The  CIA  director  was  right  to  resign

The white background  behind some of the text is merely an anomaly in the printing.

 

CIA Director David Petraeus’ career came crashing down on him on November 10^th 2012 when he was forced to resign on his own volition because of his extramarital affair he had with a woman who wrote a flattering biography about the retired four-star general.

There were reports of steamy e-mails between the two, including a reference to him and the woman having sex under a desk. There was also so-called threatening emails written by his paramour to another of his paramours which when it reached the FBI, the train he was riding to glory derailed with him as its engineer.

The lover who derailed his train to glory was identified as Paula Broadwell, 40 who was the co-author of his fawning biography, All In: The Education of General David Petraeus.

Law enforcement officials established that Broadwell was jealous of another woman (Jill Kelley) who was also friendly with Petraeus and had sent messages that Kelly took as being threatening. In actual fact, the message which was anonymous at that time didn’t cite Kelly’s relationship with Petraeus but merely said that Kelly should stop what she was doing or she would be exposed. The FBI didn’t consider those messages that were sent as being threatening enough to be classed as being criminal but since wireless messages comes under federal legislation and the FBI were called upon by Kelly to look into her complaint,  their follow up finally led them to Broadwell and Petraeus.

Aside from the fact that his affairs with these two women was a betrayal of trust between him and his wife, Holly who had been married to him for just over 37 years, it was also a sign of gross stupidity. The last thing the United States needs is a CIA director who is grossly stupid. As said in his own words and quite correctly at that, such behavior is unacceptable, both as a husband and as the leader of an intelligence organization such as the CIA.  

The affair between Petraeus and Broadwell is what prompted an FBI investigation over their fears that Broadwell had accessed the general’s e-mail, thereby possibly gaining access to classified information. I don`t know if she actually got access to classified information via his email but the potential danger of that happening certainly could have existed and having access to someone`s email is better than pillow talk.

It does however appear that Broadwell may very well had access to classified CIA information because she made some remarks taken from undisclosed information about an alleged CIA prison in Banghazi during a recent speech to her alma mater at the University of Denver, Colorado.

Further, the FBI stated that they found sensitive military information in her computer. Petraeus denies that he gave her that information but if he didn’t give it to her, who in the military did? And more importantly, who else (if anyone) did she give it too?

As head of the CIA, Petraeus had to know that philandering is considered a breach of security that could compromise national security by opening him up to blackmail. If he had been in the armed forces at the same time he was having an affair with Broadwell, he may have actually been cashiered out of the army. A former general of the Canadian troops in Afghanistan was removed from his post and demoted because he too couldn’t keep his penis in his pants. Both Canada and the United States military services prohibit sexual relations between members of the armed forces especially in a theatre of war such as in Afghanistan.

It is not my intention to suggest that Broadwell is a traitor and a spy because obviously, I have no evidence of that at all or any reason to believe that she is a traitor or a spy. But suppose she had been spying against the United States; what would be an effective way in which she could get close to the former general and obtain as much information she could about him and his views and perhaps about some of the secrets he had but he wouldn’t want published in her book. She could very well have in her mind, secrets that he might accidentally let slip during their many talks together.

To get intimately close to a former general in the armed forces who was in a war zone is not easy to do if you have never met him before. But suppose you have all the time in the world to bring this about.

First of all, while attending Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government you could as time goes by, meet generals who visit that particular school. And then you learn that one of the former generals has been invited to speak at the school and that particular general is working on a counter insurgency manual that will be used later in Iraq.

As a graduate student of the school, you go out of your way to speak with the former lieutenant general when he is a speaker at the school. You tell him about your research interests after he spoke. He foolishly hands you his card and offers to help you with your research. You are amazed that an obviously busy former lieutenant general would go out of his way to spend time with you but you know men’s weaknesses when it comes to their penises so you take advantage of his kind offer knowing that you will undoubtedly have to pay for his services by offering a service of your own but that is what spies do in any case so you accept that sacrifice as it is sometimes the price you pay to be a successful spy.

You tell him that you have begun a doctoral dissertation that includes a case study of his leadership. The general is flattered and expresses his desire to fully cooperate with you. You have many meetings with him after he becomes the head of an intelligence agency. You learn a great deal from him in fact you learn so much from what he has told you, you can fill a book with what you have learned from him.

The general trusts you because you somehow managed to be a military intelligence officer in the Army Reserve in the United States with high security clearance. The general believes that his secrets are safe because who else can be trusted better than someone with high security clearance? As a spy, you are extremely pleased with yourself because you have pumped a former American lieutenant general for information knowing that he was previously on active service and who is an expert on counter insurgency now the head of the CIA. You have succeeded so well, you get enough information from him to fill a book.  

Guess what?  Much of what I just written is actually fact with respect to the relationship between Broadwell and Petraeus.

One of the CIA’s best-kept secrets is that their most talented spies are women. Women always have the advantage in creating a reasonable sounding excuse for why they might be meeting with a man in a parked car, hotel room or dark restaurant on the edge of town. “The standard cover story is that they are having an affair. It’s plausible under any circumstances and in any part of the world.

A trained female spy can end up learning the passwords of her boyfriend’s e-mail and social networking accounts while he, of course, is blissfully unaware that his every virtual move is being monitored by his seemingly un-tech savvy girlfriend.

When most people think of international spies, they generally imagine hyper-masculine figures such as James Bond or Jason Bourne. But Israel's fearsome secret service has developed a new breed of super-spies who are seductive young women.

Tamir Pardo, a former head of Mossad—Israel’s national intelligence agency, singled out his female field agents for praise. He said, “Women have a distinct advantage in secret warfare because of their ability to multitask.” He also added that women are “better at playing a role” and superior to men when it comes to “suppressing their ego in order to attain the goal.” He also said that around half of the agency's spies are women, and added that the fairer sex has some distinct advantages over male agents.

The most notable deployment of the women's unique talents came in 1986, when a Mossad agent seduced a turncoat former nuclear engineer and lured him into a trap so he could be taken back to Israel for trial.

A Mossad agent calling herself Yael told a magazine that women often had an advantage over men, as they were more likely to be trusted by strangers. She said in part; “A man who wants to gain access to a forbidden area has less chance of being allowed in. A smiling woman has a bigger chance of success.” Another spy, Efrat, echoed the same sentiment, saying: “We use our femininity because any means is valid.”

You may recall that I mentioned the general trusting a writer who also had security clearance as an intelligence officer. Let me tell you of other persons who had similar security clearances. One of them was George Blake. In 1955 he was sent by MI6 (British Intelligence) to work as a case officer in Berlin, where ironically his task was to recruit Soviet officers as double agents. It was while he was in Berlin that he made contact with the Soviet KGB and informed them of the details of British and US operations.                                                                                

Daniel Houghton was a MI6 officer accused of trying to sell spying secrets. Houghton had "unlawfully disclosed staff lists as a result of which people working for the intelligence services were put at risk by his actions which damaged the operational capability of MI6.

On February 21, 1994, agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation arrested a 52-year old employee of the Central Intelligence Agency, Aldrich Hazen Ames, outside his Arlington, Virginia residence, on charges of conspiracy to commit espionage on behalf of Russia and the former Soviet Union.

On May 10^th of 2002, former FBI agent Robert Hanssen was sentenced Friday to life in prison without parole for spying for the Soviet Union and Russia. Hanssen pleaded guilty to 15 counts of espionage and conspiracy for passing classified information to the Soviet Union and, later, Russia, during a 20-year period.

As you can see, having security clearance does not necessarily mean that you are not spying against your own country. As I said earlier in this piece, I have no evidence at all that Paula Broadwell is a spy. She is however a woman who will go to great lengths to get what she wants, even if it includes using threats. A woman of this kind is definitely not someone that a former general in the Armed Forces and later a director of an intelligence agency should associate with in any manner whatsoever—security clearance or not.

As I see it; former CIA Director David Petraeus had put his penis ahead of his country. That made his position in the CIA vulnerable. Whatever his faults are; (and we all have them) he was smart enough to see that his vulnerability left him no other choice but to follow the recommendation given to him by James Clapper, the head of the National Intelligence,  to resign from the CIA.  

Someday when all this is in the past, Petraeus may very well be asked to offer his services to his country again. If so, I am sure he will serve a useful role in whatever task he is given in the United States providing of course that he keeps his trouser’s zipper closed when dealing with women he meets during his service to his country.