CNN news 2012-11-15 加文本

cnn news 2012-11-15

We begin tonight “Keeping Them Honest” with new questions about the scandal that has led to David Patraeus resigning as director of the CIA. Now it certainly isn’t the first sex scandal to bring down a powerful man in Washington. It certainly won’t be the last. But tonight there are growing questions about the timing of how the word got out, whether more people in the government should have been told or been told sooner that the FBI was investigating a case involving the director of the CIA.

We’re “Keeping Them Honest” as we do every night not to take side. You can get that on other cable news channels, but to look for the truth, for the facts.

Here is what we know right now about who knew what and when. According to Wall Street Journal the FBI discovered the affair between Patraeus and his biographer, Paula Broadwell, in late summer. We’ll have more on how in just a moment. So the FBI reportedly knew in late Summer that the head of the CIA was having an affair, but it wasn’t until months later after Election Day that President Obama found out, and the House and Senate intelligence committees didn’t find out until Friday. Congressional leaders from both parties are angry, they say they should have been notified sooner that there were potential national security issues. Senate Intelligence Committee chair Dianne Feinstein said today she is going to investigate why the FBI didn’t tell oversight committee about the investigation.

A decision was made somewhere not to brief us, which is atypical. It is very puzzling and I think was a mistake because this thing just came so fast and so hard, and since then, it’s been like peeling an onion. Every day some, another peel comes off and you see a whole new dimension to this.

And there’s still a lot we don’t know tonight. Now analysts say there’s no evidence, no evidence that the affair led to any security breaches and that there are strict FBI protocol about who gets notified in this kind of investigation. But the timing of when the scandal broke right after Election Day and right before Petraeus was scheduled to testify in the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, that certainly has a lot of people asking a lot of questions. Understandably.

Now the other angle to this story is of course the age-old tale of an affair between a married powerful, highly respected man in Washington and a much younger woman. Now in this case, the woman who literally wrote the book on General Petraeus, Paula Broadwell. According to Charlotte Observer the two first met in 2006 when she was a graduate student at Harvard. She later traveled to Afghanistan, interviewed Petraeus, sometimes going running with him, interviews that led to the best-selling book, “All In: The Education of General David Patraeus.” Now the revelation about the affair is bringing new interest in all the interviews Broadwell did to promote the book and what she said about Petraeus at that time. Take a look.

“He at the end of the day is a human, and is challenged by the burdens of command and has mastered wearing the mask of command, if you will. So he has this mask of command, you think he’s really confident, but I got to see a more personal side. But it’s not a hagiography. I’m not in love with David Petaeus.”

“He is quite a physical specimen. He really loves to work out. I think at the agency they called him genetic mutant. This project started as my dissertation about three years ago. And I was working with General Petraeus virtually, doing interviews via e-mail and occasionally running with him and interviewing. I’m not a spokesperson for him. And if, you know, showing a role model to other people in the world or other readers is a repugnant thing, then I’m sorry, but I think the values that he upholds and tries to instill in his, in his organizations are valuable and worth pointing out.”

Well, that was Paula Broadwell then. She has not spoken subsequently. As we said, the timeline of the scandal, who got notified and when, is now under the microscope. cnn intelligence correspondent Suzanne Kelly has more on that.

According to a friend of Petaeus, the affair began in November last year, two months after the retired general took the helm at the CIA. That same friend also reports that meetings between the two were infrequent, but at some point, Petraeus and Broadwell began communicating via personal e-mail accounts. E-mails that a government official describes as explicit. Skip ahead to May of this year. That’s about the time a government official says Broadwell began sending threatening e-mails to Jill Kelley, described as a family friend of Petraeus, who lives in Tampa, warning her to stay away. That official tells us that Kelley shared her concerns over the threatening nature of the e-mails with a friend at the FBI, and that prompted an investigation. Sometime after Patreaus became aware of the e-mails, a government official says Petraeus told Broadwell to stop sending them and sometime around July, according to the friend of Petraeus, the affair ended. The source tells cnn that Petraeus indicated Broadwell might to be obsessed with him and that Broadwell may have felt that she was warding off the competition by sending e-mails to Kelley.

At some point, both Broadwell and Petraeus were interviewed by the FBI and it was after that things began to unravel quickly. The Wall Street Journal says Broadwell was interviewed in September and that Attorney General Eric Holder knew about the investigation then. A senior intelligence official says director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, was notified of the investigation by the FBI last Tuesday, Election Day, just at some polls were beginning to close. That same source says that on Wednesday, Clapper notified the White House. Petraeus met with the president last Thursday and offered his resignation which was accepted as the ordeal became public on Friday.