The reason they continued investigating is because due to the specificity of her emails regarding people who had been in and out of MacDill / SOCOM / CENTCOM, they worried that 1) there was a mole in SOCOM, or 2) Petraeus’ email had been hacked. They still had cause to investigate, which is when they found out that the email had not been hacked and that he was having an affair. The reason they’re still investigating is because Broadwell was found to have classified materials on her laptop, which she did not obtain while on active duty, and they are trying to find out where that information came from. Also, she appears to have leaked classified information about Benghazi during a forum at Denver University a short time ago. So their investigation is not complete by any means.
Also:
This is not true. The FBI did have a warrant to access her email. At that point they were investigating a cyber harassment case against her which they had evidence she was the culprit of.
Kelley receives harassing emails from a dummy account.
FBI investigates said emails for cyber harassment and finds a startling number of detailed accounts of daily activity at MacDill, worries there is a mole in the base.
FBI investigation shows that Broadwell is the sender of the email, dumps her email account, finds correspondence to Petraeus of a sexual nature.
FBI worries Petraeus’ email security has been compromised, interviews Broadwell and Petraeus who both confirm affair.
Broadwell consents to a search of her laptop, where unauthorized classified information is discovered.
Petraeus denies providing the information to Broadwell.
FBI raids Broadwell’s residence, likely in search of additional unauthorized classified materials.
Does that all make a little more sense as to why the FBI is involved?
In the coverage I’ve seen the figure is being used in the context of “20,000 to 30,000 pages of documents, mostly email, with potentially inappropriate communications” and not “30,000 individual emails”.
In the way computer forensics are done they might get 5 pages of text for a small jpg attachment in a one line email if they are viewing the raw data. And a 10mb powerpoint attachment loaded with funny internet memes could be hundreds of pages to review.
But no matter how you look at it, it was a lot of emails. Let’s say the actual number of individual emails was 1,500 total - that would still be two a day, every day, for two years straight.
This is true of any conduct a person would be ashamed of if it was made public - like taking hardcore x-rated pics of yourself. Should people be made to resign for that, too? After all, lots of people could be blackmailed by threats to reveal a shameful pic taken when the ‘general’ was a dumb teen (or yesterday).
Again, nobody is made to resign for the action. It’s a problem if and when you are willing to lie about it. That’s the threshold when you are being investigated for a security clearance. It’s not the activity. It’s the desire to lie about it.
He had to resign because he was the head of the CIA and appointed by President Obama. Obama was elected to another four years as President just a little over a week ago. It was an embarrassing defeat for the Republicans. The president had to be embarrassed somehow. This was the first real chance. The irony is that Patraeus is a Republican.
FBI gets involved because the recipient of the emails knows an agent, and cyber harassment is a federal crime.
He sends shirtless pictures because he is a dumbass.
Actually, while he was on Active Duty in the Army, the conduct of having an affair is an offense under the UCMJ. So, yes, the conduct itself was a problem.
I’m sure they’d just jump onto the scene if you or I called. It’s still unclear why this got such quick attention. Well, it’s not totally unclear, but it’s not obvious that they would automatically be involved.
Yeah, but at least he has plenty of company in this mess!
Yes I know that. But all accounts now are saying that the affair began after his move to the agency. The question was “why did he have to resign from the CIA” not “would he have been court martialed if it began while he was still in the army”.
I mentioned earlier that the UCMJ has prohibitions on adultery, in addition to a whole host of personal activity. Gen Allen is facing court martial if the investigation currently being done on him results in evidence that he was having an affair.
Also we were discussing the affair in the context of his job now and his clearance and why the affair is important to maintaining his clearance.
In this context “lie” means “not specifically tell the authorities”, right?
I have no idea if this guy was asked by his superiors “are you having an affair?” and he said “no sir”. Let’s assume for the moment that did not happen. Is there a duty to draw to the attention of the authorities any personal secret one would be ashamed to reveal?
The intel community has a very broad definition of deception. You won’t catch them on a technicality and be allowed to keep your clearance just because you wave around and say “aha! But you didn’t specifically ask me if I was having an affair!”
He went to great lengths to keep his relationship a secret. They caught him. He wasn’t actually fired so we can’t debate whether that was appropriate. But his clearance was done the moment he created fake email addresses to disguise communication with his mistress.
The problem with this policy should be obvious: there isn’t a human alive who has nothing they would be ashamed to reveal publicly. Or if there are, they are pretty few. And those few may not be the best leaders.
Plus the self-referential problem of instantly transforming any personal secret one has failed to reveal to the authorities into a source of career-ending blackmail - exacerbating the very problem the policy was intended to resolve.
Then you’re misunderstanding, still. If you fess up to it during your interview, you are fine. It being available to your clearance investigator is not the same thing as it being available to the public.
Nobody is expected to be infallible. They’re just expected to expose their secrets to the people who grant clearances to make sure they’re not willing to lie in the context of their job. You seem to be imagining that there is a small periodical in which the various intelligence agencies publish the new scoop on all their workers. This isn’t the case.
Once again for emphasis.
It’s not the action that is the problem. It’s whether or not you are willing to be deceptive to the people who grant your clearance that is the problem.
I don’t really care if you like it. It’s just how it works, and it doesn’t work as poorly as you imagine.
