The presidential election ended last week and the nation has finally turned its attention elsewhere. Unfortunately, surfacing at the end of last week, came the resignation of CIA Director Gen. David Petraeus, the man who led coalition forces in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Once considered a possible outside presidential contender, he left office officially on Friday.
The reason: an affair he had been carrying on with his biographer, Paula Broadwell. Having an affair is grounds for automatic dismissal from a major post such as his thanks to the sensitivity of the information he had access to. There were — and remain — questions about how much access his biographer had to the “most informed man on earth.” The FBI began tracking Petraeus’s emails to see if she had access. The investigation had been ongoing and finally, after the election was over, Petraeus pulled the escape hatch.
A resignation does raise some more uncomfortable questions that will have to be answered before the whole thing dies down. If Petraeus couldn’t keep a personal affair secret, how would he have been able to hide information that other states would be actively seeking? How could he expect his agency to be free on leaks when he couldn’t control his desires himself? In the military structure, behavior such as this can even be grounds for a court-martial. You may have all the faith in the world in Petraeus and the fidelity he has to America, but his wife thought the same thing. Everyone is capable of surprises.
Finally, the event begs the questions, when Broadwell titled Petraeus’s biography “All In” what precisely was she referring to?
