|
| Jill Kelley leaves her home Monday, Nov 12, 2012 in Tampa, Fla. Kelley is identified as the woman who allegedly received harassing emails from Gen. David Petraeus' paramour, Paula Broadwell. She serves as an unpaid social liaison to MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, where the military's Central Command and Special Operations Command are located. |
TAMPA, Fla. (AP) -- CIA Director David Petraeus was shocked to learn last summer that his mistress was suspected of sending threatening emails warning another woman to stay away from him, former staff members and friends told The Associated Press Monday.
Petraeus
told these associates his relationship with the second woman, Tampa
socialite Jill Kelley, was platonic, though his biographer-turned-lover
Paula Broadwell apparently saw her as a romantic rival. Retired Gen.
Petraeus also denied to these associates that he had given Broadwell any
of the sensitive military information alleged to have been found on her
computer, saying anything she had must have been provided by other
commanders during reporting trips to Afghanistan.
The
associates spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren't
authorized to publicly discuss the matters, which could be part of an
FBI investigation.
Petraeus, who led U.S.
military efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan, resigned his CIA post Friday,
acknowledging his extramarital affair with Broadwell and expressing deep
regret.
New details of the investigation that
brought an end to his storied career emerged as President Barack Obama
hunted for a new CIA director and members of Congress questioned why the
months-long probe was kept quiet for so long.
Kelley,
the Tampa woman, began receiving harassing emails in May, according to
two federal law enforcement officials. They, too, spoke only on
condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak
publicly about the matter. The emails led Kelley to report the matter,
eventually triggering the investigation that led Petraeus to resign as
head of the intelligence agency.
FBI agents
traced the alleged cyber harassment to Broadwell, the officials said,
and discovered she was exchanging intimate messages with a private gmail
account. Further investigation revealed the account belonged to
Petraeus under an alias.
Petraeus and
Broadwell apparently used a trick, known to terrorists and teenagers
alike, to conceal their email traffic, one of the law enforcement
officials said.
Rather than transmitting
emails to the other's inbox, they composed at least some messages and
instead of transmitting them, left them in a draft folder or in an
electronic "dropbox," the official said. Then the other person could log
onto the same account and read the draft emails there. This avoids
creating an email trail that is easier to trace.
Broadwell
had co-authored a biography titled "All In: The Education of General
David Petraeus," published in January. In the preface, she said she met
Petraeus in the spring of 2006 while she was a graduate student at the
Kennedy School of Government at Harvard and she ended up following him
on multiple trips to Afghanistan as part of her research.
But
the contents of the email exchanges between Petraeus and Broadwell
suggested to FBI agents that their relationship was intimate. The FBI
concluded relatively quickly - by late summer at the latest - that no
security breach had occurred, the two senior law enforcement officials
said. But the FBI continued its investigation into whether Petraeus had
any role in the harassing emails.
Petraeus,
60, told one former associate he began an affair with Broadwell, 40, a
couple of months after he became the director of the CIA late last year.
They mutually agreed to end the affair four months ago, but they kept
in contact because she was still writing a dissertation on his time
commanding U.S. troops overseas, the associate said.
FBI
agents contacted Petraeus, and he was told that sensitive, possibly
classified documents related to Afghanistan were found on her computer.
He assured investigators they did not come from him, and he mused to his
associates that they were probably given to her on her reporting trips
to Afghanistan by commanders she visited in the field there. The FBI
concluded there was no security breach.
One
associate also said Petraeus believes the documents described past
operations and had already been declassified, although they might have
still been marked as "secret." Broadwell had high security clearances on
her own as part of her job as a reserve Army major working for military
intelligence. But those clearances are only in effect when a soldier is
on active duty, which she was not at the time she researched the
Petraeus biography.
During a talk last month
at the University of Denver, Broadwell raised eyebrows when she said the
CIA had detained people at a secret facility in Benghazi, Libya, and
the Sept. 11 attack on the U.S. Consulate and CIA base there was an
effort to free those prisoners.
Obama issued
an executive order in January 2009 stripping the CIA of its authority to
take prisoners. The move meant the CIA was forbidden from operating
secret jails across the globe as it had under President George W. Bush.
CIA
spokesman Preston Golson said: "Any suggestion that the agency is still
in the detention business is uninformed and baseless."
Broadwell did not say who told her about CIA activities in Libya. The video of Broadwell's speech was viewed on YouTube.
A
Petraeus associate said the retired general was shocked to find out
about Broadwell's emails to Kelley. Petraeus was not shown the messages,
but investigators told him the emails told Kelley to stay away from the
general in a threatening tone.
Petraeus told
former staffers and friends that he was friends with Kelley and her
surgeon husband, Scott, and regularly visited their brick home with
imposing white columns overlooking Tampa Bay.
Jill
Kelley, 37, served as a sort of social ambassador for U.S. Central
Command, hosting parties for the general when Petraeus was commander
there from 2008-2010.
A photo shows Petraeus
and his wife, Holly, with the Kelleys and Jill's identical twin sister
Natalie Khawam in the Kelleys' front yard, decked out in party beads
with a pirate flag in the background. Khawam, is a Tampa lawyer who
works on health care fraud and whistleblowers cases, according to her
Linkedin profile, which was removed from the professional networking
site Monday. The sisters - hard to differentiate in the picture with
their matching long dark locks and black dresses - also competed in a
cook-off filmed for a Food Network show called "Food Fight" in 2003.
Jill
Kelley regularly kept in touch with then-Gen. Petraeus when he became
commander of the Afghan war effort, the two exchanging near-daily emails
and instant messages, two of his former staffers say. But those
messages were exchanged in accounts that his aides monitored as part of
their duties and were not romantic in tone, the staffers said.
Kelley
did not answer the door at her Tampa home Monday morning, and later
left her home by car without talking to reporters. The Kelleys hired
Abbe Lowell, a Washington lawyer who has represented well-known clients
including lobbyist Jack Abramoff and former presidential candidate John
Edwards, and released a statement Sunday through a Washington-based
crisis management firm that she and her family had been friends with the
Petraeus family for five years and wanted to respect their privacy.
Petraeus
and his family are devastated over the affair, especially Mrs.
Petraeus, who "is not exactly pleased right now," after 38 years of
marriage, said Steve Boylan, a friend and former Petraeus spokesman who
spoke to him over the weekend.
"Furious would
be an understatement," Boylan told ABC's "Good Morning America." The
couple has two adult children, including a son who led an infantry
platoon in Afghanistan as an Army lieutenant.
Broadwell
is married with two young sons and lives in Charlotte, N.C. She has not
returned phone calls or emails seeking comment.
As
the criminal investigation continued into the emails to Kelley, FBI
Director Robert Mueller and eventually Attorney General Eric Holder were
notified that agents had uncovered what appeared to be an extramarital
affair involving Petraeus, said one of the law enforcement officials.
Broadwell
and Petraeus have each been questioned by FBI agents twice in recent
weeks, with both acknowledging the affair in separate interviews. The
FBI's most recent interviews with Broadwell and with Petraeus both
occurred during the week of Oct. 29, days before the election, one of
the law enforcement officials said. The FBI notified Obama's director of
national intelligence, James Clapper, of the investigation on Tuesday
Nov. 6, Election Day.
Clapper called Petraeus
that night and urged him to resign. Clapper informed the White House
late Wednesday, and aides informed the president Thursday morning,
before Petraeus came to personally hand in his resignation letter.
Some
members of Congress are questioning why they weren't told sooner.
Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California, who heads the Senate
Intelligence Committee, said she wants to investigate why she had to
find out from news reports Friday.
But there
were at least a couple of members of Congress who heard inklings of the
affair before the election. Republican Rep. Dave Reichert of Washington
state received a tip from an FBI source that the CIA director was
involved in an affair in late October. Reichert arranged for an
associate of his source at the FBI to call House Majority Leader Eric
Cantor on Saturday, Oct. 27, according to Cantor spokesman Rory Cooper.
Cooper
told The Associated Press Monday that Cantor notified the FBI's chief
of staff of the conversation but did not tell anyone else because he did
not know whether the information from a person he didn't know was
credible.
"Two weeks ago, you don't want to start spreading something you can't confirm," Cooper said.
The
FBI responded by telling Cantor's office that it could not confirm or
deny an investigation, but assured the leader's office it was acting to
protect national security. Cooper said Cantor believed that if the
information was accurate and national security was affected, the FBI
would, as obligated, inform the congressional intelligence committees
and others, including House Speaker John Boehner.
One
of the law enforcement officials who spoke to the AP said long-standing
Justice Department policy and practice is not to share information from
an ongoing criminal investigation with anyone outside the department,
including the White House and Congress. The official said national
security must be involved to notify Capitol Hill, and that was not the
case in the Petraeus matter.
Petraeus' affair
with Broadwell will be the subject of meetings Wednesday involving
congressional intelligence committee leaders, FBI deputy director Sean
Joyce and CIA Deputy Director Michael Morell.
Petraeus
had been scheduled to appear before congressional committees on
Thursday to testify about the Benghazi attack that killed four
Americans, including U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens. Morell is expected
to testify in place of Petraeus.
Feinstein and
others didn't rule out the possibility that Congress will try to compel
Petraeus to testify about Benghazi at a later date, even though he's
relinquished his job.
Defense Secretary Leon
Panetta, asked about Petraeus' resignation on Monday, said it saw it as a
"very sad situation to have him end his career like that." Panetta was
CIA director prior to Petraeus.
"I think he took the right step" by resigning, Panetta added.
