Petraeus Agonistes II

 

Don't cry over this guy.  He has had a hell of a run.  IMO someone  "dropped a dime" on him with the FBI. Once that happened an investigation into the limits of his lover's access to classified information through her relationship with him was inevitable.  The FBI has the power to investigate anyone in the US Government, including the director of the CIA, and they relish the responsibility.  It is in the grand tradition of J. Edgar Hoover.  A secondary consideration that is unappreciated by civilians is that as a retired US Army officer Petraeus is still subject to UCMJ and its prohibition of adultery, a crime under UCMJ punishable by a dishonorable discharge and a year in prison.  It is unlikely that this would happen but it is still the law.  If you don't like that, tell Congress to change the law.

Who would have "squealed" on him over his paramour?  There are various candidates so far; her husband, someone at CIA who did not appreciate everything he did, someone or some group in the US Army.

He was never much liked in the Army.  "Clever" is a term of art in the Army for someone "foxy,"  slippery and politically adroit.  He was always clever.  At West Point, which is, after all, a college like all others, the appreciation of teachers can be carefully cultivated by students.  He excelled at that.  Every WP graduate becomes an Army officer.  Relationships established with officer staff there affect the rest of an officer's career.  Petraeus married the daughter of the superintendant (president) of the place.  This officer was a major general.  Later he was a four star general.  Throughout his career Petraeus carefully maneuvered to maximize his potential for promotion.  He has a terrible reputation in the Army for egomania smoothly concealed beneath the appearance of the warrior scholar.  He can and has charmed all, or almost all.  His fluency in the English language and his ability to interact with congressmen and the press are superb.

He was not the originator of the armed forces current doctrine on COIN.  He did not triumph in Iraq employing that doctrine.  The improvement in the security situation there happened because he was clever enough to accept marine and Special Forces sponsorship of the "awakening" of the Sunni Arabs to the fact that they did not wish to live under Al-Qa'ida rule.  This led to the creation of the "Sons of Iraq" who, for a time, virtually wiped out the Sunni jihadis.  This gave the Shia Arab dominated government a chance to at least partially assert its power in some parts of the country.  This serendipitous set of events was carefully parlayed in the US media into the creation of an image of Petraeus as the heir of George Marshall.  Iraq is slowly becoming a satrapy of Iran.  Should Petraeus have credit for that as well?

His success" in Iraq led to sending him to Afghanistan to apply the supposedly victorious doctrine of COIN there as well.  We see the reult.

As I said, don't grieve for him.  He had a long run and will now make a lot of money somehow.  He is clever.  pl

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1112/83668_Page2.html

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

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

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

 

 

Comments

[The beaver]

Mr Kiracofe

You've missed the best part:
"As an aspiring foreign and defense policy analyst, Paula was offered a full doctoral scholarship and a fellowship from Harvard University for study in Syria and Iran"

IRAN ??? an American in Iran after 1979/80- what? trying to become the first female Ayatollah in Qom !!! ( LOL)

Me thinks the "lady" is full of xxxx!
Name dropping, inviting journos at her 40th birthday party bash in DC ( poor hubby had to cancel everything on Friday evening when her name was leaked that she is the other woman).
A reservist who wants to be the mother Theresa of intel, security and fallen soldiers. All sizzle but no steak. Reminds me of Carly Fiorina at AT&T and Lucent before she proved how faked she was at HP.

[optimax]

CK

Justin Raimondo at antiwar thinks Petraeus is a sucker caught in an Israeli honeypot operation because of his perception that the Israel/Palestine problem is our biggest threat in the ME. Broadwell has many neocon Israeli connections which he identifies. Interesting, but I think she is just a woman scorned.

http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2012/11/11/a-covert-affair-petraeus-caught-in-the-honeypot/

[The beaver]

The ghost writer Vernon Loeb is telling his side of the story:
http://www.concordmonitor.com/news/livebreakingnews/2796233-95/petraeus-broadwell-access-book

"By the time of Broadwell’s last reporting trip to Afghanistan, her access was exclusive: She flew out of Kabul on Petraeus’s jet after an emotional change-of-command ceremony and accompanied him during a barnstorming tour he made of European capitals on his way back to Washington.

I always thought that Broadwell’s motives were pure, and I always wondered why Petraeus was granting her the access that he did. The two must have seen a lot of themselves in each other – they shared the West Point bond, an addiction to physical fitness and running, and an uber-optimistic, never-say-die outlook on life."

[Rickcarr23]

That Gingrich was considered a serious GOP Presidential possibility in 2012 suggests that General Petraeus may not have all that difficult of a time finding redemption and a run for the office. Four years is a long time and apologists like Boot and Ricks have already started the rehabilitation of the general's image. Am I being unreasonably pessimistic to worry that a significant and influential segment of America's political, financial and media establishment find the image of a man on a white horse irresistibly attractive? And that after the results of the 2012 may not have the patience to wait until 2016 for a chance to change outcomes?

[Rickcarr23]

That would indeed make for a very interesting episode. Maybe an entire reality series on the History Channel.

[Walrus]

But wait, there is more...

"The top US commander in Afghanistan, General John Allen, is under investigation for allegedly inappropriate communication with a woman at the centre of the scandal involving former CIA director David Petraeus."

Tampa = Peyton place?

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-11-13/fbi-agents-search-home-of-petraeus-mistress/4369408

[Walrus]

Paula broadwell has very interesting connections as a member of the warlord loop.

Contributor to reading list referenced here:

http://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/the-2012-warlord-loop-reading-list

[Walrus]

Fred kaplan in Slate makes me want to throw up. These bastards will kill people just to get data for their PhD dissertations.

Petreaus is a narcissist, so is broadwell and there are many,many, more. An axe needs to be taken to these folk.

"The impulse was not unique to Petraeus. It grew out of the ethos of West Point’s social science department, where Petraeus had taught in the mid-1980s. The department, known as “Sosh,” was founded just after World War II by a visionary ex-cadet and Rhodes Scholar named George A. “Abe” Lincoln. Toward the end of the war, as the senior planning aide to Army Chief of Staff Gen. George Marshall, Lincoln realized that the Army needed to breed a new type of officer to help the nation meet its new global responsibilities in the postwar era. This new officer, he wrote to a colleague, should have “at least three heads—one political, one economic, and one military.” He took a demotion, from brigadier general to colonel, so he could return to West Point and create a curriculum “to improve the so-called Army mind” in just this way: a social science department, encouraging critical thinking, even occasionally dissent.

Lincoln also set up a program allowing cadets with high scores in Sosh classes to go study at a civilian graduate school, with West Point paying the tuition. In exchange, the cadets, after earning their doctorates, would come back and teach for at least three years. Once they fulfilled that obligation, Lincoln would use his still-considerable connections in Washington to get them choice assignments in the Pentagon, the State Department, the White House, a foreign embassy, or a prestigious command post.

He would later articulate a philosophy in personnel policy broadly: “Pick good people, pick them young before other pickers get into the competition, help them to grow, keep in touch, exploit excellence.”

Over the decades, a network of Lincoln’s acolytes—and the acolytes of those acolytes—emerged and expanded. They called themselves the “Lincoln Brigade.” When these alumni-officers were appointed to high-level positions, they’d usually call Col. Lincoln—or, later, his successors—and ask for the new crop of top Sosh cadets, or the most promising junior faculty members, to come work as their assistants.

In the course of his own career, Petraeus had mined this network assiduously. Many of the colleagues who helped him devise the “plot to change the American way of war” (as the subtitle of my forthcoming book about them puts it) came out of the Sosh program and referred to themselves proudly as members of the “Lincoln Brigade” or the “West Point mafia.”

When Petraeus met Broadwell, he no doubt saw in her a promising new recruit for the network.
"

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2012/11/david_petraeus_s_affair_with_paula_broadwell_why_did_an_accomplished_and.html

[Walrus]

Translation: they ****** their way around Europe on the taxpayers dime.

[Walrus]

Spencer Ackerman finally realizes he has been used by a narcissist

Petreaus is the ultimate chameleon

"The first time I met Petraeus, he was in what I thought of as a backwater: the Combined Armed Center at Fort Leavenworth. It’s one of the Army’s in-house academic institutions, and it’s in Kansas, far from the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan. In 2005, Petraeus ran the place, and accepted an interview request about his tenure training the Iraqi military, which didn’t go well. Petraeus didn’t speak for the record in that interview, but over the course of an hour, he impressed me greatly with his intelligence and his willingness to entertain a lot of questions that boiled down to isn’t Iraq an irredeemable shitshow. Back then, most generals would dismiss that line of inquiry out of hand, and that would be the end of the interview.

One of Petraeus’ aides underscored a line that several other members of the Petraeus brain trust would reiterate for years: “He’s an academic at heart,” as Pete Mansoor, a retired Army colonel who served as Petraeus’ executive officer during the Iraq surge, puts it. There was a purpose to that line: It implied Petraeus wasn’t particularly ambitious, suggesting he was content at Fort Leavenworth and wasn’t angling for a bigger job. I bought into it, especially after I found Petraeus to be the rare general who didn’t mind responding to the occasional follow-up request.

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/11/petraeus-cult-2/

[Tunde]

http://www.talkleft.com/story/2012/11/13/13650/982?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TalkleftThePoliticsOfCrime+%28TalkLeft%3A+The+Politics+of+Crime%29
Crikey ! Randy Generals doing the nookie with captive married women entrall to their war ribbons and 'access'. This could end up all Jimmy Savile-ing. That'll fix 'em.

[Omo Naija]

He certainly did an awesome job penetrating the media. I am particularly irked by Tom Ricks claims that CIA's loss is Princeton gain!

Michael Hastings who wrote the McChrystals piece as a story Tom Ricks involvement. Ricks got Broadwell an agent and book advance and the connection to the Washington Post Vernon Loeb as the ghost writer of the book.

[Clifford Kiracofe]

Before Harvard, Paula Krantz Broadwell was deputy director at the Jebsen Center for Counter-Terrorism Studies, a think tank associated with the Fletcher School at Tufts.

"Jebsen Center Staff

Brigadier General (Ret.) Russell Howard, Director | Paula Broadwell, Associate Director | Jeannine Lenehan, Staff Assistant | Andrea Walther, Graduate Research Assistant | Christian Westra, Graduate Research Assistant[2]

Jebsen Center Senior Fellows

Dr. Rohan Gunaratna, Jebsen Center Senior Fellow for Counter-Terrorism Studies | Dr. Zachary Abuza, Jebsen Center Senior Fellow for Counter-Terrorism Studies | Dr. Andrea Dew, Jebsen Center Senior Fellow for Counter-Terrorism Studies | John Ellis, Jebsen Center Senior Fellow for Counter-Terrorism Studies[3"

http://www.powerbase.info/index.php/Jebsen_Center_for_Counter-Terrorism_Studies#Jebsen_Center_Advisors

The Jebsen Center website seems to have been taken down for the moment but it does seem to have linkages to think tanks in Israel. For example, a Jersusalem Center for Public Affairs analyst:

"Joshua Gleis is a Research Fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Studies at Harvard University and a Ph.D. Candidate at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. As an analyst at the Jebsen Center for Counter Terrorism Studies, his areas of focus are counterterrorism, counterinsurgencies, and the Middle East."

http://jcpa.org/key-people/

Here is the milieu of the Jebsen Center amidst the international academic terrorism research world of paper mills:
http://www.terrorismanalysts.com/pt/index.php/pot/pages/view/participants

Lot's of "experts" taking copious notes...

[Neil Richardson]

Dear Fred:

You're welcome. I thought some in the media overhyped McChrystal's resignation as a "crisis" in civil-military relations. Next to the "Revolt" anything else would pale in comparison.

[Neil Richardson]

Dear Prof. Kiracofe:

I agree one needs to go beyond the principals and certainly the deputies level appointments have come from these think tanks.

BTW, what is your take on Richard Haass? Earlier this year, David Habakkuk and I were discussing his views on Iran and Israel. I had thought he was one of the few who were sensible in the Bush administration during the run-up in 2002-2003. IIRC he resigned as the director of PPS shortly after the end of OIF. He surprised me with his recent views on Israel and Iran which mirrored neoconservatives.

[Clifford Kiracofe]

Writing in 2009, this reporter nailed the politics of COIN inside the Beltway. She knows her stuff:

..."For the Center for a New American Security, the June 11 annual meeting was about doing things big—broadcasting to the swelling Washington national-security establishment that CNAS is a major player; that there is but a sliver of daylight between its civilian-policy mission and that of the U.S. military. Both are working symbiotically to make their vision the only remedy for the young Obama administration’s foreign-policy challenges.

Here was a heady mix of Army brass, Navy officers in their starched whites, and soldiers in digital camo networking among the dark suits and smart skirts of the civilian elite. Defense contractors, lobbyists, analysts, journalists, administration reps, Hill staff—1,400 of the “best and brightest,” seeing and being seen.

Gen. David Petraeus—no one could have better sanctified this event save Obama himself—stepped to the dais. He called CNAS “a true force.” For him, this is a good thing. Just two years ago, this predominately Democratic crowd was all about getting out of Iraq (albeit “wisely”). Then, seeking to establish muscular national-security credentials ahead of the presidential election, CNAS’s founders Michele Flournoy and Kurt Campbell made the savvy decision to position Petraeus’s expanding counterinsurgency (COIN) ideal in their own evolving agenda....."

"The June event captured the group’s transcendence over partisanship. The inclusion of heavyweights like Petraeus, flanked by a host of young war scholars, not only announced its preeminence among Washington’s policymaking elite but confirmed the increasing deference to the military on the critical national-security issues of our day.

But there is one major, potentially devastating pitfall: COIN has yet to be fully tested or even legitimated by any success outside of the surge narrative. So while one well-connected think tank gets top billing in Washington, the people of Iraq and Afghanistan—as well as the American men and women serving dutifully there—remain “long-term” guinea pigs. If it doesn’t work, an office on Pennsylvania Avenue might shut, but the implications for the world could be catastrophic."
The June event captured the group’s transcendence over partisanship. The inclusion of heavyweights like Petraeus, flanked by a host of young war scholars, not only announced its preeminence among Washington’s policymaking elite but confirmed the increasing deference to the military on the critical national-security issues of our day. "
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/one-sided-coin/

[Clifford Kiracofe]

beaver,

Yes, sizzle and enough meat for some it would seem. Paula Krantz's time in Israel is of interest. Her deputy directorship at the Jepsen Center at Tufts needs some analysis also as does the Harvard thing.

Actually, my brother was in Iran in 2008 briefly in Isfahan researching the Islamic archictural heritage there. He found the people friendly and very hospitable. As it happened he was there on election day. Walking down the street, he was approached by some people who asked if he were an American. He said yes and they hugged him as they were so excited about Obama's election...

[Clifford Kiracofe]

Raimundo is a sharp observer of the national scene and the cesspool inside the Beltway.

We can await developments and further investigation by the FBI and other elements.

Her time in Israel and related contacts are of interest. She claimed (in public) to have SCI and etc. Classified documents allegedly were on a computer owned by her.

Her book project could have been a plausible cover and so on. Her financial records may be of interest.

Who knows? But Raimundo doing his journalism duty raised the issue and we can see where this goes.

[turcopolier]

CK

"time in Israel and related contacts" Paula Krantz Broadwell. Let's get down to brass tacks. Is she Jewish? Did she spend a lot of time in Israel and does that have relevance? pl

[Charles I]

One nugget I gleaned today is that a big concern is the forwarding of emails from theoretically secure official accounts to another personal account. We all do it to remember something, or to have it when we get home. This is apparently part of the security concern.

General, no pun intended, er, tone of non-specialist coverage seems to downplay security in favour of humanity, virility and privacy, i.e., the Peyton Place context.

[Clifford Kiracofe]

Good piece on how COIN was wired into policy via the think tanks and foreign policy establishment types:

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/one-sided-coin/

The piece is from 2009 and she is on target.

[Clifford Kiracofe]

No data in press yet on that or details of foreign travel and contacts. Her personal background, ethnic/religious or whatever, may or may not have relevance and investigators will have to see what turns up in that regard.

Her center at Tufts seems to have linkages to Israeli think tanks. No mention yet in press of where she was in Israel and length of time there.

I am familiar with the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs having visited there some years ago to meet with its then director, the late Prof. Elazar. They are staunch defenders of Israel and have significant US contacts. Nice building and offices. I remember in particular a framed engraving on a wall similar to this:

http://www.swaen.com/antique-map-of.php?id=17435

Perhaps it is still there.

The Bureau just took out more computers and ten boxes, reportedly. While that may relate to just sex and Petraeus' zipper, it gives the appearance of something more which may relate to the classified data already found on one of her computers.

[Clifford Kiracofe]

Yes indeed, they puffed him and still are.

Many journalists want to be used and thus position themselves for "access." Go along to get along...just stenographers really in the entertainment world that so-called news has become.

[M. Bazarek]

Petraeus graduated from WP in 1974 and first see's combat in 2003. In between time he marries the WP superintendents daughter, is wounded in a firearms training accident, and writes lot's and lot's of manuals and reports and betrays his wife and family for a flooze. I've seen guys such as this in the upper echelon of the Chicago Police Department. We call them "house mouses" and "empty holsters".