In the luxuriantly unfolding Petraeus Affair, there are
three principal strands:
Sex; Politics; and Espionnage.
Sex; Politics; and Espionnage.
The first two form no part of our interest; we dismiss them thus:
(1) Sex
The American public being what it is, the sex angle is the sine qua non for this being lasting front-page
news. But purely as a sexual
or romantic saga, it is a bargain-basement third-rate clearance-item.
This fumbling-around among somewhat homely elderlies simply does not begin to rate as a tale
of passion. If you want that, read
Romeo and Juliette or Un Amour de Swann.
Indeed, a French reader comments, unimpressed:
Aucun sens du melo la française ces
américains! En France, on nous insuffle une histoire comme celle là toutes les
semaine, au plus haut niveau de l'Etat, et personne n'a jamais eu l'idée - non
jamis - qu'il pourrait y avoir chantage, ou même téléguidage, ou même
divulgation de secrets d'Etat! Peut-etre qu'on n'a plus en France que des
secrets de polichinelles..et des "polichinelles dans le tiroir" comme
on appelait joliment les enfants sans père, d'montemps!
(As a former French teacher, it pains me, but in the
interests of the ongoing investigation, I abstain from correcting the
punctuation or spelling in the quotation above, since that would affect the
hash-code.)
*
Si cela vous parle,
savourez la série
noire
en argot authentique
d’Amérique :
*
The Canadian press explicitly compares French vs. American
standards of sex-scandal here, basically panning ours as by comparison “squeaky-clean”:
Bottom line (and please don’t take “bottom” in any
inappropriate sense): This scandal
is not - not - not about sex!! (There, I said “not” an odd number of
times, so it still multiplies-out to a negation.)
Thus, we shall rigorously refrain from quoting, or
commenting on, such gutterpress trivia as this:
General David Petraeus flew his
mistress to Paris with him when he was appointed director of the Central
Intelligence Agency, an unnamed source has claimed.
According to Buzzfeed, married
biographer, Paula Broadwell, accompanied the esteemed military leader on a
government-funded trip to the City of Lights in July 2011 while her husband
cared for their two children at home.
(Though we can’t resist mentioning that, according to
informed sources, the two children whimpered piteously for their mommy, the
entire time she and the general were off sipping champagne out of slippers up in Pigalle.)
(For more XXXclusive hotcha-gotcha sexstuff from the CITY OF LIGHTS, click here:
Furthermore, in the interests of decorum, we shall never
refer to the temptress in question by the name now current in the nation’s
newsrooms (“Paula the Broad”), but shall restrict ourselves to the name as
printed on her unofficial-cover passport, “Paula Bonkwell”.
Above all, we shall studiously
refuse to post any photographic material whatsoever relating to this sordid affair; offering, instead, this one, since she
is a lot hotter than the rather thickset principals in this case:
 |
| La divine Aurélie |
(You can read more about this fascinating Belgian diplomatic
figure here:
* * *
~ Commercial break ~
Nook lovers are book
lovers!
We now return you to
your regularly scheduled essay.
* * *
(2) Politics
It is actually quite usual for there to be many high-level
turnovers at the beginning of a new administration. This one, in itself, is only middling prominent -- How
many of you can even name the previous three CIA directors? How many can name any single NSA
director, anybody, ever? The
only thing juicing this politically is typical Congressional grandstanding,
which seems to be getting ever more trivial -- these days we just groan when we
hear that some puffed-up committee-honcho is demanding an investigation into
whatever. And what adds
venom to this grandstanding is the attempt by sore-loser Republicans to somehow turn the missteps of the
well-known Republican Petraeus into a Democratic
scandal, just as they do with anything at all that floats their way down the
gutters. This shopworn maneuver is not worth
polemicizing against; but we will
quote something revealing from today’s Washington Post, showing just how
far Petraeus was willing to go in cultivating the Republican right wing:
Prominent members of conservative,
Washington-based defense think tanks were given permanent office space at his
headquarters and access to military aircraft to tour the battlefield. They
provided advice to field commanders that sometimes conflicted with orders the
commanders were getting from their immediate bosses.
Some of Petraeus’s staff officers
said he and the American mission in Afghanistan benefited from the broader
array of viewpoints, but others complained that the outsiders were a
distraction, the price of his growing fame.
To be sure, the neo-cons were not the only ones shown such
favoritism, there was also his bit o’ jam:
Broadwell, who first met Petraeus
when she was a doctoral student at Harvard, was treated as though she were a
member of Petraeus’s inner circle and was afforded VIP housing at the main
U.S.-NATO headquarters in Kabul.
“In Iraq, General Petraeus was
adamant that he didn’t want reporters embedded within his headquarters in any
way,” said retired Col. Peter Mansoor, who served as Petraeus’s executive
officer. “What troubles me is why he decided to change his own guidance and
allow her unfettered and lengthy access.”
So, memo to Republican die-hards: You really don’t want to lift this lid.
(Otherwise, you will find stuff like this:
* * *
~ Commercial break ~
We now return you to
your regularly scheduled essay.
* * *
(3) Espionnage
Now, here we actually do come to something potentially
interesting. There may be
nothing there, but reportorial flashlights so far have not pierced into many
dark corners.
In our post below, we noticed
the oddity of Ms Bonkwell’s claim to have enjoyed SCI
clearance -- a very big deal indeed.
There are essentially three possibilities.
(Scenario A) She’s lying. A boring possibility, but a priori the
most probable.
(Scenario B) She was granted such clearance, not
because of any need-to-know, but as a personal perk for the paramour. (If that seems unlikely, cf. the
Footnote (**) that follows.)
(Scenario C) She actually did enjoy this high-level
clearance for some legitimate reason. But… Why?
For what purposes was this ditsy self-promoter, TV stuntwoman (***) and
poison-pen e-mail hacker granted
such sensitive access?
(***) “Beware the woman who goes on
“The
Daily Show” wearing a black silk halter top and flaunting her toned
triceps. Men should know better, but, it seems, they rarely do.” -- Ruth Marcus
(**) Footnote to (Scenario B), from a reader's comment:
Ah...this
takes me back....to the late eighties. I was finishing an AF career in the
Pentagon. Our organization had a new (married) general, and he had his own
Broadwell. His gal probably couldn't do the pushups like Broadwell, but she had
some obvious other talents: she was built like Kate Upton.
Due to our mission, we had a library of reference material, staffed by a GS-11. Soon after our shiny new general arrived, that GS-11 person departed. Next we knew, he was upgrading the position to a GS-15, using as the job description his girlfriend's resume. He wasn't successful on the GS-15, but he got a GS-14, and in she rolls. It took the general and her about 8 months to finally get that job up to the GS-15 level.
She too spent a "lot of time" with our general, she too "traveled" with our guy, and she showed up at his side during project reviews and other staff meetings. If there was anyone in the organization of 120 officers and enlisted who didn't know what was happening, they were probably legally dead. Oh --- our general had all the upper level security clearances that had been invented by that time.
Well, this tale has somewhat of a sad ending, too. The general, in due course and on time, was reassigned to an intelligence agency located east of the Potomac. The librarian soon followed, as librarians do. Then, through his ex-secretaries, who kept close tabs on the philanderings of the general, we heard the following: in his new spacious offices befitting someone of his intellilgence and stature, he had his own shower. One day, his boss, a three star general, called for him to report for a pop up meeting. His secretary couldn't raise him on his office phone --- he was behind closed doors apparently conducting an important meeting with the librarian --- and the secretary didn't want to open the door. After two calls more calls from the three star, he shows up to see just what is going on. He barges into the office, and finds our one star and his librarian en flagrante in the shower.
Due to our mission, we had a library of reference material, staffed by a GS-11. Soon after our shiny new general arrived, that GS-11 person departed. Next we knew, he was upgrading the position to a GS-15, using as the job description his girlfriend's resume. He wasn't successful on the GS-15, but he got a GS-14, and in she rolls. It took the general and her about 8 months to finally get that job up to the GS-15 level.
She too spent a "lot of time" with our general, she too "traveled" with our guy, and she showed up at his side during project reviews and other staff meetings. If there was anyone in the organization of 120 officers and enlisted who didn't know what was happening, they were probably legally dead. Oh --- our general had all the upper level security clearances that had been invented by that time.
Well, this tale has somewhat of a sad ending, too. The general, in due course and on time, was reassigned to an intelligence agency located east of the Potomac. The librarian soon followed, as librarians do. Then, through his ex-secretaries, who kept close tabs on the philanderings of the general, we heard the following: in his new spacious offices befitting someone of his intellilgence and stature, he had his own shower. One day, his boss, a three star general, called for him to report for a pop up meeting. His secretary couldn't raise him on his office phone --- he was behind closed doors apparently conducting an important meeting with the librarian --- and the secretary didn't want to open the door. After two calls more calls from the three star, he shows up to see just what is going on. He barges into the office, and finds our one star and his librarian en flagrante in the shower.
I would not reproduce that uncorroborated scuttlebutt, save that it receives confirmation of a
sort from several of my moles in [named US entity redacted].
[To be continued, if the black helicopters don’t get me
first…]
[Moving to a secure location…]
~
By now, the WDJ Media Department informs me, this post
threatens to degenerate into what is technically known in the business as a “river
of text”. Contemporary readers --
well, contemporary readers do not exist, but anyhow: Contemporary surfers and
texters and browsers do not like
that. So to relieve the optical strain,
we offer this Visual Interlude:
 |
| We can service those hard-to-reach areas |
(At this point, you’ll probably want some private time...)
~
[Update] Today’s Washington Post ups the ante considerably:
Lawmakers are likely to question
whether Broadwell was improperly given access to sensitive information about
the attack. In a late October speech at the University of Denver, she said that
the CIA annex where two of the Americans were killed “had actually taken a
couple of Libyan militia members prisoners” and that the attack was thought to
be “an effort to get them back.” U.S. officials have not made reference to that
possible motive in numerous accounts of the Benghazi attack.
A CIA spokesperson called the
suggestion that the agency keeps prisoners in Libya “uninformed and baseless,”
in a statement issued Sunday night. “The CIA has not had detention authority
since 2009,” it said.
The attack on the consulate is now way overdetermined:
(i) Anniversary of September 11
2001
(ii) Revenge for the actioning of
Abu-Yahya al-Libi
(iii) Outrage over the
Muslim-insulting YouTube video
(iv) Copy-cat attacks after several
assaults in other countries motivated by (iii)
(v) Just generally being young and
restless (and male and resentful and horny, in that unhappy Muslim country);
and now
(vi) A Hollywood-cool
hostage-rescue scenario (read more about this theme here)
A nice follow-up:
~
[Intermission]
While we wait for some astonishing new development to break,
here in the meantime is a meta-hot video
for your entertainment. Like
the scandal itself, it offers Dames, Dames, Dames:
Warning: You
must be over 18 to watch this sizzling video -- but also under 60, lest you go
and do something foolish.
(Oh -- Did I say I wouldn’t be delving into the sex angle of
all this? I lied.)
~
Hmm, still no brain-boggling late-breaking
developments. But now all of
us are primed for the taste of spicy-salty IC meat. So here is something to munch on while waiting for the real story to break.
Kurt Volker, a former American
official close to Senator John McCain, sees a bigger problem: drones have made
killing too easy. In a recent article he asked: “What do we want to be as a
nation? A country with a permanent kill list? A country where people go to the
office, launch a few kill shots and get home in time for dinner? A country that
instructs workers in high-tech operations centres to kill human beings on the
far side of the planet because some
government agency determined that those individuals are terrorists?”
“Some - government - agency”? ? Excuse me? -- This is not the Small Business
Administration we’re talking about here;
this is not the Bureau of Indian Affairs. These are units that hire the very brightest and most
dedicated analysts they can find, to sift through the abundant but enigmatic
data-points.
Particularly in the SIGINT business -- since I happen to know a fellow
who knows some people who have some friends-of-a-friend who may have read
something somewhere on the Internet about that racket -- such lightminded
targeting is unlikely. SIGINTers tend to be epistemologically
really austere. They truly do not say, “Hey look! That guy has a funny-sounding
Mideastern name! Probably a
terrorist -- let’s kill him!” (And
if they did, they wouldn’t say “kill him”, but “action him”, or “get kinetic on
his ass”.) There may be some
politicking and ass-licking and hanky-panky at the top of the intel agencies,
but the guys twirling the dials are all about the mission.
~ ~ ~
[Frowning, foot-tapping update]
Well, this is truly disappointing. Not only has no-one come up with the contents of the
classified files found on Ms Bonkwell’s private computer (something to do with
the Tychonoff Affair, perhaps?), nor video footage of the Generalissimo and the
Generalissima in flagrante: no-one has managed to tie this in to
the Kennedy assassination, or even to conjure up some halfway-entertaining
conspiracy theory.
There is, to be sure, the one the wing-nuts have been
reflexively dishing-up, but that one’s beneath notice. Consider (this will be on the test):
Two Republican celebrities are
caught in hanky-panky and other shenanigans. This news is withheld until after the election. Qui prodest?
Those of you who enjoy the faculty of reason will spot the
answer instantly. Those who do
not, will never get it -- never.
Additionally, why would the following report, which blows a
hole in Romney’s bogus oil alarmism, have been delayed until after the
election?
Report Sees U.S. as Top Oil
Producer in 5 Years
The International Energy Agency
also said the United States would be a net exporter by 2030.
Already the wing-nuts are sniffing blood. Obama!
No, surely we can all do better than that. So allow me to offer some suspicious
observations.
[Alert!
Alert! Site is being
hacked!
-- Moving to the underground bunker …]
[[to be continued if we can re-establish comms]]
* * *
~ Commercial break ~
We now return you to
your regularly scheduled essay.
* * *
[Meta-update: OK. So. We made it to the Cone-of-Silence room.
To resume.]
So, how did this investigation get launched in the first
place? Certain features are odd
and unexplained.
First of all, the FBI as currently constituted is basically an honorable institution,
which does a lot of crucially important work. At times certain shady characters like Richard Nixon have attempted to misuse the Bureau for
personal ends, but that has been
getting harder and harder to do. So, no-one was going after Petraeus per se (unlike the
strange saga of the bringdown of Elliot Spitzer, which needs to be
re-aired). Even had they
known about his adultery, that is not a crime, and the FBI is not authorized to
investigate legal immorality, even if they had the time.
No, going by what has been reported so far, and assuming
this to be correct, this whole affair began with a simple boondocks catfight
between a couple of unimportant civilian women. And thus it began in classic cinematic fashion: the paranoid-thriller which is set in
motion with someone noticing some minor odd disparity, or obsessively zooming
in on a recorded piece, photographic (“Blow-Up”) or audio (“The Conversation”)
until it reveals something sinister and momentous.
So: A woman in
(naturally) Florida, receives some e-mails she does not like, from a woman
unknown. What does she do?
(a) Press DELETE.
(b) Select “Delete and Report
Spam”.
(c) Reply with a nastygram.
(d) Run to the FBI.
This being Florida, she does (d).
The FBI then does one of the following:
(A) Say, “Lady, the inboxes of
women brim with such things every day -- it is S.O.P. for Distaffland. Please go get a life.”
(B) Say: “Aye-aye, ma’am!
We’ll drop what we’re doing -- sleeper cells, vast financial
shenanigans, cross-country serial killers -- and prioritize your every whim.”
For reasons still unexplained, they choose (B).
When the report initially broke, and the identity of the
Florida woman had not been revealed, several readers (but no reporters)
commented on the oddity, hypothesizing that either the woman herself must be
someone really important, or her husband was.
But it turns out her husband is a Tampa surgeon, while she
herself is … an unpaid volunteer.
Now, as has subsequently been pointed out in the press, the
Bureau does have jurisdiction here, the incident in question being potentially “cyber-harrassment”. On the other hands, it is also a Federal offense, if it is
anything, to cross state lines with intent to litter, or to employ digital
means to commit mopery with intent to creep. So why -- knowing nothing of the involvement of anyone
at all important, or of any actual crime (for the e-mails were soon ruled
non-criminal in themselves) -- why did they take the case?
[Uh-oh -- Shots just rang out. And someone is pounding at the door …]
~
OK -- we’re back --- barely.
Nobody knows better than the Murphy Brothers -- those world-famous, wise-cracking,
pistol-packing private eyes -- how important it is to size up a client
before taking the case.
While we’re waiting for late-breaking revelations,
check out the P.I. action here:
~
[Eka-meta-update]
Ha -- the late-breaking revelations! Here they are!
Turns out we were right to wonder why the Bureau initially took on such
an apparently piss-ant case:
The FBI agent who started the case was a friend of Jill Kelley, the
Tampa woman who received harassing, anonymous emails that led to the probe,
according to officials. Ms. Kelley, a volunteer who organizes social events for
military personnel in the Tampa area, complained in May about the emails to a
friend who is an FBI agent. That agent referred it to a cyber crimes unit,
which opened an investigation.
However, supervisors soon became
concerned that the initial agent might have grown obsessed with the matter, and
prohibited him from any role in the investigation, according to the officials.
The FBI officials found that he had sent shirtless pictures of himself
to Ms. Kelley.
As a mystery-writer, I would be ashamed to plot-up
anything so lame; but this was the
best that the Bureau could do.
~
No wait -- this is getting really weird. Nothing to do with sex or politics or
espionnage -- but simply with writing,
which is what I do. Take this in:
Petraeus ghostwriter ‘clueless’ to affair
From that headline, you would naturally assume that a book purporting to be an
autobiography of General Petraeus had been published over his byline, though
the prose actually stemmed from someone whose job it is simply to write. Such a practice is not at all
uncommon, and (so long as the fact is not veiled beyond requirements of decent
discretion) not even particularly reprehensible, in the case of soldiers and
athletes and starlets and what have you, who in general could not pen a
sentence to save their lives. But…
the headline is wrong. Apparently
(am I misreading this? my head is
spinning) he ghostwrote, not for the general, who has never published a memoir,
but for his purported biographer --
the graduate student who was given unparalleled access owing, purportedly, to
her … writing skills.
This doesn’t compute;
I’m going to bed.
[16 Nov 2012] We've been riffing on this because, well, it's fun, and there's nothing good on TV. But it also is happening (unfortunately) in actual reality -- our home planet -- to real people: people who, to be sure, do play themselves on television, but who then have to go home to a cold house full of ghosts. For a sober reminder, click here:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/david-ignatius-the-petraeus-affairs-resulting-witch-hunt/2012/11/16/b1205416-3023-11e2-9f50-0308e1e75445_print.html
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