Jill Kelley Received Emails From Paula Broadwell On David Petraeus
By ADAM GOLDMAN and KIMBERLY DOZIER, HUFF POST Politics, 11/11/12 02:53 PM ET EST
LINK

WASHINGTON -- A senior U.S. military official says the author who had an affair with David Petraeus sent harassing emails to a woman who was the State Department's liaison to the military's Joint Special Operations Command.

The official says 37-year-old Jill Kelley in Tampa, Fla., received the emails from Petraeus biographer Paula Broadwell that triggered an FBI investigation.

The official was not authorized to discuss the case publicly and spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Another person who knows Kelley and Petraeus confirmed their friendship and said she saw him often.

Petraeus quit as CIA director last week after acknowledging an extramarital relationship with a woman – later identified as Broadwell.

The FBI probe began several months ago with a complaint against Broadwell. That investigation led to Broadwell's email account, which uncovered the relationship with Petraeus.

David Petraeus never shied away from the public eye before in times of crises. Now, he might not have a choice.

As details emerged about his extramarital affair with his biographer, Paula Broadwell, including a second woman who allegedly received threatening emails from the author, members of Congress said Sunday they want to know exactly when the now ex-CIA director and retired general popped up in the FBI inquiry, whether national security was compromised and why they weren't told sooner.

"We received no advanced notice. It was like a lightning bolt," said Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California, who heads the Senate Intelligence Committee.

Lawmakers also said it's possible that Petraeus will be asked to appear on Capitol Hill to testify about what he knew about the U.S. response to the Sept. 11 attack in on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, that killed four Americans, including the U.S. ambassador.

Rep. Peter King, chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, said the circumstances of the FBI probe smacked of a cover-up by the White House.

"It seems this (the investigation) has been going on for several months and, yet, now it appears that they're saying that the FBI didn't realize until Election Day that General Petraeus was involved. It just doesn't add up," said King, R-N.Y.

Petraeus, 60, quit Friday after acknowledging an extramarital relationship. He has been married 38 years to Holly Petraeus, with whom he has two adult children, including a son who led an infantry platoon in Afghanistan as an Army lieutenant.

Broadwell, a 40-year-old graduate of the U.S. Military Academy and an Army Reserve officer, is married with two young sons.

Their affair 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 the committees on Thursday to testify on what the CIA knew and what the agency told the White House before, during and after the attack in Benghazi. Republicans and some Democrats have questioned the U.S. response and protection of diplomats stationed overseas.

Morell was expected to testify in place of Petraeus, and lawmakers said he should have the answers to their questions. But Feinstein and others didn't rule out the possibility that Congress will compel Petraeus to testify about Benghazi at a later date, even though he's relinquished his job.

"I don't see how in the world you can find out what happened in Benghazi before, during and after the attack if General Petraeus doesn't testify," said Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C.

Graham, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, wants to create a joint congressional committee to investigate the U.S. response to that attack.

Feinstein said she first learned of Petraeus' affair from the media late last week, and confirmed it in a phone call Friday with Petraeus. She eventually was briefed by the FBI and said so far there was no indication that national security was breached.

Still, Feinstein called the news "a heartbreak" for her personally and U.S. intelligence operations, and said she didn't understand why the FBI didn't give her a heads up as soon as Petraeus' name emerged in the investigation.

"We are very much able to keep things in a classified setting," she said. "At least if you know, you can begin to think and then to plan. And, of course, we have not had that opportunity."

The director of national intelligence, James Clapper, was told by the Justice Department of the Petraeus investigation on election night, and then called Petraeus and urged him to resign, according to a senior U.S. intelligence official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the investigation publicly.

FBI officials say the committees weren't informed until Friday, one official said, because the matter started as a criminal investigation into harassing emails sent by Broadwell to another woman.

The identity of the other woman and her connection with Broadwell were not immediately known, but that probe led agents to Broadwell's email, which uncovered the relationship with Petraeus, according to an official who spoke to The Associated Press on Saturday.

Concerned that the emails he exchanged with Broadwell raised the possibility of a security breach, the FBI brought the matter up with Petraeus directly, according to the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to publicly discuss the investigation.

Petraeus decided to quit, though he was breaking no laws by having an affair, officials said.

Feinstein said she has not been told the precise relationship between Petraeus and the woman who reported the harassing emails to the FBI. She said she has been told only that the woman was someone Petraeus "knew and was close to."

Georgia Sen. Saxby Chambliss, the top Republican on the Senate intelligence committee, called Petraeus "a great leader" who did right by stepping down and still deserves the nation's gratitude. He also didn't rule out calling Petraeus to testify on Benghazi at some point.

"He's trying to put his life back together right now and that's what he needs to focus on," Chambliss said.

King appeared on CNN's "State of the Union." Feinstein was on "Fox News Sunday," Graham spoke on CBS' "Face the Nation," and Chambliss was interviewed on ABC's "This Week."

Paula Broadwell Emails Sent To State Department Military Liaison: AP Source
Posted: 11/11/2012 2:38 pm EST Updated: 11/11/2012 3:07 pm EST
LINK

Paula Broadwell, the woman reported to be having an affair with CIA Director David Petraeus, sent harassing emails to State Department official, the AP reported.

Jill Kelley, the woman who received emails from Broadwell that prompted her to alert FBI, reportedly works as a State Department military liaison.

According to the Washington Post, the woman was "frightened" for her safety and contacted the FBI for protection. The Post describes the emails as "threatening."

The New York Times reported that the woman's complaint led the FBI to learn of Petraeus' affair. According to the Times, officials decided to investigate Broadwell and stumbled upon emails that revealed the relationship.

Broadwell is an expert on military affairs and the author of a biography on Petraeus. She is married with two children and lives in Charlotte, N.C.

Petreaus is married to Holly Petreaus, who is the assistant director of service-member affairs at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

According to the New York Times, some senior members of Congress were alerted of the news several hours before the story broke. White House officials knew as early as Wednesday night.

Here's more from the AP:

WASHINGTON — A senior U.S. military official says the author who had an affair with David Petraeus sent harassing emails to a woman who was the State Department's liaison to the military's Joint Special Operations Command.

The official says 37-year-old Jill Kelley in Tampa, Fla., received the emails from Petraeus biographer Paula Broadwell that triggered an FBI investigation.

The official was not authorized to discuss the case publicly and spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Another person who knows Kelley and Petraeus confirmed their friendship and said she saw him often.

Petraeus quit as CIA director last week after acknowledging an extramarital relationship with a woman – later identified as Broadwell.

The FBI probe began several months ago with a complaint against Broadwell. That investigation led to Broadwell's email account, which uncovered the relationship with Petraeus.

Petraeus shocked to hear of emails, associates say
By KIMBERLY DOZIER and PETE YOST | Associated Press
LINK

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.

NBCNEWS.COM
Petraeus Probe Ended 4 Days Before Election
An FBI investigation into a potential case of "cyber-harassment" involving Gen. David Petraeus' biographer, Paula Broadwell, began several months ago and concluded four days before the presidential election, a senior U.S. law enforcement official told NBC News. According to the official, this was the second time Broadwell was questioned in the probe, during which she acknowledged having had an affair with the retired general. Petraeus was questioned a few days earlier and also acknowledged the affair, the official told NBC News. Those interviews, which took place in the last week of October, allowed the FBI to conclude there was no basis for criminal charges, which accounted for why the Director of National Intelligence James Clapper wasn't informed about the probe until election day.

"This had nothing to do with the election," the official told NBC News. The official added that the FBI and Justice Department's decisions on the case were not governed by the political calendar, nor were they influenced by a phone call from House Majority Leader Eric Cantor's office to the FBI on Oct. 31 asserting that it had heard from a FBI whistleblower. In fact, the investigation began several months ago when a woman reported to the FBI she was receiving anonymous and harassing emails, the senior official told NBC News. Multiple government officials identified the woman to NBC News as close Petraeus family friend Jill Kelley, who lives in Tampa, Florida.

Guide To Understanding The Petraeus Sex Scandal