He says that now, but he apparently remained in office several months while knowing that this inquiry was going on. To me, that strips a little of the gloss off the idea that he recognized himself as a role model.
Why? Just because he didn’t resign immediately when they questioned him about what happened? At what point, for you, would the timing of his resignation have been appropriate to indicate that he still viewed his position as one in which he was obligated to be a role model?
I think once he learned that his affair had created a security problem, then it’s interfering with his role – and hence his ability to be a role model. As it is, the timing makes it look like he only decided to resign once he knew the problem was going public, and that before that he was trying to hunker down, hope it wouldn’t get much attention, and hold on to his job.
Nobody said he was a good role model. Just that his position has the obligation to be one.
Sure, if there is a question of the guy being turned traitor, that’s a serious public interest.
However, there doesn’t appear to be any realistic evidence that this guy was at risk for being a traitor. In this case the lover was his biographer, not an enemy agent.
My point is that if the concern is that someonce can be “turned” by being “compromised”, that risk is increased the greater the punishment imposed for the offence of having an affair. If the person’s job is on the line, he or she is easier to compromise - if it is not, if it is merely an embarrasment, the blackmail threat loses its sting.
I don’t find the notion that the fact that a CIA director is found to be having an affair will lower the esteem the CIA is held in, or that a general having an affair will lower the esteem that the military has, to be reasonable.
The public realises that people in such postitions are human, subject to human weaknessess. If those weaknesses are screwing up their occupations, that’s one thing.
The issue then becomes “what if he said ‘I will not resign’”?
There is equally no reason to believe that people who are adulterers make bad generals or CIA chiefs. That seems to be in the realm of unproved assertions.
What appears to be the case from historical is that powerful and successful people sometimes have an irrational prediliction for screwing around, and that this has no necessary correspondence whatsoever with ability.
You’re still not addressing the integrity issue. You keep wanting to pretend that it’s the punishment for the affair that is the problem, that isn’t true. I know a ton of people in the intel community who have had affairs, as long as their supervisors are aware of them, there is no problem with them keeping their clearances and their jobs. They just can’t be keeping it a secret from the organization that issues their security clearance.
When you do keep it a secret, you are opening yourself up to blackmail because you never intended for the information to go public. That is a concern. On top of that, he has a responsibility to maintain the integrity portion of the CIA and military value system. There is a lot of weight put in being able to trust people you work with in that community, living an entirely secret life does not leave people feeling like you are very trustworthy.
The CIA could care less what you do in your private life, as long as you are honest about it when questioned and you don’t have anything that leaves you vulnerable to manipulation such as a big secret that you don’t want anyone to know about. Creating fake email addresses to communicate to your mistress via deleted draft emails is a good indication that you didn’t want that information to go public. And when you are investigated and found out, that agency has a lot of reasons to believe you lack personal and professional integrity.
Seriously.
It’s not the affair. It’s the lying.
Wait, now I’m confused.
I thought by “integrity” you meant the lack of integrity one shows by cheating on one’s spouse. That shows a lack of “integrity” in that one is being a lying cheater towards one’s spouse, bringing the organization into disrepute because one sets a bad example of morality for subordinates … or at least, that’s what I thought you were arguing.
Now you appear to be saying being a cheating SOB is a-okay as long as you tell the authorities, and the real issue is lack of honesty - not to your spouse, but to the CIA or military.
Does a general who cheats on his or her spouse (but tells the authorities about it so s/he can’t be blackmailed) demonstrate “integrity” and provide a good public relations example “acting as the public face of the organization”?
I don’t think they’re mutually exclusive, but that is because he is the director of the CIA and not some low level lackey. The affair in and of itself is not a terminable offense for anyone. Like I said, if you were going to see this through the lens of “how would the CIA treat anyone in this position” they would not care if he had an affair, they would care that he took pains to hide his relationship. That would mean that anyone would be risking their job because they carried out a secret relationship that threatened their security clearance. I have personally known people in this situation who risked their clearances due to illicit affairs.
The other side of the situation is that he is the director of the CIA, and held to a higher moral standard than the low level lackey of the first example. While low level lackey might get to keep his job by fessing up (maybe), the director of the CIA is the face of the organization. An organization who relies on integrity to operate effectively, and almost any government official who is found to be having an affair are typically quietly asked to leave and do what’s best for their families. See: Elliot spitzer, Anthony Weiner, etc.
You seem to want to focus on the issue that sex outside the marriage does not necessarily make one unfit for their position. I don’t disagree with that on its face, but in the context of the situation I think it most certainly does. He has a long military career which relies on the professional and personal integrity of its leaders to effectively run the service. The UCMJ has extensive regulations surrounding personal behavior because the expectation is that you reflect the military 100% of the time and should behave accordingly 100% of the time as though you are the face of the organization. When he moved over to the CIA the requirement for personal integrity didn’t magically disappear as long as he does a good job for the agency. As the director of the CIA, his behavior was not acceptable because he 1) carried out an affair which violated his personal integrity, and 2) he hid it from his organization which violates the honesty required for his professional integrity to remain intact. A lesser person may have been able to recover, because that person wasn’t the face of the organization. Petraeus has built his career on his reputation as a straight edge, morally infallible kind of guy. You can see that in how shocked the community was to hear of the affair, like the FBI being willing to believe it was more likely that his email had been hacked than it was that he was having an affair.
In this situation, I think it’s appropriate that he resign. He knows he is a role model, he knows his integrity has been tarnished and his reputation harmed. It’s not appropriate for him to say “screw you guys, I’m staying”. He knows well enough not to do that.
:dubious: We’re talking about the CIA. Espionage is no career for anyone but liars.
He had to resign because he had shown himself to be a dumbfuck. First, he forgot about security precedents like the Profumo affair. Second, if he had gotten divorced before taking up with his fangrrrl nobody would have cared. Third, he put it in the crazy. All dumbfuck moves that, taken together, demonstrated that he was not fit for his job.
Yes, but you’re supposed to be lying to people outside the CIA. Once you start lying to people inside the CIA, you’re a liability.
Anyway, it appears I was wrong about the whole “Why wouldn’t you investigate” bit: there was only a single, oblique reference to Petraeus and no threats, so the FBI shouldn’t have had the power to take it any further.
Basically, this is a massive clusterfuck worthy of Jerry Springer. As I understand it:
Broadwell was having an affair with Petraeus, and Kelley was flirting with another general.
Broadwell sends Kelley jealous emails (thinking she’s also having an affair with Petraeus), which Kelley might have assumed were about her flirting with General Allen.
Kelley talks to a friend in the FBI, who convinces his organisation to investigate who sent these emails. His motive was seemingly to get into her pants, as he allegedly also sent her shirtless photos and is now under investigation by the internal affairs branch of the FBI.
The FBI shows a complete disregard for their legal and moral obligations, starting by finding out that the emails came from Broadwell without any kind of warrant or any reason to believe a crime had been committed. Then they read through tens of thousands of pages of communications between Kelley and Allan and between Broadwell and Petraeus, again, without justification.
Only then do they discover the affair between Broadwell and Petraeus.
Now what would be really nice is if this bit the FBI and the surveillance state in the ass.
Ideally, he should have quit once he began having an affair. If he felt he was violated his personal and professional standards, he shouldn’t have waited until other people began investigating it. You can’t really tell yourself you’ll be a role model, but only after you get caught.
There’s another issue to consider here. Even if the intelligence community, the political sphere, and the general public don’t care if somebody’s having an affair, I think we can assume that in most cases the spouse is going to care and will not be happy about it. So that means that even if adultery has no wider repercussions, a person will still have a motive to conceal their affair. And that means they will be vulnerable to extortion. So somebody having an affair is a legitimate security concern.
NO.
A serving General would fall under the Uniform Code of Military Conduct.
Probably Article 134.
This part is what got me. The last news report I saw (CNN) said they now have nearly 30 thousand emails.
I haven’t sent 30,000 emails in my entire life. They should have fired the dumbass for failure to do his damned job. He didn’t have time.
How about this for a reason: The man, while a commanding officer, punished soldiers in his command for offenses covered under the UCMJ. One such offense is adultery. Since he’s a military type, I think this saying is on point: Live by the sword, die by the sword.
ETA: I just realized there’s a silly pun there.
Okay, that number has to be either counting every address in a multi-address E-mail or counting all the mass E-mails sent to the various contact lists, such as an “All Hands” (what’s the current Army terminology for that, anyway?) from the CG.
Did you read what I actually wrote? The affair isn’t the issue, nor is lying to your spouse. It’s the risk to your security clearance. When you start lying to your boss, your clearance is toast.
Ideally yes. Maybe he realized he was not living up to the standards that he expected of himself by maintaining his position. Maybe he was just an opportunist who thought he could ride the whole thing out and save his career. Either way, he obviously wasn’t behaving super ethically, so him leaving is the appropriate thing. Whenever it was that he happened to finally leave.