Summary: David Petraeus, the former director of the CIA, is rumored to enter a guilty plea for mishandling classified information.
According to ABC News, David Petraeus, the former CIA director and a celebrated war veteran, will enter a guilty plea for misdemeanor charges he received for apparently mishandling classified material. The agreement to plead guilty was reached with federal prosecutors.
Petraeus is specifically charged with the unauthorized removal and retention of classified information. The former CIA director is suspected of providing private documents to his mistress. According to USA Today, it is believed that Petraeus revealed the names of covert officers and war strategies to the mistress.
The Justice Department released a statement about the agreement, saying, “Three documents — a criminal information, a plea agreement and a statement of facts — were filed today in the United States District Court for the Western District of North Carolina’s Charlotte Division in the case of United States v. David Howell Petraeus. The criminal information charges the defendant with one count of unauthorized removal and retention of classified material. … The plea agreement and corresponding statement of facts, both signed by the defendant, indicate that he will plead guilty to the one-count criminal Information.”
Some speculated that the resignation was some sort of “Obama cover-up.”
Petraeus resigned from his position as director of the CIA in November 2012. He served just over a year as director. Prior to becoming the director of the CIA, Petraeus served in the United States Army for 37 years, and led American forces in both Afghanistan and Iraq.
However, Petraeus’ career came crashing down when a long-term affair with Paula Broadwell, his biographer, was revealed. The pair met when Broadwell was working on her dissertation as a graduate student at Harvard University. Due to their relationship, Broadwell became very close to Petraeus, which eventually allegedly granted her access to confidential information. She published Petraeus’ biography, “All In,” at the beginning of 2012, roughly 10 months before he announced his resignation from the CIA.
It was a serendipitous event that the affair between the two became publicized. The FBI was attempting to uncover who was sending harassing emails to a woman from Florida who had connections to senior U.S. military officials. The emails were linked to Broadwell, and, when Broadwell and Petraeus’ communications were studied, it showed evidence of an affair with the former four-star general—who happened to be married.
According to Wikipedia, the pair would leave email messages as “drafts” in an email account, apparently in hopes that the messages would not be easily traced.
Broadwell did have security clearance, but her relationship with Petraeus caused many to wonder about national security. Federal authorities were concerned that Petraeus provided Broadwell with access to private information, and that she had classified material at her residence.
Just a few days after news of the affair broke, FBI agents searched Broadwell’s North Carolina home.
In the past few months, some investigators had been pressuring senior officials to file charges against Petraeus. Eric Holder, the Attorney General, had not yet signed any documents to initiate filing charges. In January, however, Holder insisted that the investigation was “ongoing” and that it was being “done in a fair and an appropriate way.”
Eric Holder is also scheduled to resign as attorney general
Broadwell was not charged with any criminal conduct.
Broadwell and Petraeus have both publicly apologized for any harm their relationship may have caused. In a letter to a friend, Petraeus wrote, “I screwed up royally. … I paid the price, appropriately.”
Petraeus works with KKR, a global investment firm, and teaches as a visiting professor of public policy at the City University of New York’s Macaulay Honors College. HE also serves on the boards of several veterans organizations.
Source: ABC News
Photo credit: Wikipedia