CIA Director David Petraeus Resigns, Citing Affair

Penurious Penguin writes "After serving as Director of the CIA since September 2011, David Petraeus resigned from his position today, November 9. The retired four-star Army general has cited an extramarital affair as reason for the resignation. Michael Morell will now serve as Acting Director of the CIA."

The News For Nerds:

[retroworks]

SOME guys get to have TWO girlfriends...

Re:5 days prior to hearing.

[DigitAl56K]

The buck stops with Hillary. Or whomever else it can stop at short of Obama.

The President stood up during the 2nd Presidential debate, in front of the entire nation, and clearly stated the buck stops with him, and not Hillary Clinton. He made this point very clearly.

But don't let the very public and easily accessible facts get in the way of your rant.

This is going to get very messy

[electron sponge]

Petraeus' biographer Paula Broadwell under FBI investigation over access to his email, law enforcement officials say [nbcnews.com]

Petraeus Resigns Over Affair With Biographer [slate.com]

He had an affair with his biographer, which apparently began while he was active duty military in Afghanistan. Extramarital affairs are illegal under the Uniform Code of Military Justice. He'll be lucky if the DoD doesn't bring him out of retirement just to take a star off his shoulder.

Re:Job Performance

[MrEricSir]

and if the affair was with a subordinate in the CIA?

It wasn't. The affair was with his biographer [slate.com], and it was uncovered by the FBI. [foxnews.com]

Re:5 days prior to hearing.

[macwhizkid]

He resigned 5 days prior to the congressional hearing on what transpired at the US Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, which resulted in the death of U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and other US personnel.

Oh, for crying out loud. Look, maybe there was a genuine conspiracy relating to the Benghazi attack. Or maybe there wasn't and shit just happens.

But, if you want to convince anyone else of your case, you have to stop treating every shadow like it's a smoking gun and every government official like they're a co-conspirator until you have real, substantial evidence. That's the way it works: you don't get to claim conspiracy just by randomly picking facts to be a story and hoping some of it pans out.

If Congress wants to talk to Petraeus, they'll subpoena him. If that happens and he flees the country, then that's a story. His exact job title really doesn't matter.

Re:Base partisan politics? Look in the mirror.

[Black Parrot]

Sometimes shit happens and there's no way to plan for it.

'Shit' didn't just happen. A pending attack or assassination was a big concern for Ambassador Stevens months beforehand, and his requests for more security went nowhere.

Past that, there's some concern that Obama failed miserably when Hillary Clinton's legendary '3 am phone call' came.

Even if you want to say 'shit happens' for the latter, the former is still a good reason to look into the deaths of 4 Americans.

In any case, your absolute lack of curiosity on the subject makes you every bit the mindless partisan you accuse republicans of being.

Those of you who get your "news" from FOX may be interested to learn that -

a) the requests for security were for a different embassy

b) a CIA response team was on site 28 minutes after the alarm went out

Re:Base partisan politics? Look in the mirror.

[Obfuscant]

a) the requests for security were for a different embassy

August 2, 2012: Ambassador Stevens sends a cable to D.C. requesting "protective detail bodyguard postions" -- saying the added guards "will fill the vaccum of security personnel currently at post... who will be leaving with the next month and will not be replaced." He called "the security condition in Libya ... unpredictable, volatile and violent."

Ambassador Stevens was referring to Benghazi, not "a different embassy" as you claim.

September 11, 2012: 9:43 a.m. Benghazi time (3:43 ET): Amb. Stevens sent cables to D.C., including a Benghazi weekly report of security incidents reflecting Libyans' "growing frustration with police and security forces who were too weak to keep the country secure."

Again, Benghazi, not "a different embassy", as you claim.

9:40 p.m. (3:40 p.m. ET): Gunfire and an explosion are heard. A TOC agent sees dozens of armed people over security camera flowing through a pedestrian gate at the compound's main entrance. It is not clear how the gate was opened.

The agent hits the alarm and alerts the CIA security team in the nearby annex and the Libyan 17th of February Brigade, one of several powerful militias serving as a de facto security presence in Benghazi. The embassy in Tripoli and the State Dept. command center were also alerted.

State Dept. Diplomatic Security follows events in real time on a listen-only, audio-only feed, according to testimony of Charlene Lamb, the deputy assistant director for international programs, given before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee on Oct 10.

This is, once again, at the Benghazi embassy, not someplace else. A real-time feed of the audio was being monitored in DC. They knew what was happening. It wasn't a reaction to someone using their right of free speech, and shouldn't have been apologized for.

10:25 p.m. (4:25 p.m. ET): A six-member CIA team arrives from the annex with 40 to 60 members of 17th of February Brigade. The team removes Smith's body.

Hmm. 9:40PM to 10:25 PM. I do the math and get 45 minutes, not the 28 minutes you claim. An nearby annex with military forces that takes 45 minutes to show up.

But these are all lies from "Fox News", right? Try again. CBS [cbsnews.com]

Re:Job Performance

[Solandri]

Yes, but not being able to conceal an affair doesn't speak well for his performance as a security agent.

It's the other way around. When getting a security clearance, one of the things they look for is any skeletons you have in the closet which could be used to blackmail you. The affair itself is not particularly relevant to his job. What is relevant is that he put himself in a situation where he could potentially have been blackmailed [wikipedia.org]. From best to worst, the possible situations for someone who's supposed to be protecting government secrets is:

No affair
Openly public affair
Affair, initially secret, but now admits to it
Affair, still keeping it secret

Re:Base partisan politics? Look in the mirror.

[Fallingcow]

Is this inaccurate?

Focus Was on Tripoli in Requests for Security in Libya [nytimes.com]

Interesting article. Covers quite a bit more than the title implies.

Re:Job Performance

[ppanon]

CIA death squads?

He said George H.W. Bush who, prior to being president and vice president, was CIA director [wikipedia.org] for just under a year in 1976. While this is probably prior to the involvement of CIA with death squads in Honduras, Nicaragua, and El Salvador, and after the Phoenix Program [wikipedia.org] in VietNam, it would be surprising if there wasn't CIA involvement with death squads in Guatemala, Argentina, Chile [wikipedia.org] (very likely), the Phillipines (also very likely) or another country [yahoo.com] with with one of the right-wing governments known to use death squads to silence political opposition during periods spanning the mid 70s.

While some of the death squad targets may have aguably been combatants like the Afghani and Pakistani targets of current Predator strikes, most were just citizens using speech to raise awareness of injustices perpetrated by the right wing governments and their cronies. You generally don't need death squads to kill combatants because the army can do that job. You use death squads to perform extra-legal killings of civilians in the middle of the night because they are being a political annoyance and you don't have (or can't be bothered to gather) evidence that they are involved in illegal activities.

All because of the fear that those countries would irreparably fall to communism like dominoes even though, when Nicaragua and El Salvador eventually fell, the eventual outcome wasn't as feared.