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: Petraeus
Drudge Has It
Drudge now has picked up the Petraeus/Benghazi story I posted about late last night based on the new book coming out on Tuesday.
There’s some explosive stuff in the book about Petraeus being done in by his own senior people at the CIA and about John Brennan running special ops anti-terror raids from the White House that led to the Benghazi attack against us on 9/11/12.
I’m very curious to see how much media attention/official response the book gets.
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.
Brennan to CIA
The Prez nominated John Brennan, currently his Deputy National Security Adviser, to be CIA Director.
Brennan will replace Gen. Petraeus. Deputy Director Michael Morell has been Acting Director since Petraeus left and was himself a candidate for the top job. Many at CIA are disappointed that he didn’t get it.
Brennan worked at the CIA for twenty-five years.
Do As He Says, Not As He Does
As you’d expect of a GOP congressman from Tennessee, Scott Des Jarlais is staunchly anti-abortion.
He’s also just about the biggest hypocrite you’ll find anywhere.
While married to his first wife, Des Jarlais, a physician, had affairs with two of his patients, three of his co-workers, and a saleswoman for a drug company. When one of the patient mistresses told him she was pregnant, he aggressively pushed her to have an abortion, and there’s a recorded phone call of that conversation.
His first wife also had two abortions during their marriage with his full support.
Despite all the icky revelations, Des Jarlais has no plans to resign.
And in Arlington, VA, Gen. David Petraeus is thinking, “WTF?”
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.
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.
Paula Broadwell at Harvard — “Self-Promoter”
From “Broadwell fell short of aims at Harvard,” Callum Borchers, Bryan Bender, and Tracy Jan, Boston Globe:
One of Broadwell’s former professors at Harvard described her as a self-promoter who would routinely show up at office hours.
“It was very much, ‘I’m here and you’re going to know I’m here,’ ” said the professor, who did not want to be identified because of the sensitivity of ongoing investigations. “She was not someone you would think of as a critical thinker. I don’t remember anything about her as a student. I remember her as a personality.”
The professor said when Petraeus chose Broadwell to write his biography, there was shock among the national security faculty at Harvard because “she just didn’t have the background — the academic background, the national security background, or the writing background.”
It Just Doesn’t Make Sense
From “Petraeus Says U. S. Tried to Avoid Tipping Off Terrorists After Libya Attack,” Eric Schmitt, NYT:
“David H. Petraeus…told lawmakers on Friday…that the administration refrained from saying it suspected that the perpetrators of the attack were Al Qaeda affiliates and sympathizers to avoid tipping off the groups.”
But the local Al Qaeda group Ansar al-Sharia proudly announced they had carried out the attack just a few hours after it happened. So just in case they thought we didn’t know, they told us. You can’t tip off someone when they are publicly boasting.
The other aspect of Petraeus’ argument that makes no sense is that the original talking points that referenced Al Qaeda were drafted by intelligence professionals and later changed to say “extremists” by “someone outside the the intelligence community,” according to Congressman Peter King (R-NY).
Petraeus’ claim would be much more credible if some political, diplomatic, or military person wrote talking points saying Al Qaeda, and the intelligence community changed them. But here we have the reverse.
Embattled Farmers 