11 nov 2012
US officials say FBI discovered Petraeus affair in summer
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| Dr Sanjay Kumar Cardiac Cardiothoracic Heart Surgeon India |
Gen. David Petraeus,
then the NATO International Security Assistance Force commander, with
Paula Broadwell, his biographer, in Afghanistan on July 13, 2011 in a
handout photo.
Washington: High-level officials at the Federal Bureau of
Investigation and the Justice Department were notified in the late
summer that FBI agents had uncovered what appeared to be an extramarital
affair involving the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, David
H. Petraeus, government officials said Sunday.
But law
enforcement officials did not notify anyone outside the FBI or the
Justice Department until last week because the investigation was
incomplete and initial concerns about possible security breaches, which
would demand more immediate action, did not appear to be justified, the
officials said.
The new accounts of the events that led to
Petraeus' sudden resignation on Friday shed light on the competing
pressures facing FBI agents who recognized the high stakes of any
investigation involving the CIA director but who were wary of exposing a
private affair with no criminal or security implications. For the first
time Sunday, the woman whose report of harassing emails led to the
exposure of the affair was identified as Jill Kelley, 37, of Tampa, Fla.
Some members of Congress have protested the
delay in being notified of the FBI's investigation of Petraeus until
just after the presidential election. Sena. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif.,
the chairwoman of the Intelligence Committee, said Sunday that her
committee would "absolutely" demand an explanation. An FBI case
involving the CIA director "could have had an effect on national
security," she said on Fox News Sunday. "I think we should have been
told."
But the bureau's history would make the privacy question
especially significant; in his decades-long reign as the FBI's first
director, J. Edgar Hoover sometimes directed agents to spy improperly on
the sex lives of public figures and then used the resulting information
to pressure or blackmail them.
Law enforcement officials, who
spoke on condition of anonymity because of the delicacy of the
investigation, defended the FBI's handling of the case.
"There
are a lot of sensitivities in a case like this," said a senior law
enforcement official. "There were hints of possible intelligence and
security issues, but they were unproven. You constantly ask yourself,
'What are the notification requirements? What are the privacy issues?"'
A
close friend of the Petraeus family, said Sunday that the intimate
relationship between Petraeus and his biographer, Paula Broadwell, began
after he retired from the military last year and about two months after
he began work as CIA director. It ended about four months ago, said the
friend, who did not want to be identified while discussing personal
matters. In a letter to the CIA workforce on Friday, Petraeus
acknowledged having the affair. Broadwell has not responded to repeated
requests for comment.
Under military regulations, adultery can be
a crime. At the CIA, it can be a security issue, since it can make an
intelligence officer vulnerable to blackmail, but it is not a crime.
The
same Petraeus family friend confirmed on Sunday the identity of Kelley,
whose complaint to the FBI about "harassing" emails, eventually traced
to Broadwell, set the initial investigation in motion several months
ago. Kelley, along with her husband, became friends with Petraeus and
his wife, Holly, when Petraeus was head of the military's Central
Command, which has its headquarters at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa.
"We
and our family have been friends with General Petraeus and his family
for over five years," Kelley and her husband, Scott Kelley, said in a
statement released Sunday. "We respect his and his family's privacy, and
want the same for us and our three children."
The statement did not acknowledge that it was Kelley who received the emails, which was first reported by The Associated Press.
The
involvement of the FBI, according to government officials, began when
Kelley, alarmed by about half a dozen anonymous emails accusing her of
inappropriate flirtatious behavior with Petraeus, complained to an FBI
agent who is also a personal friend. That agent, who has not been
identified, helped get a preliminary inquiry started. Agents working
with federal prosecutors in a local U.S. attorney's office began trying
to figure out whether the emails constituted criminal cyber-stalking.
Because
the sender's account had been registered anonymously, investigators had
to use forensic techniques - including a check of what other email
accounts had been accessed from the same computer address - to identify
who was writing the emails.
Eventually they identified Broadwell
as a prime suspect and obtained access to her regular email account. In
its inbox, they discovered intimate and sexually explicit emails from
another account that also was not immediately identifiable.
Investigators eventually ascertained that it belonged to Petraeus and
studied the possibility that someone had hacked into Petraeus' account
or was posing as him to send the explicit messages.
Eventually
they determined that Petraeus had indeed sent the messages to Broadwell
and concluded that the two had had an affair. Then they turned their
scrutiny on him, examining whether he knew about or was involved in
sending the harassing emails to Kelley.
It was at that point -
sometime in the late summer - that lower-level Justice Department
officials notified supervisors that the case had become more
complicated, and the Criminal Division's Computer Crime and Intellectual
Property Section began working on the investigation as well.
It
remains unclear whether the FBI also gained access to Petraeus' personal
email account, or if it relied only on emails discovered in Broadwell's
in-box. It also remains uncertain exactly when the information about
Petraeus reached Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. and Robert S.
Mueller III, the FBI director. Both men have declined to comment.
But
under the Attorney General Guidelines that govern domestic law
enforcement officials, agents must bring to the attention of FBI
headquarters and the Department of Justice whenever they are looking at a
"sensitive investigative matter," which includes cases "involving the
activities of a domestic public official."
FBI agents interviewed
Broadwell for the first time the week of Oct. 21, and she acknowledged
the affair, a government official briefed on the matter said. She also
voluntarily gave the agency her computer. In a search of it, the agents
discovered several classified documents, which raised the additional
question of whether Petraeus had given them to her. She said that he had
not. Agents interviewed Petraeus the following week. He also admitted
to the affair but said he had not given any classified documents to her.
The agents then interviewed Broadwell again on Friday, Nov. 2, the
official said.
Based on that record, law enforcement officials
decided there was no evidence that Petraeus had committed any crime and
tentatively ruled out charges coming out of the investigation, the
official said. Because the facts had now been settled, the agency
notified James R. Clapper, the director of national intelligence, about 5
p.m. on the following Tuesday - Election Day.
Meanwhile, the FBI
agent who had helped get a preliminary inquiry started and learned of
Petraeus' affair and initial concerns about security breaches became
frustrated. Apparently unaware that those concerns were largely
resolved, the agent alerted the office of Rep. Eric Cantor, the House
majority leader, about the inquiry in late October. Cantor passed on the
concerns to Mueller.
Cantor revealed Saturday that he had talked with the FBI agent.
Officials
said Sunday that the timing of notifications had nothing to do with the
election, noting that there was no obvious political advantage for
either President Barack Obama or Mitt Romney in the news that the CIA
director had had an affair; Petraeus is highly regarded by both
Republicans and Democrats. They also said that Cantor's call to the FBI
on Oct. 31 had not accelerated or otherwise influenced the
investigation, which they said had never stalled.
FBI and Justice
Department officials knew their handling of the case would ultimately
receive immense scrutiny and took significant time to determine whom
they were legally required to inform, according to a senior law
enforcement official.
"This was very thought-through," the official said.
Because
the investigation raised the possibility of serious security breaches,
including the compromise of the CIA director's email account and the
possession of classified documents by Broadwell, there was a case for
immediate notification. The law requires that the Senate and House
intelligence committees be kept "fully and currently informed" of
intelligence activities.
But Justice Department and FBI rules,
designed to protect the integrity of investigations and the privacy of
people who come under scrutiny, say that investigators should not share
potentially damaging information about unproved allegations or private
matters unless it is critical for the investigation.
Glenn A.
Fine, the inspector general for the Justice Department from 2000 to
2011, said it appeared that the FBI was "legitimately following a lead"
about possible criminal wrongdoing or a security breach.
"Some
have said the FBI was out to get the CIA," said Fine, who is now a
partner at the law firm Dechert LLP in Washington. "That might have been
true 20 years ago. But it is hard to believe that is going on today."
John
Prados, a historian and author on intelligence and its abuses, said the
case "posed several dilemmas for the FBI" that would have prompted
agents and their bosses to proceed gingerly.
"Petraeus is a very
important person, so they would want to be crystal-clear on exactly what
happened and what the implications were," Prados said. "There was
probably a sense that it had to be taken to top bureau officials. And
bureau officials probably thought they had better tell the White House
and Congress and the DNI, or they might get in trouble later," he added,
referring to the director of National Intelligence.
But if the
security issues were resolved and no crime had been committed, Prados
said, there was no justification for informing Congress or other
agencies that Petraeus had an affair.
"In my view, it should never have been briefed outside the bureau," he said.
