CIA Chief Petraeus resigns as result of extra-marital affair

just read that the state cops are having a hell of a time getting new blood, because they hook everyone up..... too many people are saying in their application that all crimes are listed but the polly says that they are lying when they try to say that they never used someone else prescription drug. this is an auto fail that is not recoverable, not for the crime, but for the deception..

Whatever they are call it is still my understanding they are a routine tool for security clearance in the Federal government.

An yes, they are not a hundred percent and at the moment I can not think of the FBI agent name who passed many such tests as he cheerfully sold the names of our spies to the old USSR resulting in many deaths.

That's OK. I know who you mean and I can't think of his name either. Wasn't he also a member of Opus Dei?

I'm not sure I really understand his need to resign, simply because of an affair, but I suspect it may be related to his own personal sense of honor and duty more than anything else. Once the affair became known, which he regarded as evidence of his own poor judgment, he may have felt he had no other choice, both because of his highly sensitive position and because of the likely emotional impact on his wife and family from the revelation.
And, there may be more to the back-story about the affair than we are aware of now.

This should hardly end his career. He's a very bright, highly educated, very accomplished man, who will probably move on and find another niche for his talents elsewhere.

hopefully not following McCrytal and becoming a shill for the corporate class...

I think I see some anchovies afloat, but I don't get to your last point, about that meaning he was wanting out of the CIA. I do think he has cojones, good bad or indifferent, and would just say he wanted out and then do it.

Sorry I were getting two "gentlemen" confused one were Robert Hanssen an FBI agent that never took a "lie detector" test and Aldrich Ames an CIA agent who while spying for the old USSR who did passed two such tests.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aldrich_Ames

In 1986 and 1991, Ames passed two polygraph examinations while spying for the Soviet Union and Russia, respectively. Ames was initially "terrified" at the prospect of taking the test, but he was advised by the KGB "to just relax."[24] Ames's test demonstrated deceptive answers to some questions but the examiners passed him, perhaps in the later opinion of the CIA because the examiners were "overly friendly" and therefore did not induce the proper physiological response.[25]

The CIA finally focused on Ames after it realized that despite a salary of only $60,000, Am

But under the military law that governed his 37-year Army career, adultery is a crime when it may “bring discredit upon the armed forces
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I guess overall it is a good thing that General and then President Eisenhower did not feel the same way.

Philbert. Filbert. Philbuss...

or was that the wrong generation?

nytimes.com/2012/11/11/us/fbi-said-to-have-stumbled-into-news-of-david-petraeus-affair.html?_r=0

E-Mails From Biographer to a Third Party Led to PetraeusBy SCOTT WASHINGTON — The F.B.I. investigation that led to the resignation of David H. Petraeus as C.I.A. director on Friday began with a complaint several months ago about “harassing” e-mails sent by Paula Broadwell, Mr. Petraeus’s biographer, to an unidentified third person, a government official briefed on the case said Saturday.

When F.B.I. agents following up on the complaint began to examine Ms. Broadwell’s e-mails, they discovered exchanges between her and Mr. Petraeus that revealed that they were having an affair, said the official, who spoke of the investigation on the condition of anonymity.

The person who complained about harassing messages from Ms. Broadwell, according to the official, was not a family member or a government official. One Congressional official who was briefed on the matter on Friday said senior intelligence officials had explained that the F.B.I. investigation “started with two women.”

“It didn’t start with Petraeus, but in the course of the investigation they stumbled across him,” said the Congressional official, who said the intelligence officials had provided no other information about the two women or the focus of the inquiry. “We were stunned.”

Mr. Petraeus said in a statement that he was resigning after 14 months as head of the Central Intelligence Agency because he had shown “extremely poor judgment” in engaging in the affair. He has been married for 38 years.

Neither the Congressional intelligence committees nor the White House learned of the investigation or the link to Mr. Petraeus until last week, officials said. Neither did Mr. Petraeus’s boss, James R. Clapper Jr., the director of national intelligence.

A senior intelligence official said Saturday that Mr. Clapper had learned of Mr. Petraeus’s situation only when the F.B.I. notified him about 5 p.m. on Tuesday. That night and the next day, the official said, the two men discussed the situation, and Mr. Clapper told Mr. Petraeus “that he thought the right thing to do would be to resign,” the intelligence official said.

Mr. Clapper notified the president’s senior national security staff late Wednesday that Mr. Petraeus was considering resigning because of an extramarital affair, the official said.

Some Congressional staff members said they believed that the bureau should have informed at least the Republican and Democratic leaders of the House and Senate intelligence committees about the unfolding inquiry. The committees are likely to demand an explanation of why they were not told.

“Why didn’t the F.B.I. tell us?” said Representative Peter T. King, a New York Republican on the House Intelligence Committee. “Why was the F.B.I. investigating the C.I.A. and this was involving a compromised computer of the director of the C.I.A., nobody told the president or the White House?”

White House officials said they were informed on Wednesday night that Mr. Petraeus was considering resigning because of an extramarital affair. On Thursday morning, just before a staff meeting at the White House, Mr. Obama was told.

That afternoon, Mr. Petraeus went to see him and informed him that he strongly believed he had to resign. Mr. Obama did not accept his resignation right away, but on Friday, he called Mr. Petraeus and accepted it.

The government official dismissed a range of media speculation that the F.B.I. inquiry might have focused on leaks of classified information to the news media or even foreign spying. “People think that because it’s the C.I.A. director, it must involve bigger issues,” the official said. “Think of a small circle of people who know each other.”

The F.B.I. investigators were not pursuing evidence of Mr. Petraeus’s marital infidelity, which would not be a criminal matter, the official said. But their examination of his e-mails, most or all of them sent from a personal account and not from his C.I.A. account, raised the possibility of security breaches that needed to be addressed directly with him.

“Alarms went off on larger security issues,” the official said. As a result, F.B.I. agents spoke with the C.I.A. director about two weeks ago, and he learned in the discussion, if he was not already aware, that they knew of his affair with Ms. Broadwell, the official said.

Web-based e-mail like Gmail and Yahoo Mail can be quite vulnerable to hacking, and it is possible that F.B.I. experts were studying whether Mr. Petraeus’s accounts had been compromised. Any possibility that hackers could use the C.I.A. director’s e-mail as a route to break into sensitive government computer systems would be an obvious concern.

But the fears of bigger security problems proved unjustified, and the security questions were resolved, two government officials said.

But there are still several unanswered questions surrounding the circumstances of the F.B.I. investigation and about the affair between Mr. Petraeus and Ms. Broadwell, officials said Saturday.

It is not clear yet, for instance, when Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. or Robert S. Mueller III, the director of the F.B.I., became aware that the F.B.I.’s investigation into Ms. Broadwell’s e-mails had run across Mr. Petraeus.

Tracy Schmaler, a spokeswoman for Mr. Holder, declined to comment Saturday on when he was informed about or authorized the surveillance of Mr. Petraeus’s e-mails.

The authorities have provided no information about the person who filed a complaint about Ms. Broadwell’s e-mail, the apparent trigger for the F.B.I. investigation.

Ms. Broadwell, who has been a prolific commentator on Twitter, Facebook and other social media, still had made no statement Saturday, and could not be reached for comment.

Charlie Savage and Michael S. Schmidt contributed reporting.

Hansen is the one I was thinking of.

You're thinking of Philbrick, Osso. But he wasn't a spy for the Communists. He was an FBI agent who successfully infiltrated the Communist Party.

You're right.

The first thing that come to my mind is how dare the FBI and the AG do an investigation for any length of time that involved the CIA director without briefing the President at least never mind the congressional oversight committees.

Obama should have some serious questions over not being in the loop over such an investigation................

How do you know he wasn't in the loop? I haven't seen any claims one way or the other.

From the last story I posted here......

nytimes.com/2012/11/11/us/fbi-said-to-have-stumbled-into-news-of-david-petraeus-affair.html?_r=0


Neither the Congressional intelligence committees nor the White House learned of the investigation or the link to Mr. Petraeus until last week, officials said. Neither did Mr. Petraeus’s boss, James R. Clapper Jr., the director of national intelligence.

OK, thanx. I missed that earlier.

Herb Philbrick, of "I Led Three Lives Fame". Not to be confused with Harold Adrian Russell "Kim" Philby.

Criminy, they are all blending together.

Yup. Good ol' Herb.