. The CIA’s Deputy Director Michael Morell, who Mr. Obama has appointed as the spy agency’s acting director, is now expected to testify instead.
At the time of Mr. Petraeus’ appointment to the CIA, the Agence France-Press news agency reported that critics of the four-star general described him “as a hyper-ambitious ‘King David’ with designs on the presidency.”
The mistress – Paula Broadwell:
Ms. Broadwell wrote a biography of the general called All In: The Education of General David Petraeus. Her personal website has been taken down, but her author information on publisher Penguin’s site says that Ms. Broadwell is a PhD candidate at the University of London. She received a Masters degree in public administration from Harvard University. The Penguin biography also states that Ms. Broadwell has “more than a decade of military service and nearly two decades of work in counter-terrorism and counter-insurgency.”
The pair met in the spring of 2006 when Ms. Broadwell was a graduate student at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, The Associated Press reported Saturday. Mr. Petraeus was rewriting the U.S. military’s counter-insurgency manual at the time.. Ms. Broadwell asked if he could help with academic research and he gave her his card. While working on her dissertation, Ms. Broadwell learned that Mr. Petraeus was going to Afghanistan and she e-mailed to ask if she could join him. He consented and the dissertation evolved into a biographical book, co-authored by Washington Post editor Vernon Loeb.
When Ms. Broadwell’s book was published in January this year, many critics attacked it for being biased and lacking independent perspective. A Rolling Stones review criticized the book for leaving the reader with unanswered questions, and called it “blatant, unabashed propaganda.” When Ms. Broadwell appeared on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart to talk about her book, Mr. Stewart quipped: “`The real controversy here is: Is he awesome or incredibly awesome? It’s a nice portrait.”
On the show, Ms. Broadwell said she would often interview Mr. Petraeus while running six-minute miles with him. She also said that Mr. Petraeus’ nickname is Peaches – a name that has stuck since his high school days.
In a CBS interview, she said Mr. Petraeus “is a human and is challenged by the burdens of command.” She talked about being able to get “a special sneak peek” into Mr. Petraeus’s personal side that showed how compassionate he is about the sacrifices the military makes in Afghanistan.
On Twitter, Ms. Broadwell describes herself as a “National Security Analyst; Army Vet; Women’s Rights Activist; Runner/Skier/Surfer; Wife; Mom!”
The wife – Holly Petraeus, née Hollister Knowlton:
The wife of the four-star general met her husband of 38 years when he was a cadet at West Point. Ms. Petraeus’ father was a superintendent there. They have two grown children, and their son led an infantry platoon in Afghanistan. Ms. Petraeus is an assistant director at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, an organization set up to help members with financial problems. She blogs regularly on their website, often about money matters that affect military families directly.
The other spouse – Scott Broadwell
Ms. Broadwell is married to Scott Broadwell, an interventional radiologist, and they live in an upper-middle class neighbourhood in Charlotte, N.C., with their two sons, according to The Daily Beast.
On Friday night, Blake Hounshell, managing editor of Foreign Policymagazine, tweeted a link to what he called an “interesting letter.” The letter, published mid-July, was from a New York Times Magazine reader to their advice columnist. Titled My Wife’s Lover, the writer says he is aware of his wife having an extramarital affair with a high-profile government executive. The writer says he has watched the affair intensify over the last year and seeks advice on whether to acknowledge the relationship or ignore it.
The tweet has sparked speculations on social media that the letter writer may have been Mr. Broadwell himsellf. The magazine’s editor, Hugo Lindgren, has tweeted that fact-checking shows the column has no connection to the scandal.