After sex scandal, ex-CIA chief Petraeus takes Wall Street job

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Former CIA director David Petraeus addresses a University of Southern California event honoring the military on March 26, 2013 in Los Angeles, California.

Retired Army Gen. David Petraeus, attempting to rebuild his reputation after he resigned as CIA director last year over an extramarital affair, will take a new job with investment firm Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, the firm said on Thursday.

Petraeus, 60, will serve as chairman of the newly created KKR Global Institute, supporting its investment teams and portfolio companies studying new investments, especially in new parts of the world. The New York-based company did not detail the terms of its agreement with Petraeus, but a spokeswoman said he will serve in a consultant's role.

The four-star general resigned as head of the CIA in November, saying he had engaged in an extramarital affair. It was a stunning downfall for a revered military man who was seen as one of the top American leaders of his generation and was once considered a potential contender for the White House.

The sex scandal involving the married Petraeus and his biographer Paula Broadwell, an Army reserve intelligence officer who is also married, provided fodder for comedians and triggered a media storm that followed his confession and resignation.

He had been CIA director since September 2011. Before that, Petraeus served more than 37 years in the U.S. Army. He was commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan and also commanded forces in Iraq in 2007 and 2008, when violence in that country dropped following a surge in military forces.

Petraeus has a doctorate from Princeton University and has written widely on international relations, military strategy and tactics, and national security issues. He also has taught economics and international relations at the U.S. Military Academy.

He will add the new job to a couple of teaching assignments. Earlier this month, the University of Southern California announced he will join its faculty to teach classes and also mentor ROTC members.

In April, Macaulay Honors College at City University of New York named Petraeus a visiting professor for public policy starting next August. He said in a statement released by Macaulay that he was looking forward to leading a seminar on the global economic slowdown.

KKR, which has more than $78 billion in assets under management, has been involved in some of the biggest private equity buyouts in history including the $45 billion takeover of Texas power producer TXU, now known as Energy Future Holdings, in 2007. Private equity still accounts for most of KKR's assets under management, but the firm has been diversifying into credit and hedge funds.

KKR said the global institute will help it focus on issues that can affect its global investments. Those include public policy, regulatory and technology trends. The institute also will build on KKR's push to help its portfolio companies expand globally.

Petraeus' former mistress breaks silence

Is Petraeus Scandal an Obama Scandal?

By: Roger Aronoff*
Accuracy in Media

The news media are continuing to try to protect the Obama administration from a rapidly growing scandal. A November 13th article in The Washington Post by Scott Wilson argued that Obama “has been untouched by the unfolding investigation involving former CIA director David Petraeus,” a view that belongs on the opinion page under the heading, “wishful thinking,” not on the news pages.

The stunning news from November 9th that CIA Director David Petraeus had resigned over an affair with his biographer, Paula Broadwell, a former Army intelligence officer and a former lieutenant colonel in the Army Reserve, has become the source of numerous theories and psychological questioning of what makes powerful people tick. But it is actually proving to be a second shot at what should have been treated as a major Obama administration scandal prior to the November 6th election, the situation surrounding the terrorist attack in Benghazi, Libya on September 11 this year, as I argued in a column last week.

Why, in light of two previous attacks this year on our consulate in Benghazi, did we keep it open, and not provide the added security that Ambassador Chris Stevens pleaded for? Why, knowing that he was on an al-Qaeda hit list, was our consulate not better protected, especially in light of a secret August 16th cable he sent to Hillary Clinton’s office at the State Department pointing out that there were “approximately ten Islamist militias and AQ training camps within Benghazi?” Why did the administration for weeks try to argue that this was the result of a spontaneous demonstration that got out of hand, which was, as Susan Rice called it, a copy-cat demonstration of the one earlier in the day in Egypt, supposedly over a little seen anti-Muslim video trailer made in the U.S.?

The bar for what is considered a scandal was cited in an Atlantic Wire article last year, as being when the word “scandal” is on the front page of The Washington Post. In the case of Obama, according to this definition, even Operation Fast & Furious and Solyndra didn’t qualify as scandals.

The Post’s Scott Wilson wrote that the Petraeus “scandal hinges on a personal relationship beyond the White House and has not implicated the president or his closest advisers.” That is where Wilson, the Post and most of the media have missed the big picture.

The Post reported on the front page on November 13th that Petraeus had planned to continue in his job as CIA director if his affair with Broadwell did not go public, and he was apparently led to believe it would not go public.

Charles Krauthammer, a columnist for the Post, in his role as a Fox News analyst, saw that information as being very revealing: “It meant that he understood that the FBI obviously knew what was going on…and that he understood that his job, his reputation, his legacy, his whole celebrated life was in the hands of the administration, and he expected they would protect him by keeping it quiet.”

Krauthammer continued: “And that brings us to the ultimate issue, and that is his testimony on September 13. That’s the thing that connects the two scandals, and that’s the only thing that makes the sex scandal relevant. Otherwise it would be an exercise in sensationalism and voyeurism and nothing else. The reason it’s important is here’s a man who knows the administration holds his fate in its hands, and he gives testimony completely at variance with what the Secretary of Defense had said the day before, at variance with what he’d heard from his station chief in Tripoli, and with everything that we had heard. Was he influenced by the fact that he knew his fate was held by people within the administration at that time?”

Now that the Petraeus adultery scandal has emerged, it is bringing all these issues to the forefront, with an emboldened Republican Party that doesn’t believe the President when he says he knew nothing about the Petraeus affair until the day after the election. It’s not just Republicans, as many in the media are just as incredulous. Ron Kessler, for example, a former reporter for The Washington Post, now with Newsmax, wrote the day following Petraeus’s resignation, “FBI agents on the case expected that Petraeus would be asked to resign immediately rather than risk the possibility that he could be blackmailed to give intelligence secrets to foreign intelligence agencies or criminals. In addition, his pursuit of the woman could have distracted him as the CIA was giving Congress reports on the attack on the Benghazi consulate on Sept. 11.”

Kessler has written several books on the FBI, the CIA and the Secret Service, and is known to have excellent sources inside the FBI. He added that “FBI agents on the case were aware that such a decision had been made to hold off on forcing him out until after the election and were outraged.”

It is just not believable that Attorney General Eric Holder knew about the affair and the investigation in late summer, and the FBI knew about it at least since May, yet the President was kept in the dark that his CIA director was under investigation. If that is what happened, then heads should roll for incompetence, and leaving the head of the CIA in a vulnerable position while the President of the United States was unaware.

Holder finally offered an explanation publicly on November 15th. He said the Justice Department does “not share outside the Justice Department, outside the FBI, the facts of ongoing investigations.” He said he “made the determination as we were going through that there was not a threat to national security.” As the Post reported, “Because of that conclusion there was no reason to advise officials outside the department before the investigation was complete.”

Apparently he felt it was finally complete enough to go to the Director of National Intelligence James Clapper Jr. on late afternoon of Election Day. Clapper then told the President the following day. But then how is it that it was only this week, on November 12th, that the FBI went to Ms. Broadwell’s home to search her computer for classified materials? It is those sorts of questions that make it implausible that an investigation to figure out if this posed a national security threat would not have been brought to the attention of the President.

Today, Petraeus went before the House and Senate Intelligence committees to clarify how the message of what the administration knew and when they knew it became so tangled. The issue was attempting to square what he was said to have told Congress back on September 13th with what is now known to be the case. Back then, it was reported that Petraeus said the attack on the consulate resulted from a demonstration, akin to a “flashmob,” sparked by the anti-Islam video, and not a planned terrorist act.

Rep. Peter King, chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, said that Petraeus claimed that he had said early on that the attack on the consulate was a result of terrorism. But King seemed puzzled, saying that he remembered Petraeus playing down the role of an al-Qaeda affiliate during his September 13th testimony.

According to Rep. Joe Heck (R-NV) of the House Intelligence Committee, who attended Petraeus’s September 13 appearance and today’s, the initial talking points that the CIA released went through an editing process before being given to UN Ambassador Susan Rice, who addressed the media on the Sunday following the attack. Heck said they didn’t know for sure who edited the talking points, but President Obama said at his press conference on Wednesday that Rice “made an appearance at the request of the White House in which she gave her best understanding of the intelligence that had been provided to her. If Senator McCain and Senator Graham and others want to go after somebody, they should go after me. And I’m happy to have that discussion with them. But for them to go after the U.N. ambassador, who had nothing to do with Benghazi and was simply making a presentation based on intelligence that she had received, and to besmirch her reputation is outrageous.”

In other words, President Obama was taking the credit for whatever “presentation” Rice made during her talk show appearances. Rep. Heck told Fox News, “The initial talking points, which were put together in an unclassified format at the request of the House Intelligence Committee initially did state that al-Qaeda affiliated groups were involved, however, we understand that by the time it went through its editing process after it left Langley (CIA), that reference was taken out.” He added that Petraeus made clear and emphasized this morning that “the initial intelligence reporting which stated that the incident grew out of a spontaneous demonstration or protest was proven to be false. There was no protest outside the gates prior to the attack starting. And that became apparent after the interviews of individuals that were at the compound as well as after being able to view the surveillance videotape of the embassy outpost.”

Was Petraeus changing his story and no longer parroting the White House’s line? That remained unclear, but it certainly appears that he changed his tune. Another oddity was the timing of an announcement by the CIA on Thursday, the day before Petraeus would be talking to the committees for the first time since his resignation, that the CIA inspector general would be conducting an investigation into his conduct. Another warning to toe the party line?

On that same day, Andrea Mitchell raised the question of Petraeus’s responsibility in an interview with Democratic Senator Kent Conrad. “What is David Petraeus’s responsibility for this?” asked Mitchell. “There is some suggestion that General Clapper, the Director of National Intelligence, was already concerned that the CIA was putting out its defense without checking with other agencies for the way Benghazi was handled. And also that the White House is not happy with the CIA for giving talking points to Susan Rice that got her into this political difficulty on the Sunday morning talk shows. Do you think the agency should bear some responsibility or is this scapegoating after the fact?” Even Sen. Conrad was amused by Mitchell’s spin.

It remains to be seen how this plays out. Republicans are calling for a Watergate-type select committee, meaning that instead of Armed Services, Intelligence and Homeland Security each holding separate hearings, there would be one committee with members from each of those committees represented. Also, the lead would come from the House, rather than the Senate, which would leave the Republicans in charge to determine the witnesses and schedule, rather than having Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid once again running interference for the Obama White House.

This is not what President Obama had in mind for his second term in office.

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*Roger Aronoff is the Editor of Accuracy in Media

Petraeus Spins the Media

By: Cliff Kincaid*
Accuracy in Media

Disgraced former CIA director David Petraeus is now talking to the press and denying that he leaked classified information to his mistress Paula Broadwell. But there is no reason to believe the denial. Petraeus is an admitted adulterer who covered up an extramarital affair. He was forced to resign and has no credibility left.

Petraeus, a retired four-star Army general, spoke with Kyra Phillips of HLN, a CNN network. Phillips “described” his comments to Robin Meade on HLN’s Morning Express program. One of the big headlines from the appearance is that “he never passed classified information on to [his] mistress,” as if Petraeus can now be believed.

The big problem for Petraeus is that Broadwell publicly revealed classified information about a CIA detention facility in Libya, saying it was the real target of the terrorist attack that killed four Americans on September 11. Obama and his top officials, including Petraeus, had claimed the attack was related to a video with negative depictions of Islam’s prophet. This claim was demonstrably false.

Retired Army Colonel Ken Allard, a former NBC News military analyst and author on national security issues, notes that Petraeus had testified on September 14—three days after the attack. “It was meant to inform congressional leaders about what the intelligence community really knew,” Allard points out. “By most accounts, Gen. Petraeus endorsed the story then being touted by the Obama administration, that the attack was not terrorism but a flash-mob reacting to a YouTube clip. Really, dude? What really rankles is that the CIA director, like other senior national-security officials, is sworn to protect the security of the United States without regard to partisan concerns. How could the director, knowing what he presumably knew, give credence to what even then seemed little more than a politically-inspired cover story?”

One of the “core values” of the CIA is supposed to be “Integrity.” Its website says, “We uphold the highest standards of conduct. We seek and speak the truth—to our colleagues and to our customers.”

The CIA maintains an “Office of Congressional Affairs” that is supposed to ensure that Congress “is fully and currently informed of intelligence activities.”

The Congress was denied the truth about the murders of the four Americans in Benghazi and also denied any information about the Petraeus affair until an FBI agent came forward to Republican House members Dave Reichert and Eric Cantor a week or so before the election. He had concluded that the case was “being stalled, possibly for political reasons,” by the FBI, The New York Times reports. The FBI agent has been identified as a veteran counter-terrorism professional who apparently feared that emails traced to Broadwell and Petraeus friend Jill Kelley could expose Petraeus to foreign influence, exploitation, or blackmail.

The CIA website itself warns about the “potential for coercion” on agency employees and insists that they “abide by regulations governing the use, handling and protection of sensitive information.”

Reichert and Cantor, however, kept the information from their colleagues in the House and the American people. They turned the information back over to the FBI, which was already investigating the FBI whistleblower for opening the investigation that led to Petraeus in the first place. The FBI did nothing about Petraeus until the day of the election, when it informed James Clapper, Jr., the Director of National Intelligence, who then insisted that Petraeus resign. Petraeus did so after the election and before his scheduled testimony on what really happened at Benghazi.

Only after the election did the FBI raid Broadwell’s home to discover what classified information she may have had in her possession.

According to various reports, the Petraeus-Broadwell affair began two months after he began as CIA director in September 2011 and ended four months ago. Hence, he was living a lie as CIA director for about nine months and was subject to potential blackmail during this time.

HLN’s Kyra Phillips reports, “…he has insisted to me that he has never passed classified information to Paula Broadwell.” Speaking to her colleague Robin Meade, she added, “As long as I have known him, he has never wavered on classified information, ever. And to the best of my knowledge, you know, that has always been sacrosanct. I have also never known him to tell me something that is not true, Robin.”

But this is the same David Petraeus who acknowledged to Phillips engaging in “dishonorable” behavior by cheating on his wife and keeping the affair secret.

The CIA website declares, “To safeguard some of the nation’s most sensitive information, CIA officers must be highly reliable and trustworthy. Woven through all aspects of their performance is the imperative to adhere to the highest standards of integrity.”

In order to get a security clearance at the CIA, one must undergo an investigation that “addresses comprehensively one’s loyalty to the United States, strength of character, trustworthiness, honesty, reliability, discretion, and soundness of judgment.”

It also says, “Your responsibility to adhere to high standards of personal conduct does not end on the first day of employment. CIA employees undergo regular reinvestigations, including periodic polygraph examinations.”

Was Petraeus ever required to undergo a regular “reinvestigation?” Why doesn’t Phillips ask Petraeus about that?

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*Cliff Kincaid is the Director of the AIM Center for Investigative Journalism

Petraeus 'suspected al-Qaida' immediately-References taken out of original CIA memo

(FOX NEWS) Former CIA Director David Petraeus stoked the controversy over the Obama administration’s handling of the Libya terror attack, testifying Friday that references to “Al Qaeda involvement” were stripped from his agency’s original talking points — while other intelligence officials were unable to say who changed the memo, according to a top lawmaker who was briefed.

Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., told Fox News that intelligence officials who testified in a closed-door hearing a day earlier, including Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and Acting CIA Director Mike Morell, said they did not know who changed the talking points. He said they went out to multiple departments, including the State Department, National Security Council, Justice Department and White House.

“To me the question right now is who changed those talking points and why. … I’d say it was somebody in the administration had to have taken it out,” King told Fox News. “That, to me, has to be pursued.”

Reactions to Petraeus testimony on Benghazi attack

By Tom Curry, NBC News national affairs writer

 

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Updated 12:30 pm ET -- Former CIA Director David Petraeus testified Friday before the House Intelligence Committee as Congress seeks to find out why the Sept. 11 attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi occurred and why greater protection was not provided to the facility.

Petraeus also testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee Friday. Both sessions were held behind closed doors.

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House Intelligence Committee member Peter King, R-N.Y. told reporters Friday after Petraeus testified that the initial “talking points” from the Obama administration to prepare officials for what they should say publicly in the first days after the attack had been changed to delete references to any al Qaida involvement in the event.

King said he and his colleagues now needed to hear testimony from officials in the State Department, the Defense Department “and also people at the White House – to see if anyone at the White House changed the talking points.”

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In the attack Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans – Glen Doherty, Tyrone Woods, and Sean Smith – were killed.

King told reporters after Petraeus testified that “his testimony today was that from the start (immediately after Sept. 11) he had told us that this was a terrorist attack, that terrorism was involved from the start.”

But King said that he himself “had a very different recollection" of what Petraeus had told the panel in the initial aftermath of the attack. 

"The clear impression that we (members of the House Intelligence Committee) were given (in the initial days after the attack) was that the overwhelming amount of evidence was that it arose out of a spontaneous demonstration and it was not a terrorist attack,” King said. 

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Rep. C.A. “Dutch” Ruppersberger of Maryland, the senior Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, told MSNBC’s Thomas Roberts after hearing from Petraeus that “I can’t agree that there was entirely an intelligence failure” in the days leading up to the attack.

He said, “The intelligence community did put people in the area of Benghazi and in Libya generally. It was a hot spot, it was an area where you had to be on high alert – they did not pick up the actual attack itself. So we’re evaluating whether or not it was or was not an intelligence failure.”

Another House Intelligence Committee member, Rep. Tom Rooney, R–Fla., told MSNBC’s Roberts that he’d learned from the Petraeus testimony how inadequate the protection at the consulate was on Sept 11.

“We had less than a handful of security there for the ambassador,” Rooney said. “First of all, I don’t know why the ambassador was there on 9/11 to begin with, but that’s a whole other story. Second we were relying really on local Libyan militia who – if there was anything coordinated about the two attacks, at the compound and at the annex, it is that there was a coordinated absence by the people who were supposed to be protecting us.” He said the Libyan militia “were nowhere to be found” when the assault occurred.   

In planning for threats to American embassies and consulates, Rooney said, “there has got to be some more guarantee that our ambassadors are going to have the kind of protection that’s not some Libyan-style militia that obviously doesn’t work.”

Rooney added that President Barack Obama has said “he did everything he could” to protect the consulate. “He may have done everything he could, but it wasn’t enough because our people are dead.” 

The investigation into the Benghazi events has become a major focus for members of Congress returning to the Capitol after last week’s elections. The episode has political implications not only for Obama but for Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who may run for president in 2016.

Petraeus resigned one week ago after the revelation of his adulterous affair with his biographer Paula Broadwell.

At issue in the investigation and the political scrimmaging this week has been the question of why, five days after the attack, the administration dispatched U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice to speak on the Sunday news shows to offer a preliminary explanation of the attack, which she attributed to an anti-Islamic video that was circulated on YouTube. More >>

What Petraeus Told Congress

The Blaze/ Madeleine Morgenstern 

Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.) said former CIA Director David Petraeus told lawmakers Friday that he believed all along that terrorists were involved in attacking the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya — at odds with his initial testimony two months ago when he labeled the Sept. 11 assault a spontaneous reaction to an anti-Islam video.

“General Petraeus’ testimony today was that from the start he told us that this was a terrorist attack, that terrorists were involved from the start,” King told reporters after the closed-door hearing before the House intelligence committee. “I told him in my question I had a very different recollection of that.”

King added, “The clear impression we were given was that the overwhelming amount of evidence was that it arose out of a spontaneous demonstration and it was not a terrorist attack…he has I think a different impression of the impressions he left on Sept. 14.”

King said a CIA analyst with Petraeus testified that the agency’s talking points for the White House immediately after the attack were specific about Al-Qaeda terrorist involvement but that the line was apparently removed from the final version of events.

“After it went through the process…that was taken out,” King said.

United Nations Ambassador Susan Rice said on Sept. 16 that the best information available indicated the Benghazi attacks were prompted by the video. It took the White House about a week to label them terrorism.

King called the proceedings “very cordial” and said everyone thanked Petraeus for his service following his resignation one week ago after admitting to an extramarital affair.

Will Petraeus Set the Record Straight?

PJMedia/  Richard Fernandez

Breitbart quotes a tweet by CNN correspondent Frances Townsend claiming information by Pentagon correspondent Barbara Starr that David Petraeus will testify that he knew the attack on the Benghazi consulate was terrorism “almost immediately.” The “same source” claims he will say Susan Rice’s talking points ascribing the attack to a video came from the White House.

If Petraeus really does testify to this effect, he will inescapably be alleging under oath that the president was a liar. Even if the testimony is restricted strictly to Benghazi and not its aftermath, the crucial question remains: did the president abandon the men on the ground to their fates?

Of course the purpose of this new leak may be to muddy the waters. In Washington, home to hundreds of newspaper correspondents and reporters, nothing is as it seems. The age of Obama resembles nothing so much as an evil fun-house of mirrors.

There may be a behind-the-scenes effort to influence what Petraeus will say. Charles Krauthammer has already suggested that the administration has tried to use the Broadwell incident to silence the former CIA director. But if Petraeus testifies as advertised, it may mean that he has decided that the administration will destroy him even if tries to go along and that his only remaining option is to fight.

DP’s options are rapidly shrinking. CNN reports that the CIA has opened an internal investigation into Petraeus’ conduct. Does anybody still believe this is about an extra-marital affair? Probably the same people who who believed that Benghazi was about a YouTube video.

The announcement of the internal investigation comes on the eve of closed door testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee. Petraeus is expected to offer his thoughts to the committee members on what the Agency knew and when it knew it in the days after the attack in Benghazi, Libya that killed Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans on September 11.

For reasons that the public does not understand, the incident in Benghazi has started a full-blown power struggle that is raging beneath the surface of official Washington.  More >>

Holder defends keeping Petraeus inquiry from White House

WP/  Sari Horwitz, Carol D. Leonnig and Greg Miller

  U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder speaks at a news conference in New Orleans Nov. 15, 2012/
Jonathan Bachman-Reuter

Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. on Thursday defended the Justice Department’s handling of the investigation that ledDavid H. Petraeus to resign as CIA director, saying that the department was right to keep the inquiry secret from the White House until after last week’s presidential election.

Holder’s first public comments on the controversy came as the CIA opened an internal inquiry of Petraeus’s conduct during his 14-month tenure as director. The move means that there are three active investigations related to a scandal that has scrambled President Obama’s national security team.

The Washington Post’s Greg Miller explains how the discovery of classified documents in Paula Broadwell’s home complicates the FBI’s reasoning for initially keeping their investigation secret.

“What we did was conduct the investigation in the way we normally conduct a criminal investigation,” Holder said in a news conference in New Orleans.
He said the inquiry was handled “in an impartial way. We follow the facts. We do not share outside the Justice Department, outside the FBI, the facts of ongoing investigations.”
Holder’s remarks were aimed at quieting criticism that has grown sharper in recent days as the initial shock waves from Petraeus’s resignation have given way to questions about Justice Department decisions during its probe.
Some of those questions have focused on Fred Humphries, an FBI agent in Tampa whose concerns that the investigation had uncovered possible national security risks led to a chain of events that resulted in a House Republican leader raising the issue with the office of FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III. A person close to Humphries said he had no intention of being a whistle-blower, but the agent’s informal comments may have triggered the disclosure of Petraeus’s affair.
Republicans have accused Holder of withholding the results of the investigation until after the election for political motives. At the same time, some Democrats have begun to draw comparisons between the exposure of an adulterous affair by Petraeus and the bureau’s history of digging up dirt on Washington officials during the tenure of founding FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover.
“We don’t want to return to those days,” said Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.), a member of the House intelligence committee and a former federal prosecutor. “The FBI was trying to find the right line here,” he said, even as it unearthed “what may have been an affair that had nothing to do with national security.”
Lawmakers from both parties have faulted the FBI for not notifying Congress that a criminal probe had turned up compromising material on the CIA director as well as potentially inappropriate communications between a Tampa socialite at the center of the case and Gen. John R. Allen, the U.S. military commander in Afghanistan.
Holder fired back Thursday, saying the Justice Department “made the determination as we were going through that there was not a threat to national security.” Because of that conclusion, he said, there was no reason to advise officials outside the department before the investigation was complete.
The FBI notified the executive branch with a call to Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper Jr. on the evening of Election Day, Nov. 6. Holder said the call was made then because the bureau had “conducted a critical interview the Friday before. When we got to that point, we thought it appropriate to notify the president.” Read more on WP >>

What Petraeus affair reveals about your emails

WND/ Steve Elwart*

gawker.com

“Hell has no wrath like a woman scorned.” The saying took on a new meaning, with wrath being source of the “Petraeus-gate” that started when a general’s mistress believed he was cheating her.

The fact that Jill Kelley, a friend of the Petraeus family, received what she felt were threatening emails was apparently enough to bring the FBI into the case, prodded along by an agent-friend of the recipient.

The FBI started the investigation under the authority of the 1986 United States Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA). The act allows for “government entities” to acquire a warrant to access email records less than 180 days old “if there is reasonable cause to believe a crime has been committed.” For email older than six months, a federal agency only needs to get a subpoena signed by a federal prosecutor, not a judge, to obtain the messages.

Because of the wording of the law, Americans have fewer privacy protections for their electronic emails than would for those same messages than if they were printed out and stuck in a drawer.

In the eyes of the law, email kept on an individual’s hard drive in their home computer has the same protection as one’s personal papers, which require a search warrant. Emails stored on a remote server “in the cloud” do not have the same protection.

The writers of the law also did not envision the cloud. Email stored in the cloud has the same legal protection as documents in a public warehouse: the government can obtain them with a simple subpoena; no court procedure is required.

To make things really confusing, the government’s interpretation of the ECPA was rejected by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, the federal appellate court that covers the western United States, including California, and the home to many online email companies and the servers that host their messages. As a result, the DOJ advises “Agents outside of the Ninth Circuit can therefore obtain such email (and other stored electronic or wire communications in ‘electronic storage’ more than 180 days) using a subpoena…” but reminds agents in the Ninth Circuit to get a warrant.

Cloud email servers use the power of many different servers across the Internet. It does not reside in one place. Mail services such as those offered by Google (gmail) will store email messages (from your inbox, draft, and deleted folders) long after you have forgotten them. FBI and other investigating agencies routinely gain access to electronic inboxes and information about email accounts offered by Google, and other Internet mail providers.

The Associated Press and The Wall Street Journal report that Jill Kelley contacted the FBI about “five to ten” anonymous emails that started in May and reportedly warned Kelley to “stay away” from an unnamed man. In the resulting investigation, the FBI discovered electronic paper trail eventually led to an “anonymous” account that was used by Paula Broadwell and her husband.

In examining this and other accounts, agents uncovered sexually explicit emails that Broadwell exchanged with another party who also used what has been reported to be a Gmail account. Eventually, investigators were able to determine that the other party was CIA Director David Petraeus using an assumed name.

While it hasn’t been specified exactly how the FBI were able to track the emails back to Broadwell, anyone with knowledge of how email works can make an intelligent assessment.

Petraeus and Broadwell used anonymous accounts with fake names that they set up for the purpose of their illicit affair. While they knew enough to cover some of their tracks, they weren’t sophisticated enough to take sufficient steps to completely protect their identity.

There are some services, such as Tor Project that can hinder tracing attempts. Other services such as Hotspot Shield and LogMeIn Hamachi can create a virtual private network to help preserve privacy. But this system is not fool-proof. Many of these services still use U.S. based servers that may have logs that can be read by investigating agencies or hackers.

Any email messages that are sent leave a trail. Many email services contain hidden codes called “metadata” that will contain the IP address of the sender’s computer’s internet connection device called a “router.” Other services, such as Gmail, will only include the IP address and Internet name of the servers that pass along the email.

The FBI spent weeks tracing the route these messages took. The FBI cross-referenced the IP addresses of the email’s origins against hotel guest lists, looking for common names. The messages were traced back not only to the Broadwell home, but also to the hotels where she was staying while sending some of the messages. (The travel patterns revealed by the emails coincided with her travel to promote her biography of Petraeus.)

The FBI could also request email data from the email service without the knowledge of the user. In fact, the email service is prohibited by law in notifying the user that the records were accessed.

Google is routinely approached by investigating agencies for email information. In fact, they issue what they call a “Transparency Report” every six months, to provide users with statistics about government requests for data and takedowns. For the period of January to June 2012, Google fulfilled 35,000 government requests for email information, 16,000 from the United States alone. How many of these requests were accompanied by a warrant is never disclosed.

Armed with the metadata and information from the email service, the FBI now had Broadwell’s name and in the course of the investigation uncovered another disturbing element, the possibility that classified information was being sent to Broadwell, who is also a reporter.

Federal prosecutors now had the probable cause they needed to request a warrant to monitor Broadwell’s other email accounts. Through this warrant they were able to determine that Broadwell and another person had set up a private email account to exchange messages.

A little more digging uncovered that fact that anonymous person Broadwell was communicating with was Petraeus.

(In a bizarre twist, another Army general, John Allen, the U.S. commander in Afghanistan, was also caught up in the investigation, being suspected of exchanging 20,000 to 30,000 pages of potentially inappropriate communications with Jill Kelley, the woman who sparked the investigation in the first place.)

The investigators also discovered that Broadwell and Petraeus had used a technique that is common among terrorist organizations and organized crime. They used the oft-neglected draft folder.

In this technique, one person will write a message and rather than send the message, they will save it to their draft folder. The other person will then log into the account, usually through a web browser and read the message in the folder.

Ironically, storing emails in a draft folder, rather than an inbox, may make it easier for the government to intercept their communications. This is because the Department of Justice has argued that emails in the “draft” or “sent mail” folder are not in “electronic storage” (as defined by the Stored Communications Act), and thus not deserving of warrant protection. Instead, the government has argued it should be able to get such messages with just subpoena rather than a warrant.

Some of the techniques the FBI user to track down Broadwell, Gen. Petraeus and later, Gen. Allen can also be utilized by any computer user.

For example, for a Gmail account, a person can see this metadata by doing the following:

1. Log into the Gmail account and open a message.
2. In the upper right corner of the message, next to the “reply” button, click on the “down” button.
3. Then click on the “Show original” selection.
4. A new window will open showing all the data that was hidden in the message.

A guide is available to download that will give instructions for looking at metadata for 19 different type of email accounts.

With this metadata, the IP address of the sender can be determined and then use an IP address locator such as WhatIsMyIPAddress to find out the ISP where the email account is registered as well as its geographic location. This is good information to have if a computer user is getting attacked by multiple spam messages coming from one sender.

It is also interesting to look up your own email address to see what information is available on you.

So far, the results of the investigation are varied: the distinguished military careers of two long-serving servicemen are effectively ended, three marriages damaged, perhaps irreparably, and the insecurity of our electronic communication has been exposed.

Congress is supposed to be looking into the antiquated communications law, but don’t hold your breath. The Justice Department has warned that updating that telephone-modem-era law would have an “adverse impact” on investigations. The White House, for its part, does not seem to be in a hurry to secure an individual’s rights against having their privacy violated.

Interestingly, in congressional testimony, James A. Baker, associate deputy attorney general for the Department of Justice, has suggested that people’s online privacy is enhanced if the government has easier access to private data. “By authorizing law enforcement officers to obtain evidence from communications providers, ECPA enables the government to investigate and prosecute hackers, identity thieves, and other online criminals. Pursuant to ECPA, the government obtains evidence critical to prosecuting these privacy-related crimes.”

Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., said, “With the explosion of cloud computing, social networking sites, and other new technologies, determining how best to bring this privacy law into the digital age will be one of Congress’s greatest challenges.”

That email invisibility cloak many Americans think they have is full of holes.

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* Steve Elwart, P.E., Ph.D., is the executive research analyst with the Koinonia Institute and a subject matter expert for the Department of Homeland Security.

When Will Our Email Betray Us? An Email Privacy Primer in Light of the Petraeus Saga

greenberg-art.com

As part of the unfolding scandal that led to the resignation of CIA Director Gen. David Petraeus, the FBI read massive amounts of private email messages that uncovered an affair between Petraeus and his biographer Paula Broadwell. We've received a lot of questions about how this works, and what legal process the FBI needs to conduct its email investigation. The short answer? Our email privacy laws are hopelessly out of date. If we learn nothing else from the Petraeus scandal, it should be that our private digital lives can become all too public when over-eager federal agents aren't held to rigorous legal standards. More on EFF>>

Petraeus Breaks His Silence To HLN

The Blaze

Former CIA Director David Petraeus told an HLN journalist he never passed classified information to Paula Broadwell and insisted his resignation last week had nothing to do with the Sept. 11 attack that killed four Americans in Benghazi, Libya.

Petraeus has been speaking with HLN’s Kyra Phillips since last week. Phillips relayed some of their conversations on the air on Thursday.

“He has insisted to me that he has never passed classified information to Paula Broadwell,” the woman he was having an extramarital affair with, Phillips said. “As long as I have known him, he has never wavered on classified information, ever. And to the best of my knowledge, you know, that has always been sacrosanct. I have also never known him to tell me something that is not true.”

Phillips said Petraeus told her he wants to testify about Benghazi — something he will do behind closed doors on Friday.

“He has said this has nothing to do with Benghazi and he wants to testify. He will testify,” Phillips said. “He has maintained to me all along this was a personal failing, Robin, which, as I said, to me was quite stunning and to many other people. He’s not the type of person that I’ve ever known to fail at anything, knowing [him] as long as I have over the years. And so he has made it very clear that this was about an extramarital affair and not over classified information or Benghazi.”