A Petraeus Puzzle: Were Politics Involved?

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POLITICS - The director of the CIA has resigned over an extra-marital affair two days after a Presidential election in which the Agency’s role in Libya was of burning concern—what is really going on here?

There seem to be some potentially fascinating political aspects of this story that have yet to be explored. Why, for instance, did this news explode publicly when it did?

Both the New York Times and the Washington Post report that the FBI had found, after months of investigation, that neither retired General David Petraeus, now the former director of the CIA, nor the woman with whom he was evidently involved, his biographer Paula Broadwell, had broken any laws.

Congressional intelligence officials reportedly want to know why they were not informed earlier that the FBI was investigating Petraeus. But what I am wondering is why, if the FBI had indeed concluded that they had no criminal case, this matter was brought to anyone’s attention at all.

The investigation apparently began when another woman Petraeus knew—the AP identified her as Jill Kelley, a Florida woman with connections to the military—complained about harassing e-mails, which turned out to have been from Broadwell. It’s not yet clear how directly the e-mails involved Petraeus.

As an official told the Wall Street Journal, “This investigation wasn’t about the CIA director, it was about what looked like a cyber crime.” In this case, like any other, the official went on, “There are strict rules, there is a wall, about sharing information on ongoing criminal investigations.” (Read the rest … including the political dynamic to the Petraeus puzzle … here)

-cw

(Jane Mayer is a reporter and feature writer for The New Yorker. Her most recent book is The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How The War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals)

CityWatch

Vol 10 Issue 91

Pub: Nov 13, 2012