Why is extramarital affairs cause for resignation?

[LC_Strawhouse]

Details are slow to come out but this whole thing apparently started from an investigation into someone hacking into his email, which turned out to be her. The news stories also seem to hint between the lines that there was some kind of stalking going on.

[Leaffan]

@LC_Strawhouse

Details are slow to come out but this whole thing apparently started from an investigation into someone hacking into his email, which turned out to be her. The news stories also seem to hint between the lines that there was some kind of stalking going on.

Apparently I was the one jumping to conclusions. There’s more to this story than I heard reported yesterday and I apologize.

[EasyPhil]

@LC_Strawhouse

Details are slow to come out but this whole thing apparently started from an investigation into someone hacking into his email, which turned out to be her. The news stories also seem to hint between the lines that there was some kind of stalking going on.

The FBI now investigates people hacking into GMail accoiunts? What level does the hacking have to rise to for the FBI to get involved?

[drachillix]

@Leaffan

I’m on Stoneburg’s side with this. The USA makes a much bigger deal with this than the rest of the world. You’re going to be blackmailed because you boinked someone else while married? I can’t even make sense of that.

Politicians and public figures in the rest of the world are still allowed to have private lives.

A More elaborate example:

I am the head of the CIA, a very well paying high responsibility job. I have access to information about all manner of foreign covert operations. I have a team of people who can pretty much find out anything about anyone in the world with sufficient time and allocation of resources.

I am married

and you know of my affair…

and you know how to contact my wife.

and you happen to be a north korean intelligence operative.

So you step into line at Starbucks one day right behind me and hand me an envelope containing a note that demands that I turn over a list of any covert operatives in N Korea or you pass on these lovely 8x10’s along with a video of me banging some coed like a screen door in a hurricane to my wife.

The wife will most likely (and justifiably) open a very messy, very expensive divorce, probably to the tune of millions by the time we get done with selling the house, spousal support, child support, legal fees, etc..

or I copy a few names and addresses and hand it to this guy at Starbucks next week. Several members of my operation will probably be killed if I do…but it will be very difficult to prove I was the leak. After all they are covert agents in a hostile country, this was always a possibility, maybe I could get away with it and save myself a messy divorce.

[drachillix]

@EasyPhil

The FBI now investigates people hacking into GMail accoiunts? What level does the hacking have to rise to for the FBI to get involved?

Hacking the personal email of a high level government official perhaps.

[John_Mace]

@Leaffan

I’m on Stoneburg’s side with this. The USA makes a much bigger deal with this than the rest of the world. You’re going to be blackmailed because you boinked someone else while married? I can’t even make sense of that.

Politicians and public figures in the rest of the world are still allowed to have private lives.

Plenty of politicians and public figures weather this storm. Witness Bill Clinton.

But the head of the CIA is in a different category due to the security clearance and the blackmail issue. And those are 2 distinct things-- someone having a secret affair is a security risk, blackmail or no.

[DSeid]

Some additional details.

Associates of Petraeus had received “anonymous harassing emails” that were then traced to Broadwell, ABC’s Martha Raddatz reported, suggesting she may have found their names or addresses in his e-mail.
The e-mail account was apparently Petraeus’s personal Gmail, not his official CIA e-mail, according to the Wall Street Journal. That’s a big deal: Some of the most powerful foreign spy agencies in the world would love to have an opening, however small, into the personal e-mail account of the man who runs the United States’ spy service. The information could have proved of enormous value to foreign hackers, who already maintain a near-constant effort to access sensitive U.S. data.
If Petraeus allowed his Gmail security to be compromised even slightly, by widening access, sharing passwords or logging in from multiple addresses, it would have brought foreign spy agencies that much closer to a treasure trove of information. As the Wall Street Journal hints, investigators were concerned about Petraeus’s Gmail access precisely because of the history of foreign attempts to access just such accounts … A 2010 Chinese infiltration of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce ended up funneling weeks of corporate data; even after the chamber thought it had reestablished security, it discovered that an office printer and a corporate apartment thermostat were still sending data – who knows what kind? – back to China. You have to wonder what a similar infiltration into the private e-mail account of the director of the Central Intelligence Agency might have turned up.
Of course, the CIA director is not the Chamber of Commerce, which may explain why the FBI’s counter-intelligence monitoring is so sensitive that just Broadwell’s access to his Gmail account triggered an investigation. But the fact that the FBI looked so hard and so carefully – and that Petraeus lost his directorship of the CIA over an intrusion that many of us might consider minor or even routine – underscores the potential risk to U.S. intelligence entailed in Petraeus’s, or Broadwell’s, alleged misuse of his personal account.

[Leaffan]

@drachillix

A More elaborate example:

I am the head of the CIA, a very well paying high responsibility job. I have access to information about all manner of foreign covert operations. I have a team of people who can pretty much find out anything about anyone in the world with sufficient time and allocation of resources.

I am married

and you know of my affair…

and you know how to contact my wife.

and you happen to be a north korean intelligence operative.

So you step into line at Starbucks one day right behind me and hand me an envelope containing a note that demands that I turn over a list of any covert operatives in N Korea or you pass on these lovely 8x10’s along with a video of me banging some coed like a screen door in a hurricane to my wife.

The wife will most likely (and justifiably) open a very messy, very expensive divorce, probably to the tune of millions by the time we get done with selling the house, spousal support, child support, legal fees, etc..

or I copy a few names and addresses and hand it to this guy at Starbucks next week. Several members of my operation will probably be killed if I do…but it will be very difficult to prove I was the leak. After all they are covert agents in a hostile country, this was always a possibility, maybe I could get away with it and save myself a messy divorce.

Yeah, I get that. Read post 18, and then 22.

[sleestak]

In addition to the blackmail issue, having an affair shows a serious judgement issue. If you are a pol or have a security clearence, making the assumption that you can have an affair and not get caught is rather stupid.

He knew, going into the affair, that getting caught would bring a media shit storm and put the president in a bad situation. It is well known what happens when affairs get exposed.

Maybe he really loves the woman. If that is the case, do it right. Get divorced and then start the relationship. Instead he had an affair that risked his marriage, his job and the political fallout. That is dumb.

Slee

[EasyPhil]

Is anyone wondering how monumentally stupid it is for the CIA director is using GMail for personal email? This just doesn’t make any sense.

[DSeid]

What should he use for personal e-mail? His CIA account?

The issue is that he was sloppy. His lover got access and used it for reasons that are unclear to harass his associates because he did not follow reasonable security precautions for someone in his position.

Maybe he could weather an admitted affair, maybe not, but that sort of sloppiness at his level? No.

Now in the old days she would have just gone missing before it reached that point!

[EasyPhil]

@DSeid

What should he use for personal e-mail? His CIA account?

The issue is that he was sloppy. His lover got access and used it for reasons that are unclear to harass his associates because he did not follow reasonable security precautions for someone in his position.

Maybe he could weather an admitted affair, maybe not, but that sort of sloppiness at his level? No.

Now in the old days she would have just gone missing before it reached that point!

How about an email account where he owns the domain and uses encryption? These things aren’t that expensive and if you the head of the top spy agency in US you would think he would know this. This is the reason he should be resigning, he’s not security savvy.

[BMalion]

She better be hot.

[Lust4Life]

Its a pity, he’s a very switched on person IMO, but he slipped up so had to bite the bullet.

[YogSothoth]

I also think its kind of a stupid thing to do, the resigning.

Look, all Petraeus had to do in order to avoid blackmail was come out and say he was cheating, and he doesn’t regret it and that it won’t impact his job to get some from the outside once in a while. CIA Director isn’t an elected job, so he doesn’t have to win any votes. He could just be out with his womanizing.

[mhashi22]

What about the president of the United States? Or is oral sex under the desk while you’re on the phone with foreign dignitaries just sex and not an extramarital affair? I would think that blackmail and leaked information would be just as much of a security issue in the Oval Office, yet there was no talk of resignation with Clinton. Yes, that was just his personal business and none of ours

[AK84]

@Alessan

Patreus was the best American general sonce Korea, and as far as I know was doing a fine job in the CIA. He’s a great man, and great men have great faults. You can’t have one withou the other.

If Patreus was the best since Korea, then the US has had really bad luck in generals for 60 years.
An extra marital affair cam certainly be a cause for resignation if it calls into question your ability to do your work in a proper manner. If your lover uses your private email account to harass your collegues, then that certainly calls into question your ability.

[5_time_champ]

@BMalion

She better be hot.

Not too bad, Holly Petraeus and Paula Broadwell She did 59 pushups in a competition with Jon Stewart on the Daily Show back in January, in that very outfit. Said she could do 100 easily.

And according to Wikipedia, Paula Broadwell just turned 40 yesterday [November 9]. Helluva 40th birthday. :eek:

[BMalion]

Helloooo.

[Leaffan]

@5_time_champ

Not too bad, Holly Petraeus and Paula Broadwell She did 59 pushups in a competition with Jon Stewart on the Daily Show back in January, in that very outfit. Said she could do 100 easily.

And according to Wikipedia, Paula Broadwell just turned 40 yesterday [November 9]. Helluva 40th birthday. :eek:

Well, I’d be standing at attention too.