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In light of calls from several senators and congressional representatives, Gen. David Petraeus has agreed to testify before the Senate Thursday, despite an FBI investigation that led to former Afghanistan general's resignation from his post as CIA-director. The strange scandal that implicated top U.S. general and a Florida socialite and put a hold on the Senate confirmation of Gen. John Allen was thought to have robbed intelligence committees of Petraeus' testimony about the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi. That attack claimed the lives of four Americans, including U.S. Ambassador to Libya Chris Stevens. Petraeus had personally flown to...

Sen. John McCain is calling for establishment of a Watergate-style congressional committee to investigate the deaths of four Americans, including Ambassador Christopher Stevens, at the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya. The Arizona Republican tells "CBS This Morning" he believes the unanswered questions surrounding events at Benghazi on Sept. 11 require such a select committee. McCain accused the Obama administration of making misleading statements. He also said U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice went on national television and said incorrectly that the violence was the result of a demonstration against an anti-Muslim movie made in the United States. Asked if he'd stand in...

President Barack Obama said Wednesday that he has seen no evidence that a scandal that led to the resignation of CIA Director David Petraeus harmed national security. “I have no evidence at this point from what I’ve seen that classified information was disclosed that in any way would have had a negative impact on our national security,” Obama said at a White House briefing. Petraeus, a decorated four-star general who received widespread praise for the surge strategy in Iraq, resigned as CIA director on Friday, citing an extramarital affair. Numerous federal government officials have told NBC News that the married...

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., responded to President Obama’s challenge that he “go after me” over the Benghazi attack by declaring him either incompetent or corrupt and suggesting he is not taking the attack seriously. “This president — this administration — has either been guilty of colossal incompetence or been engaged in a coverup, neither of which is acceptable to the American people,” McCain said on the Senate floor today. “I speak as a friend of Christopher Stevens, I speak as a person who knows something about warfare, I speak as something of an authority — that this attack could have...

How long does it take to tell the president that his CIA director is under investigation? Here is the answer Americans are now supposed to believe: longer than it took for the White House to discover that a YouTube video did not inspire the Sept. 11, 2012 terrorist attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi. In June 2010, President Obama fired Gen. Stanley McChrystal as the U.S. commander in Afghanistan because McChrystal had criticized civilian administration officials in the presence of a writer from Rolling Stone. Obama immediately named Gen. David Petraeus — hero of the Iraq surge — the...

At first the FBI probed the e-mails of Paula Broadwell and CIA Director David Petraeus from a suspicion of cyberstalking and harassment. They then dropped the probe after determining that the biographer of Petraeus had a personal relationship with him, even though they discovered that Broadwell had classified documents on her computer. After the entire probe went public and forced Petraeus to resign, FBI agents suddenly conducted a seizure of materials from Broadwell’s home — which the Washington Post reports comes from a belated curiosity into her possession of those classified documents: The FBI is making a new push to...

The Arizona Republican tells “CBS This Morning” he believes the unanswered questions surrounding events at Benghazi on Sept. 11 require such a select committee. McCain accused the Obama administration of making misleading statements. He also said U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice went on national television and said incorrectly that the violence was the result of a demonstration against an anti-Muslim movie made in the United States. Asked if he’d stand in the way of any nomination of Rice as the next secretary of state, McCain replied, “She’s not qualified.”

Breaking on Fox.

I’ll hit this on the blog later too but I want to push it out bright and early, as it’s a wrinkle in last night’s post about the shirtless circus clowns who govern us: Ms. Kelley, a volunteer with wounded veterans and military families, brought her complaint to a rank-and-file agent she knew from a previous encounter with the F.B.I. office, the official also said. That agent, who had previously pursued a friendship with Ms. Kelley and had earlier sent her shirtless photographs of himself, was “just a conduit” for the complaint, he said. He had no training in cybercrime,...

In the post immediately below, Scott recaps some of the recent developments in the Petraeus scandal. I want to add one or two more, and also elaborate a bit on one of the items that Scott mentioned.The most significant of the recent bombshells, I think, is the report that Eric Holder knew about the scandal as of late summer, when the FBI contacted his office to get permission to interview Petraeus and Paula Braodwell. Holder apparently claims that he never mentioned this potentially election-derailing news to his boss and good buddy, Barack Obama. I find this claim–that, while many...

Gen. David Petraeus sure loved helping his lady friends. While he was director of the CIA, Petraeus wrote a letter supporting the child-custody fight of the “psychologically unstable” twin sister of his close friend Jill Kelley — whose bombshell claims of being threatened by his lover led to the top spy’s resignation last week, sources told The Post. The four-star general’s letter to the court — written in the past two months — supported a motion to overturn a ruling made nearly a year earlier by a judge who resoundingly denied custody to Kelley’s sister, Natalie Khawam, because of serious...

The federal agent who launched the probe that eventually led to David Petraeus’ resignation as director of the CIA was taken off the case indefinitely over the summer after his superiors became concerned that he may be personally involved in the case, The Wall Street Journal reports, citing “officials familiar with the probe.” The unidentified FBI agent still passed along his concerns to a member of Congress even after he was barred from taking part in the investigation, afraid that the case would be covered up. And while the FBI was looking into a number of harassing emails from Petraeus’...

One piece of information that got lost the last few days of sex scandals is the news that David Petraeus personally traveled to Libya after the Benghazi attack — and apparently filed a “trip report” covering his own findings. Senator Dianne Feinstein, who heads the Senate Intelligence Committee probing the Benghazi terrorist attack, wants either the report or Petraeus to testify to its contents. So far, though, the CIA and the White House have refused to provide it — and yesterday, Feinstein threatened that subpoenas may be forthcoming if the stonewalling continues... ...This lack of openness, coming on the heels...

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich stopped by Fox & Friends Tuesday morning to promote his new book, but was first asked to share his thoughts on the ever-widening scandal surrounding General David Petraeus and his biographer, Paula Broadwell. (snip) Host Steve Doocy asked Gingrich what he made “of the fact that the with mainstream media has followed the White House’s lead” on the story, maintaining that the President did not know about Petraeus’ situation until after the election. Gingrich said this was the first time he’s realized that “this has been going on for months,” later adding that he’d been...

The FBI probe into the sex scandal that prompted CIA Director David Petraeus to resign 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 documents — most of them e-mails — of “potentially inappropriate” communications between Allen and Jill Kelley, a 37-year-old Tampa woman whose close relationship with Petraeus ultimately led to his downfall. Allen, a Marine, succeeded Petraeus as the top allied commander in Afghanistan in July 2011. He also served...

........... Since the Kelleys have been in Tampa, records show, one or both have been subjects of lawsuits nine times — including an $11,000 judgment against them that originated in Pennsylvania. Ongoing cases, the court records show, include an indebtedness case from Chase Bank; a foreclosure case from Regions Bank; and a credit card case from FIA Card Services. Not long after the couple arrived in Tampa, Jill Kelley and her identical twin sister, Natalie Khawam, appeared for a taping of the Food Network's reality show, Food Fight. The segment featured sibling rivalry, with the twins cooking off against two...

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — FBI agents are at the North Carolina home of the woman whose affair with retired Gen. David Petraeus led to his resignation as CIA director. A spokeswoman for the FBI says that agents went to Paula Broadwell’s home in Charlotte on Monday night. FBI spokeswoman Shelley Lynch declined to say what the agents were doing there. FBI agents appeared at Broadwell’s home carrying the kinds of cardboard boxes often used for evidence gathering during a search. They walked through the open garage of Broadwell’s house and knocked at a side door before entering the home. One person...

Discussion of why there is an investigation on this level.

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...

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...