Chris Hayes has a new show starting Monday night on MSNBC.
He’s calling it “All In.”
You’ll recall that’s the title of Paula Broadwell’s biography of Gen. Petraeus, which took on an, um, somewhat ironical meaning after their affair was revealed.
Tag Archives: Paula Broadwell
Petraeus Brought Down in Palace Coup
According to a new book coming out Tuesday, senior CIA officials went after David Petraeus to make sure that the FBI found out about his affair with Paula Broadwell so that Petraeus would have to resign. These officials were unhappy with how Petraeus was running the agency, specifically that he was too focused on paramilitary operations (like drone strikes) at the expense of intelligence gathering and analysis. His military management style at a political agency also brought him many enemies who wanted him gone.
The authors of the book, Brandon Webb and Jack Murphy, discovered the Petraeus information while researching their book on the Benghazi terrorist attack, Benghazi: The Definitive Report.
As for Benghazi, they say the attacks on the Benghazi mission and CIA annex that left four Americans dead were retaliation for U. S. raids against Islamic terrorist extremists in Libya. They claim that neither Petraeus nor Ambassador to Libya Chris Stevens, who died in the attacks, was aware of our ongoing military operations using special ops forces. They say John Brennan, Obama’s Deputy National Security Adviser and now his nominee to head the CIA, was running these operations from the White House outside the traditional command structure, and that the State Department and the CIA didn’t know about them.
It will be interesting to see if this book has any impact on Brennan’s nomination and what Petraeus’ response is.
Good for Her
The NYT reports that since she learned of her husband’s affair with Paula Broadwell, Holly Petraeus has not missed a day of work at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, where she leads the Office of Servicemember Affairs.
Elizabeth Warren recruited Mrs. Petraeus for the job, given her previous experience helping military families at the Better Business Bureau.
Will Petraeus Lose Wife As Well As CIA Job?
The Daily Mail reports that David Petraeus’ wife Holly is threatening divorce over his admitted affair with Paula Broadwell. The anonymously sourced story says that she is suspicious that he also had an affair with Jill Kelley, which he denies.
The article says that she “keeps demanding to know how many other women he has cheated on her with.”
They have been married since 1974 and have a son and daughter.
And Gloria Allred Joins the Party!
I guess we should have seen this coming — Gloria Allred is now representing Jill Kelley’s twin sister, Natalie Khawam, in the Paula Broadwell-Gen. Petraeus-Gen. Allen scandal.
Both Gen. Petraeus and Gen. Allen wrote letters in support of Natalie in her custody battle with her ex, Grayson Wolfe, or, as I call him, Gray Wolfe.
Sicko Paula Broadwell Threatened to Make Jill Kelley Go Away
The New York Daily News reports that Jill Kelley believed Paula Broadwell was threatening her life:
The menacing emails sent by David Petraeus’ ex-mistress to a Florida socialite promised to make the apparent rival “go away” and boasted of her friends in high places, the Daily News has learned.
The notes Paula Broadwell sent to Jill Kelley were far more sinister than previously reported and seemed like the rantings of someone “clearly unhinged,” a close friend of Kelley told The News Monday.
“This wasn’t just a catfight. Any normal person who got emails like that would have immediately called the police,” said the friend.
She said Kelley read her the emails when she called, panic-stricken and seeking advice in the days before the scandal became a stunning public spectacle and led to Petraeus’ resignation as CIA director.
The friend, who did not want to be identified, said Kelley saw the emails as death threats, specifically one in which Broadwell vowed to “make you go away.”
In other emails, Broadwell, a West Point graduate, touted her military background in a threatening manner and boasted of having “powerful” friends.
“This wasn’t just a case of cyber-bullying,” the friend said. “(Kelley) was scared for her life. She had reason to be. These emails are the real thing. When she read them to me, I literally had the shivers.
Jill Kelley Tried to Get $80 Million from Petraeus Connection
Jill Kelley is the Tampa woman whom Paula Broadwell warned to stay away from her lover, Gen. Petraeus. Everything unraveled when Kelley went to the FBI about Broadwell’s emails. Now we learn that Kelley tried to cash in big-time from her friendship with Petraeus.
From “Jill Kelley, key figure in David Petraeus scandal, led lavish life,” Shashank Bengali, David Cloud, Joseph Tanfani, L A Times:
At the Republican National Convention in Tampa in August, New York energy entrepreneur Adam Victor was introduced to [Jill] Kelley. She was described as “a very close friend of Gen. Petraeus,” who had helped Kelley become South Korea’s honorary consul.
Victor, who was looking to establish a major coal project in South Korea, invited Kelley to New York in mid-September. There, she again played up her Petraeus ties. Victor then flew Kelley to Hawaii to meet with a South Korean delegation to help pave the way for negotiations.
But then, Victor said, Kelley asked for 2% of the gross cost of the project for her compensation. Informed that would mean a fee of about $80 million, Kelley persisted until Victor ended the relationship. An industry standard compensation would be no more than $1 million, Victor said.
“It was such an astronomical figure that it suggested she had no experience in negotiating these types of deals,” Victor said. “Gen. Petraeus had a lapse in judgment in using his influence to put her in that position.”
Paula Broadwell Made Up Mission from Gen. McChrystal
WaPo had an interesting Paula Broadwell story today.*
She was kicked out of her Ph.D. program at Harvard in 2007, which had to be devastating for someone as hard-charging and ambitious as she is.
In 2009 she tried to put together a panel of counterinsurgency experts, claiming that Gen. Stanley McChrystal, then the top commander in Afghanistan, had tasked her with assembling experts to review his strategy. But McChrystal never asked her to do this, she just made it up.
She was determined to stand out and make a name for herself. Be careful what you wish for.
* “Paula Broadwell’s drive and resilience hit obstacles,” Greg Jaffe and Anne Gearan
Jill Kelley Had Phony Cancer Charity
Jill Kelley is the Tampa woman who went to the FBI about harrassing emails that turned out to be from Gen. Petraeus’ mistress Paula Broadwell. She is now involved in an investigation of top Afghaniston commander Gen. Allen because of 20,000 to 30,000 pages of emails between Kelley and Allen in the last couple of years.
Now HuffPo reports that Kelley and her husband, who is a surgeon, had a phony cancer charity. They took in about $160,000, spent it on meals, entertainment, travel, and lawyers, and then declared the charity bankrupt in 2007.
Kelley and her husband have been in financial trouble recently, with threatened foreclosures on two properties and lawsuits for unpaid credit card bills.
Jill Kelley’s twin sister Natalie was an officer with the cancer charity. Natalie filed for bankruptcy last April with $3.6 million in liabilities.
OK, Now My Head Is Going To Explode
Now the Pentagon says that it is investigating the commander who succeeded Gen. Petraeus in Afghanistan, Gen. John Allen, for “inappropriate communications” with Jill Kelley, the woman who complained to the FBI about threatening emails that turned out to be from Petraeus’ mistress, Paula Broadwell.
I think the word we’re looking for here is “Byzantine.”
Embattled Farmers 