The Affair

Attkisson reports that Petraeus hasn't been the only high ranking official to leave his post since the Benghazi assault.

Gen. Carter Ham is in the process of stepping down as commander of U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM). He was in charge of U.S. military operations in Libya and the surrounding region on that night. The Pentagon has called the move a matter of routine succession.

The Navy has replaced Charles Gaouette, the Rear Admiral who commanded the USS Stennis aircraft carrier Strike Group in the Middle East due to recent allegations of "inappropriate leadership judgement," which were not otherwise described.

Paula Broadwell, meanwhile, has made no public comment on the affair since the news broke, or on her comments in Colorado regarding Benghazi.  http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505266_162-57548240/petraeus-resignation-just-sex-scandal-or-serious-security-concern/

CIA Director, General David Petreaus resigns, claiming an extra maratial affair?



Now that Elizabeth Warren has won a seat in the senate by defeting Scott Brown, it is unlikely that Obama will select Sen John Kerry for head of the State Dept, replacing Hillary, because there would be the risk that Scott Brown would run and win that seat, thereby making the senate 50-50 Dem and Republican.

Now the Obama admin will try to rehabilitate our Ambassador to the UN, Susan Rice.

BTW, who in the world believes the Petreaus resignation is not about the Bengazi Affair

http://beforeitsnews.com/alternative/2012/11/general-betrayal-the-cia-the-murder-of-ambassador-stevens-and-the-return-of-iran-contra-2494532.html
General betrayal: the CIA, the murder of Ambassador Stevens and the return of Iran-Contra

If you believe ex-General David Petraeus, freshly sacked ex-Director of the CIA, quietly resigned because he was caught with his pants down once too often, then you have fallen for the biggest cover-up in US politics since the Iran-Contra scandal back in the 1980s.

Once again we have the same old mix of shunting illegal arms shipments around the world to suit US policies and objectives. Once again, playing both ends against the middle. Once again, convoluted CIA plotting and scheming that was bound to end badly. And yet again, blatant lying to the American people and the Congress to conceal a scandal of multiplying and increasingly dangerous dimensions.

Petraeus resigned precipitately on the eve of testifying to Congress on the circumstances of the bloody assassination of J. Christopher Stevens, US ambassador to Libya, on the 9/11 anniversary this year. Stevens was allegedly attacked by a so-called crowd of maddened jihadists at the embassy’s offshoot consulate in the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi.

This is a contrived smokescreen concocted to conceal the fact that Obama not only knew the truth about the events in Benghazi, he personally refused to order military re-enforcements despite multiple requests from US officials both on the ground and in Washington
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On September 27, 2012, three days after the attack, mainstream media broadcast a report that full-scale military assistance to the embattled consulate had been denied. We also know that commanders of US forces in Tripoli, who could have easily intervened, received orders from the highest levels in the Pentagon to stand down.

There is no great mystery there. The United States goes to great lengths to obscure the presence and strength of US military forces on the ground in Libya.

The ambassador was taken out –‘erased’ in common secret service parlance – because he was the lynchpin of an extraordinary conspiracy to shuttle high-powered arms looted from former Libyan government stockpiles, through the rag tag band of US-backed rebels who overthrew the Gadaffi regime, thence onwards –via Turkey – to America’s stooge freedom fighters struggling to sabotage the Assad regime in Syria.

Benghazi was the nerve center of the entire scheme, and Stevens the controlling spider in the web. Patently, he was hugely and deliberately exposed to danger. The consulate was protected by locally-hired militia belonging to the ‘February 17 Martyrs Brigade’ on the specious bureaucratic grounds it was not an embassy, and so did not qualify for the usual Marine protection.

The ambassador was spending an unusually large amount of time in a region of Libya known to be volatile – yet he didn’t qualify for armed protection

Protection never came.

Yes, given a nut and bolt or two, this is Iran-Contra all over again. Out of the way Benghazi was the operations center of the CIA-managed plan to shunt Libyan arms (ground-to-air missiles, high powered rocket grenades, artillery shells) to the main Turkish Aegean port of Iskenderun.

From there, convoys under the direct control of the Turkish High Command escorted the weapons to the Syrian border. One documented shipment accounted to 400 tons of crated weapons.

In a moment I will come to the mysterious business of the Turkish military jet supposedly shot down by Syrian anti-aircraft fire earlier this year, which bears a direct connection to the Benghazi business.
According to various reports (Wall Street Journal, Daily Telegraph, repeated in numerous European media organs), Libyan rebels were paid to steal arms from ex-government dumps. Weapons that did get into the hands of the rebels were re-purchased, using secret CIA slush funds – the ‘black money’ – which is never disclosed to Congress.

We learn that here is a strikingly similar parallel to the Iran-Contra arms-go-round mastermind, the Naval Marine Corps Lt.-Col Oliver North. In that infamous affair of mid-1980s, the US covertly paid the fundamentalist regime of Ayatollah Khomeini – then at war with the current US ally of convenience Iraq – for shipments of weapons, delivered to the Right-wing Contra terrorists engaged in a struggle against the popular Nicaraguan government.
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Petreaus was expected to testify at a congressional hearing, next week, looking into the killing of our Ambassador to Lybia, Stevens, in the attack on the US Consulate in Bengazi. Reportedly, now that Petreaus has resigned, he will not testify. UPDATE: Petraeus has testified.





http://www.newsmax.com/Headline/petraeus-resigns-cia-affair/2012/11/09/id/463573

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. The CIA ‘s reporting to Congress included a claim that protests over a YouTube video played a role in the attacks, thus allowing Obama to initially discount the possibility that the U.S. had suffered another terrorist attack just before the election.

In contrast, based on real time video and reports, the State Department was reporting that the attack that led to the deaths of four Americans, including U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens, was terrorist-related.

The State Department reported that there were no protests at the consulate.

Still, the White House, with concurrence by the FBI and Justice Department, held off on asking for Petraeus’ resignation until after the election.

His resignation occurred three days after the election, avoiding the possibility that Obama’s ill-fated appointment of Petraeus could become an issue in the election.

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. “The decision was made to delay the resignation apparently to avoid potential embarrassment to the president before the election,” an FBI source says. “To leave him in such a sensitive position where he was vulnerable to potential blackmail for months compromised our security and is inexcusable.”

Michael Kortan, the FBI’s assistant director for public affairs, said he had no comment.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324073504578113460852395852.html?mod=WSJ__LEFTTopStories

FBI agents were pursuing what they thought was a potential cybercrime, or a breach of classified information.

Instead, the trail led to what officials said were sexually explicit emails between two lovers, from an account Mr. Petraeus used a pseudonym to establish, and to the destruction of Mr. Petraeus's painstakingly crafted image as a storied Army general.

Mr. Petraeus admitted to an affair in a letter to CIA employees announcing his resignation.
In the aftermath of the investigation, some lawmakers are aiming criticism at the FBI and the Obama administration, including Attorney General Eric Holder, who knew about the email link to Mr. Petraeus as far back as late summer. A House Republican leader also learned of the matter in October. Some argue that Mr. Petraeus shouldn't have resigned; others said that the FBI should have formally notified Congress earlier.

The top Senate Democrat on intelligence issues said Sunday she would investigate the FBI's handling of the inquiry, and why the matter wasn't shared earlier with Congress

The other 'other woman.'
http://nation.time.com/2012/11/11/official-petraeus-paramour-emailed-woman-in-fla/

As questions swirl about the extramarital affair that led to the resignation of CIA Director David Petraeus, the retired general and his biographer, Paula Broadwell, have been quiet about details of their relationship. However, information has emerged about the woman who received the emails from Broadwell that led to the FBI’s discovery of Petraeus’ indiscretion.

A senior U.S. military official identified the second woman as Jill Kelley, 37, who lives in Tampa, Fla., and 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.

In a statement Sunday, Kelley and her husband, Scott, said: “We and our family have been friends with Gen. Petraeus and his family for over five years. We respect his and his family’s privacy and want the same for us and our three children.”

Using terrorist tactics, petraeus and mistress avoided a 'paper trail' by not actually sending emails.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-57548733-83/petraeus-reportedly-used-draft-e-mails-to-communicate-with-mistress/

In an effort to cover a trail of messages between him and his mistress, former CIA Director Gen. David Petraeus reportedly used a tactic favored by terrorists and teenagers -- communicating via draft e-mail.

Petraeus and Paula Broadwell, the co-author of Petraeus' biography and the woman he was having an affair with, set up private Gmail accounts in order to communicate, the Associated Press reported today. In addition to creating the e-mails under false identities, Petraeus and Broadwell decided to exchange some messages using the draft function, as an added precaution.

Instead of actually e-mailing each other, they would compose and draft messages but not send them. The other person would then log into the same account and read the drafts. This made those messages harder to trace, and the tactic has been used in the past by terrorists and teenagers, an unnamed law enforcement official told the AP.

Apparently, this trick has been around a while. PBS Frontline mentioned it in a 2005 special on terrorist tricks and counter-measures.

http://seattletimes.com/html/nationworld/2019670396_benghazi13.html
Of the dozen people McClatchy asked in Benghazi and Tripoli, only an unarmed 31-year-old security guard who was stationed at the main gate of the consulate on Sept. 11 had heard about a possible second U.S. compound in Benghazi. And he said he didn't know the CIA had been based there.

"All I heard about was a secret building," the guard said, adding that he didn't know where it was. The guard asked not to be further identified, fearing reprisals from extremists for working with Americans.

During an Oct. 26 question-and-answer session at the University of Denver, Paula Broadwell, who's been named as the woman whose affair with CIA Director David Petraeus led to his resignation Friday, told the audience that two Libyan militiamen were being held at the CIA annex and suggested that the attackers were targeting the annex, rather than the consulate.

"Now, I don't know if a lot of you heard this, but the CIA annex had actually, um, had taken a couple of Libyan militia members prisoner, and they think that the attack on the consulate was an effort to try to get these prisoners back. So that's still being vetted," she said
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But most here don't believe that. The guard, who stayed around the consulate for the duration of the assault, said he thought that the subsequent attack on the CIA compound happened because the attackers had followed the Americans who were fleeing the consulate to the CIA annex.

"They came to kill Americans," he said.

The assault at the consulate began somewhere between 9:25 and 9:40 p.m. The CIA annex came under fire twice in subsequent hours, according to a timeline released by the CIA. The first attack consisted of what the agency called "sporadic small arms fire and RPG rounds," a reference to rocket-propelled grenades. That assault lasted about 90 minutes, from 11:30 p.m. to 1 a.m.
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MY OBSERVATION? Now that the Bengazi Affair, where our Ambassador to Lybia Chris Stevens,  was killed in an attack, is linked to a sensational sex scandal, the MSM is covering it BIG TIME! Please recall that for two months the MSM ignored the attack in Bengazi, and raised no questions ahead of the elections.

BONUS LINK:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/gen-allen-is-fourth-us-commander-in-afghanistan-to-be-fired-or-embroiled-in-controversy/2012/11/13/343964ea-2dd2-11e2-b631-2aad9d9c73ac_story_1.html

LINGERING QUESTIONS: Why was General Carter Hamm relieved from duty in the middle of the Benghazi Incident? Why was Rear Admiral, Charles M. Gauette, head of the John C Stennis carrier group, the Commander of Carrier Strike Group (CSG) 3 recalled?
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/13/us/petraeuss-resignation-highlights-concern-over-military-officers-ethics.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

MY RECOMMENDATION: Create a rule, that applies to all military officers above the grade of Major, and ALL Intellegence agency personell, that they must IMMEDIATELY report ALL their email accounts, including private, secret, etc, to their immediate supervor. And, yes, that includes the NSA.

That's all, folks!

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