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One of the mysteries in the Benghazi scandal has been the role of David Petraeus, who was then the Director of the CIA but was forced to resign in a personal scandal shortly thereafter. While the White House and State Department tried to cobble together talking points to explain away the terrorist attack that took four American lives, what did Petraeus do? According to new information reported for the first time by Jonathan Karl on ABC News’ This Week earlier this morning, Petraeus rejected the final version as “useless” —

FBI Visits Petraeus' Home, Sources Tell NBC News Pete Williams and M. Alex Johnson FBI agents visited the home of former CIA director David Petraeus on Friday, two sources with knowledge of their visit told NBC News. USA Today reported Friday that the agents went there to "interview" Petraeus, but it's unclear whether he was at his home in suburban Washington. Officials said the visit didn't indicate any new development in the FBI's months-long investigation into allegations that writer Paula Broadwell improperly received or stored classified documents while she was working on Petraeus' biography.

Obama gave his chief counterterrorism advisor, John Brennan, who is now the nominee to be the next leader of the CIA, a blank check. Brennan could do just about whatever he needed to do in North Africa and the Mideast, contend Murphy and Webb. Brennan chose to conduct a dangerous classified war without looping in Stevens, who paid with his life for his ignorance, according to the book. The Joint Special Operations Command, which Brennan controls, is a collection of special forces outside of the regular military command originally formed as a hostage-rescue team. But in the middle of last...

The Obama administration’s crackdown on leaks to the press has snared a high-profile conviction of an FBI linguist, who was sentenced to 20 months in prison Monday after pleading guilty to giving classified information to a blogger. The sentence for Shamai Leibowitz is likely to become the longest ever served by a government employee accused of passing national security secrets to a member of the media. His case represents only the third known conviction in U.S. history for a government official or contractor providing classified information to the press. And it reflects a surprising development: President Barack Obama’s Justice Department...

It’s a common refrain from the victor: elections have consequences. The victor then goes on to claim a mandate to do A or Z. It’s par for the course. The real question is whether elections have consequences for the media. As it turns out, the answer appears to be yes. On a whole host of issues, the mainstream media’s reporting seems to have a bit more balance, at least compared to the pre-election coverage of some of the campaign’s most important issues. The left will dismiss this as conservative sour grapes, but ask yourself whether you saw, heard or read...

As the spotlight shines on ex-CIA Director David Petraeus' biographer-turned-mistress Paula Broadwell, journalists have uncovered a speech in which she may have revealed classified information about the attack on a U.S. consulate in Benghazi. Broadwell told a Denver audience in October: "Now I don't know if a lot of you heard this, but the CIA annex [to the consulate] had taken a couple of Libyan militia members prisoner and they think that the attack on the consulate was an effort to try to get these prisoners back."The CIA adamantly denied her the claim, which would have been a violation of laws prohibiting CIA detention....

In October Paula Broadwell told an audience that the CIA in Benghazi "had taken a couple of Libyan militia members prisoner" at its secret annex. The CIA flatly denied the claim, saying that the agency "has not had detention authority since January 2009, when Executive Order 13491 was issued. Any suggestion that the Agency is still in the detention business is uninformed and baseless." Marc Thiessen of the American Enterprise Institute points out that the denial is factually incorrect because while Obama ordered the closure of all CIA detention facilities (i.e. “Black Sites”), the order states that it "does not...

“The intelligence community had it right, and they had it right early,” said chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence Rep. Mike Rogers (R., Mich.). The CIA “talking points” on Benghazi initially identified the attackers as al Qaeda or al Qaeda-linked terrorists but senior administration officials removed the reference, Rogers said on NBC’s Meet the Press.Meanwhile, White House deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes told reporters traveling with the president on Saturday that the White House made only minor changes in the first comments by a White House official on the Benghazi security scandal.“We were provided with points...

Photo Ben Curtis/AP The US ambassador in Libya and three other embassy staff were killed in a rocket attack after the diplomat's car was targeted in the eastern city of Benghazi, it was confirmed on Wednesday. A statement from President Obama "condemned the outrageous attack on our diplomatic facility in Benghazi, which took the lives of four Americans, including ambassador Chris Stevens". The president added: "Chris was a courageous and exemplary representative of the United States." Earlier, Libya's interior ministry confirmed that Stevens died in the attack. "The American ambassador and three staff members were killed when gunmen fired...

The news media are continuing to try to protect the Obama administration from a rapidly growing scandal. A November 13th article in The Washington Post by Scott Wilson argued that Obama “has been untouched by the unfolding investigation involving former CIA director David Petraeus,” a view that belongs on the opinion page under the heading, “wishful thinking,” not on the news pages.

Women love a man in a uniform. Men love a woman out of a uniform. Old verities stand affirmed by the intelligence that ousted the director of the Central Intelligence Agency. General David Petraeus commanded U.S. forces in Afghanistan. But what man is really in command when face-to-face with a determined Paula Broadwell? The author of the appropriately titled "All In" conquered Petraeus in a way that neither the Taliban nor al Qaeda could. Terrorists aren't the only ones who target generals. Broadwell gives new meaning to "hagiographer." The overused term, which 99 percent of the time tells us more...

What caused the Federal Bureau of Investigation to play the role of voyeur in the affair between David Petraeus and Paula Broadwell? We have been told that FBI agent Fred Humphries—the instigator of the original investigation into “threatening emails” sent by Broadwell to Jill Kelley–was concerned that secret documents might have been passed to or stolen by Broadwell. Yet the FBI made it clear that a breach of national security was NOT at issue in their investigation. “By late October, the FBI had concluded there was no national security breach and was only pursuing a criminal investigation of the harassing...

In late October, an FBI agent and whistleblower brought a story of possible Bureau corruption to Republican House Majority Leader, Eric Cantor. It was a story of Obama Regime operatives deliberately sacrificing the national security interests of the United States for the president’s political gain. And what did the Republican house leader do with that information which—10 days before the election–could have shown that Barack Obama placed his own political advantage above the security of the nation? Why naturally he took the story to just one person–Obama appointee, FBI Director Robert Mueller, the very man who would have been responsible...

If William Shakespeare were still with us, he would have found his Othello. David Petraeus is not the darkly handsome Moor of the Bard's tale, but a pallor, highly-decorated officer, a nerdy-looking guy with a comb-over. However, like the Moor, he fuses monumental courage with human frailty. Public stature often stands on clay feet. It's the rest of us who put the marble sculpture of celebrity on its pedestal. In spite of all the splendid attributes of competence, dignity and self-respect that accompanied the honorable and valiant Othello in his military career, he was merely mortal, an easy victim of...

The greatly anticipated testimony by former CIA Director David Petraeus is almost upon us. In less than half an hour, General Petraeus will be going behind closed doors to testify to before members of the House and Senate intelligence committees. Specifically, he will be asked about what he knew about the attack in Benghazi and when he knew it. According to CNN, Petraeus will also testify that the CIA was not responsible for the talking points used by Susan Rice when she famously went on five different Sunday talk shows and spread the false rumor that a video was responsible...

The resignation of CIA Director David Petraeus over an extramarital affair has raised and will continue to raise a number of questions. First among them (OK, maybe not first, national security being more important, but stay with me) is why should he have resigned? I am always amused when journalists use the words "sex scandal" when writing about such things. Having abandoned most standards for what used to be called "upright behavior," culture now "tsk-tsks" when someone is caught in a compromising position. Bill Clinton didn't have to resign after the Monica Lewinsky scandal. He lied about their assignations under...

Petraeus Scandal: Four Americans have been killed under still-unexplained circumstances, yet the obsession is with a general's mistress and not with the truth of why these men were left to die in Libya. How ironic that the FBI agents who descended on the home of Paula Broadwell to gather information on the mistress of now-former CIA Director David Petraeus probably did a better job than the FBI agents who gave a cursory look at our burned-out consulate in Benghazi, leaving behind classified documents strewn on the floor and even our ambassador's diary to be picked up by CNN. A press...

The reason for General David Petraeus’ sudden, forced resignation is as plain as the ass on a goat. Barack Obama wanted to discredit Petraeus, prejudice the American public against him and effectively intimidate the general into silence lest he spill the beans to congress about the Regime’s criminal activities of providing arms, fighters and support to Syrian terror groups from the Chris Stevens-managed, Benghazi mission. Of course, Obama also didn’t want anyone “in-the-know” testifying about his treacherous betrayal of Stevens and 3 other Americans as he deliberately offered them up to al Qaeda killers. A dead Regime operative can never...

While Secretary of State Hillary Clinton boozes it up in Australia and the Pentagon grapples with more floozy eruptions, outraged military families are still waiting for answers about the forgotten 9/14 attack on Camp Bastion. Muckrakers and distraction engineers are having a front-page field day with the so-called "sex scandal." But for surviving relatives and colleagues of heroic Marine Lt. Col. Christopher Raible and Sgt. Bradley Atwell, it's the national security scandal at Afghanistan's Camp Bastion that deserves headline coverage. There's been a virtual blackout of the alarming story in the national press. As I reported last month, the meticulously...

Petraeus Scandal: An affair that was known to the FBI for months and kept from congressional oversight committees might explain his complicity in a false narrative of the Benghazi terrorist attack and the order to "stand down." The addition of sex to Benghazigate adds a dimension sure to keep the scandal going and one that does indeed make Watergate seem like a third-rate burglary. The affair admitted to by Gen. David Petraeus, now our former director of the Central Intelligence Agency, might have attached blackmail or the potential for blackmail to a scandal we have already called a case of...

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ABOARD A U.S. MILITARY AIRCRAFT — The FBI probe into the sex scandal that led to the resignation of CIA director David Petraeus has expanded to ensnare Gen. John R. Allen, the commander of U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan, the Pentagon announced early Tuesday. According to a senior U.S. defense official, the FBI has uncovered between 20,000 and 30,000 pages of “potentially inappropriate” emails between Allen and Jill Kelley, a 37-year-old Tampa woman whose close friendship with Petraeus ultimately led to his downfall. Allen, a Marine, succeeded Petraeus as the top allied commander in Afghanistan in July 2011. The...

Before she went 'All In' with David Petraeus, biographer Paula Broadwell was driven to succeed at a North Dakota high school, where she was named student council president and valedictorian. Broadwell, 40, was revealed late last week to be the woman who engaged in an extramarital affair with the disgraced former general, forcing him to resign from his position as CIA director. But in 1991, she was known back then as Paula Kranz, who attended Century High School in Bismarck, where she was voted homecoming queen and 'most likely to be remembered' in the school's yearbook. A former coach at...

Federal agents are inside the home of the Charlotte author at the center of a scandal involving CIA Director David Petraeus, who resigned on Friday. The Federal Bureau of Investigations confirms that it has agents inside Paula Broadwell's Dilworth home. While agents on scene would not confirm what they were looking for, nearly a dozen agents were seen carrying boxes and taking photographs inside the home. Paula Broadwell, the biographer who wrote a book about retired four-star general David Petraeus, 60, has not been seen at her Dilworth home since the news connecting her to an extramarital affair with Petraeus.

Petraeus Scandal: An affair that was known to the FBI for months and kept from congressional oversight committees might explain his complicity in a false narrative of the Benghazi terrorist attack and the order to "stand down." The addition of sex to Benghazigate adds a dimension sure to keep the scandal going and one that does indeed make Watergate seem like a third-rate burglary. The affair admitted to by Gen. David Petraeus, now our former director of the Central Intelligence Agency, might have attached blackmail or the potential for blackmail to a scandal we have already called a case of...

Andrea Mitchell was willing to peddle the Obama party line regarding the Petraeus matter . . . but Joe Scarborough wasn't buying. On today's Morning Joe, Mitchell dutifully reported that "according to all the officials involved," President Obama was not informed about Petraeus until the Thursday after the election. Scarborough dropped something of a bombshell, saying he "heard about something like this coming several weeks ago." Said Scarborough emphatically: "don't tell me the White House didn't know. That is not true." View the video here.

A complaint about potentially harassing emails sent by a woman romantically linked to Central Intelligence Agency chief David Petraeus to a second woman sparked the security investigation that led Mr. Petraeus to suddenly resign on Friday, according to people familiar with the investigation. U.S. officials familiar with the probe said the Federal Bureau of Investigation began its investigation following a complaint from a woman in Florida about Paula Broadwell, Mr. Petraeus's biographer and the woman identified by officials familiar with the probe as having had an extramarital affair with him. Enlarge Image image image Associated Press David Petraeus in September...

After more than nine weeks of trying to reconcile their story line with that of the State Department and the CIA, the Pentagon finally released its timeline of the Libya terror attack during a Friday afternoon, off-camera briefing with an official who could only be quoted anonymously. The news was overtaken almost immediately by the announcement that Gen. David Petraeus had resigned, purportedly due to an extramarital affair. He was slated to testify in closed-door hearings on Capitol Hill this coming week before the Senate and House intelligence committees. Petraeus no longer plans to testify. However, while the Petraeus resignation...

On NBC, DEM Rep. --former . Gov Jennifer Granholm (D-MI)-- again repeated VP Biden's line that that was the info we got from the intel, at the time of the attack, and that it was the REP. that cut the defense, thus(as a result) it affected (somehow) the security around the embassy... My question is, why is it that liberals can not stop hammering us on Iraq and refuse to take the truthful answer that we all thought that Saddam Hussein had WMD according to our intel at the time? -- BTW The DEM Mayor Kasim Reed (D-Atlanta) kept spinning...

I may have awakened him. The late James Jesus Angleton, once the chief of CIA counterintelligence, sounded kinda groggy to me after I got him–loud and clear!–on my famously untrustworthy ouija board. Of course I have no idea whether he gets to sleep at all. I don’t quite know exactly “where” he is, after all, and he doesn’t answer direct questions on the subject. Anyway, there he was, and I started right in. ML: So what am I supposed to think about Petraeus? JJA: That you’re living in a country where espionage is rampant. ML: Huh? JJA: Have you read...

Benghazi Consulate attack back on front burner in CongressBy Julian Pecquet and Jordy Yager - 11/11/12 06:00 AM ET The terrorist attack that killed the U.S. ambassador and three other Americans in Libya is back on the front burner in Congress now that President Obama has won reelection. No fewer than four House and Senate panels plan to hold closed-door briefings with administration officials about the attack this week, while one committee is holding a public hearing. Members of both parties say they expect the Benghazi probe to last well into Obama's second term. Rep. Ed Royce (R-Calif.), who has...

To become truly great, scandals need to catch fire. They need to grow as fuel is added daily or weekly, leaks, new info. Post election, Benghazi was a fading campfire. Now, the Petraeus sex scandal has ignited it to a level that even the NYT can't ignore. How long has the administration known? Did Petraeus beat the lie detector on his vetting as CIA Director? Or has the administration known all along? Who authorized the FBI investigation, and how come, since there is apparantley no crime alleged? And, her is the nut of it, what was Petraeus told to say...

JERUSALEM – The speculation surrounding the sudden resignation of CIA Chief General David Petraeus is focusing in large part on his role in an alleged cover-up of the attacks against the U.S. mission in Benghazi this past September. Perhaps overlooked is the CIA’s role in purportedly using the Benghazi mission to coordinate U.S. aid to Syrian opposition groups and information those same insurgents include jihadists openly acting under the al-Qaida umbrella. One week before he was slated to testify before Congress on the Benghazi debacle, Petraeus on Friday night announced his resignation, citing an extramarital affair, and it was reported...

The FBI investigation that led to the discovery of CIA Director David Petraeus’ extramarital affair and his resignation Friday started when the agency began monitoring Petraeus’ email, Fox News has learned. The agency was alerted that biographer Paula Broadwell, with whom Petraeus had the affair, may have had access to his personal email account. The FBI investigation began when someone reported suspicious emails allegedly sent from Broadwell. The agency then determined that she allegedly had emailed a number of government employees. The FBI was at one point trying to determine whether any of the employees were being stalked, sources told...

Let’s just go ahead and get this out of the way, eh? Aren’t feminists who embrace the “slut� label (e.g., “Slutwalk“) all about empowerment and liberation? And if you are an empowered liberated woman, what difference does it make if you’re married or your partner is married? All those silly vows — “Forsaking all others� and so forth — are just oppressive tools by which the patriarchy subjugates women, and anyone who buys into moral ideals of marital permanence and lifelong fidelity has succumbed to what the Marxists would call “false consciousness.�Stipulate that adultery has occurred and continues to occur...

Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) on Friday vowed to subpoena outgoing CIA Director Gen. David Petraeus if he won’t testify voluntarily about the Sept. 11 attacks in Benghazi, Libya. Gowdy said that while he regretted the “personal ramifications” of Petraeus’ sudden resignation over an extramarital affair, it would not stop Congress from hearing from him about the assault on the consulate that left four Americans dead. “The fact that he’s resigned and had an affair has nothing to do with whether or not he’s gonna be subpoenaed to Congress,” Gowdy said on Fox News’ “On the Record with Greta Van Susteren.”...

The reporter-source relationship can blossom into something more intimate and more troubling, as evidenced by the Suzy Wetlaufer-Jack Welch affair. But other types of close ties between journalists and newsmakers can also pose nettlesome problems. It was a cozy reporter-source relationship in the extreme, a clear conflict of interest and a deliciously scandalous affair that produced gasps and gossiping among journalists. The editor--not just a lowly reporter--but the top editor of the Harvard Business Review had become romantically involved with the married former General Electric chairman, Jack Welch, after she interviewed him for a story. Now, Suzy Wetlaufer did what...

Ronald Kessler of Newsmax has more details on the Petraeus affair. They are rather sordid, and raise more questions about the timing of his resignation: [A]n FBI source says the investigation began when American intelligence mistook an email Petraeus had sent to his girlfriend as a reference to corruption. Petraeus was commander of U.S. Forces in Afghanistan from July 4, 2010 until July 18, 2011. The investigation began last spring, but the FBI then pored over his emails when he was stationed in Afghanistan. … Given his top secret clearance and the fact that Petraeus is married, the FBI continued...

Even by the standards of the friday afternoon news dump tradition, yesterday's news that Gen. David Petraeus had resigned from the CIA was a stunner. The most heralded military officer of his generation fell from grace after it was revealed he'd had an affair with his biographer. The affair was discovered earlier this year soon after the FBI began monitoring his email. This raises a very serious question. Who authorized the FBI to monitor the e-mail of the Director of the CIA?

Here is what I wonder. Did David Petraeus allow himself to be blackmailed by the minions of Barack Obama? The testimony Petraeus gave Congress on Benghazi shortly after the assassination of our ambassador to Libya was a restatement of the patently false narrative foisted on the country by Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and their underlings -- to wit, that the assault on the American consulate was a spontaneous demonstration in reaction to the Coptic Christian's Youtube video. Petraeus had to know better. The Benghazi bungle took place on the anniversary of 9/11. There was plenty of intelligence available to Petraeus...

Breaking now.

Central Intelligence Agency Director David Petraeus has resigned, citing an extra-marital affair, NBC News reported. "Yesterday afternoon, I went to the White House and asked the President to be allowed, for personal reasons, to resign from my position," Petraeus said in his resignation letter. "After being married for over 37 years, I showed extremely poor judgment by engaging in an extramarital affair. Such behavior is unacceptable, both as a husband and as the leader of an organization such as ours."

A House committee is planning to hold a hearing next week on the Libya consulate attack, following up on an issue that Republicans had emphasized before the presidential election in questioning President Obama's foreign policy record. Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans were killed in the Sept. 11 terrorist attack on the consulate in Benghazi. A local Libyan extremist group is suspected of carrying out the attack, but the Obama administration has been criticized for its confusing explanation for the strike and for security warnings that apparently weren't heeded. The House Intelligence Committee will hold its hearing on the...

The CIA rushed security operatives to an American diplomatic compound in Libya within 25 minutes after it had come under attack and played a more central role in the effort to fend off a night-long siege than has been publicly acknowledged, U.S. intelligence officials said Thursday. The agency mobilized the evacuation effort, took control of an unarmed U.S. military drone to map possible escape routes, dispatched an emergency security team from Tripoli, the capital, and chartered aircraft that ultimately carried surviving U.S. personnel to safety on Sept. 12, U.S. officials said. The account, which was provided to news organizations Thursday...

As the poster of this article, I STRONGLY urge you to go to Glenn Beck's site and watch Part 1 video first (at the bottom of the linked page's article) and then watch Part 2 video at the top. Former CIA Officer: Obama Administration let Ambassador Stevens die Monday, Oct 22, 2012 Part 2 of the interview is below. Scroll down for Part 1 Glenn invited Clare Lopez, a former CIA officer, onto his TV show Monday night to discuss the attack on the U.S. embassy on Benghazi. Lopez has written extensively on the situation in Libya, as well as...

When David Petraeus visited the Harvard Kennedy School in 2009, one of the meetings he requested was with author Doris Kearns Goodwin. Petraeus, who holds a PhD in International Relations from Princeton, is a fan of Team of Rivals and wanted time to speak to the famed historian about her work. Apparently, the great general (and current CIA Director) is something of a bibliophile. He's increasingly an outlier. Even as global literacy rates are high (84%), people are reading less and less deeply. The National Endowment for the Arts (PDF) has found that "[r]eading has declined among every group of...

When people download a film from Netflix to a flatscreen, or turn on web radio, they could be alerting unwanted watchers to exactly what they are doing and where they are. Spies will no longer have to plant bugs in your home - the rise of 'connected' gadgets controlled by apps will mean that people 'bug' their own homes, says CIA director David Petraeus. The CIA claims it will be able to 'read' these devices via the internet - and perhaps even via radio waves from outside the home. Everything from remote controls to clock radios can now be controlled...

Gen. David Petraeus, the commander of coalition forces in Afghanistan, would endorse a presidential announcement that the 30,000 troops committed as part of a 2009 surge to the country would be back home by end of 2012, military and administration officials tell National Journal. Formally, Petraeus wants to withdraw one brigade combat team of about 5,000 troops by the end of the year, and another 5,000 by the spring of next year. But mindful that the political environment in the U.S. and in Congress has turned sharply against the war, Petraeus is aware that the extra brigades he inherited cannot...

Report: Petraeus 'seriously considered' for CIA director By Jordan Fabian - 04/05/11 09:34 AM ET Gen. David Petraeus, the commander of allied forces in Afghanistan, is under consideration to become the next CIA director, according to a report. NPR reported Monday evening that several insiders say that Petraeus is being "seriously" considered for the key intelligence post. Under the proposed plan, CIA Director Leon Panetta could also move over to the Pentagon to serve as the next Defense secretary. He would replace Robert Gates, who wants to step down at the end of the year after serving in the Bush...

Potential 2012 Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, looking to bolster his foreign policy credentials, is on a Mideast swing that included a visit to Afghanistan on Sunday. Romney senior adviser Eric Fehrnstrom said Romney met the commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, General David Petraeus. Romney, former governor of Massachusetts, ran for the Republican presidential nomination in 2008 only to lose to John McCain. He has shown multiple signs of planning to seek his party's nomination again for the right to oppose Democratic President Barack Obama in 2012. Romney could be among as many as a dozen Republicans seeking the...