As I surmised hours after the Petraeus-gate scandal broke, the FBI's investigation is far beyond that of a simple affair. After days of hearing from "anonymous government officials" that - except for when they said it was not just about an extra-marital affair - the investigation turned up no national security breaches, "anonymous government officials" are now telling the Washington Post that there is some expanded FBI investigation into a possible national security breach:
Senior law enforcement officials said that a late-night seizure on Monday of boxes of material from the North Carolina home of Paula Broadwell, a Petraeus biographer whose affair with him led to his resignation last week, marks a renewed focus by investigators on sensitive material found in her possession.
“The issue of national security is still on the table,” one U.S. law enforcement official said. Both Petraeus and Broadwell have denied to investigators that he was the source of any classified information, officials said.
Petraeus and Broadwell deny Petraeus was the source. That's reassuring because their credibility in this whole affair is rock solid (both puns intended).
The surprise move by the FBI follows assertions by U.S. officials that the investigation had turned up no evidence of a security breach — a factor that was cited as a reason the Justice Department did not notify the White House before last week that the CIA director had been ensnared in an e-mail inquiry.
Now we have supposedly "sensitive" material magically appearing in Broadwell's home, and the
Wall Street Journal already
reported that classified information magically appeared on her computer. We also have some 30,000 pages of documents - mainly e-mails - between Tampa volunteer social director Jill Kelley and another top military leader, Gen. John R. Allen. A socialite with no formal military role, Kelley was, according to members of Petraeus' staff,
a “self-appointed” go-between for Central Command officers with Lebanese and other Middle Eastern officials.
I didn't know you could appoint yourself an ambassadorial role. Why bother with the State Department? Allen and Petraeus clearly had no problem with Kelley's holding her self out to be - as her vanity plates read - "
Honorary Consul." This little three-way was on full display when both generals submitted
letters of support in Kelley's twin sister's custody battle. (In case you're lost in the soap opera-esque plot twists, WaPo has a
cast of characters. The hard copy has a colorful booty chart.)
Defying all credulity, the anonymous officials insist that Petraeus did not give Broadwell the information, despite her unprecedented access, both professionally and biblically. From WaPo:
The ongoing effort is now aimed mainly at Broadwell. It “is now about the source of documents on her computer,” the official said. “At this point, there is no evidence to support that [Petraeus] was the source.” The official added that it would be a “little breathless to describe it as a national security investigation.”
"
A little breathless to describe it as a national security investigation" completely contradicts the anonymous official who said just paragraphs earlier in same WaPo article that "
the issue of national security is still on the table." Perhaps if these anonymous officials were forced to go on the record, they would be at least somewhat consistent in their stories.
As morally-problematic as Broadwell and Kelley might be, these two women had close personal relationships - one an affair and the other, we are told, was platonic - with our country's top military leaders, and law enforcement seems more than happy to let them be the fall gals for these powerful men. Still, the FBI's investigation into what allegedly-classified information Broadwell possessed, ignores completely the simplest explanation as to how Broadwell got the allegedly-classified information: that Petraeus gave it to her. Invoking Occam's razor here.
Note: Broadwell may have had a security clearance while on active duty, but that would not permit Petraeus to share classified information with her over the pillow, nor would it allow her to keep classified information at her home in hard copy or on her personal computer. Just ask National Security Agency (NSA) whistleblower Thomas Drake who was charged under the Espionage Act for allegedly retaining allegedly classified information at home.
Note #2: While the FBI is now saying Broadwell had classified information, whether or not that information was actually properly classified is an open question. As I wrote yesterday, judging from the Drake case, the government is not beyond putting information through a retroactive forced classification review and claiming that even information marked "unclassified" is now "classified" for the purposes of charging someone under the Espionage Act for embarrassing top government officials, whether through whistleblowing like Drake or merely bragging about unprecedented insider access.
The MSM is helping anonymous government officials spew whatever "facts" respond to the latest criticism over an obviously inappropriate, unethical, and possibly illegal scenario. While the transparency is a plus, the ever-changing story is a disservice to truth. Real transparency is not about selective anonymous officials officials doing damage control when the CIA Director sleeps with his grad student- cum-biographer.