News:

And we're back!

Main Menu

From the military to the CIA

Started by viper37, November 15, 2012, 11:21:11 PM

Previous topic - Next topic

viper37

One thing I did not quite get in the Petreaus affair, is why is he still a general, subject to US military rule while he is directing the CIA?  Don't all military personal have to officially quit their military job before working for the CIA? Or is it only for non public figures?
I don't do meditation.  I drink alcohol to relax, like normal people.

If Microsoft Excel decided to stop working overnight, the world would practically end.

garbon

"I've never been quite sure what the point of a eunuch is, if truth be told. It seems to me they're only men with the useful bits cut off."
I drank because I wanted to drown my sorrows, but now the damned things have learned to swim.

CountDeMoney

Quote from: garbon on November 15, 2012, 11:22:17 PM
Aka you haven't paid attention. :P

No, I don't believe he has been.

Petreaus is now retired, Viper.  DCIA is a civilian position.

11B4V

Quote from: viper37 on November 15, 2012, 11:21:11 PM
One thing I did not quite get in the Petreaus affair, is why is he still a general, subject to US military rule while he is directing the CIA?  Don't all military personal have to officially quit their military job before working for the CIA? Or is it only for non public figures?

He was playing "hide the salami" while on active service.
"there's a long tradition of insulting people we disagree with here, and I'll be damned if I listen to your entreaties otherwise."-OVB

"Obviously not a Berkut-commanded armored column.  They're not all brewing."- CdM

"We've reached one of our phase lines after the firefight and it smells bad—meaning it's a little bit suspicious... Could be an amb—".

Syt

I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein's brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops.
—Stephen Jay Gould

Proud owner of 42 Zoupa Points.

CountDeMoney

Definitely catch tonight's Colbert Report;  it was a classic.

Eddie Teach

So what's the story with Chick 2, was he boning her as well?
To sleep, perchance to dream. But in that sleep of death, what dreams may come?

11B4V

#7
Quote from: Peter Wiggin on November 16, 2012, 12:07:07 AM
So what's the story with Chick 2, was he boning her as well?

Chick 1 was harrassing chick 2

Chick 2 told shirtless friend in fbi

Meanwhile General 2 was email sexting chick 2

FBI stumbled on petras..............WHO CARES


I THINK
"there's a long tradition of insulting people we disagree with here, and I'll be damned if I listen to your entreaties otherwise."-OVB

"Obviously not a Berkut-commanded armored column.  They're not all brewing."- CdM

"We've reached one of our phase lines after the firefight and it smells bad—meaning it's a little bit suspicious... Could be an amb—".

CountDeMoney

Hilarious watching two married women in a catfight over a married man.

11B4V

Quote from: CountDeMoney on November 16, 2012, 12:12:14 AM
Hilarious watching two married women in a catfight over a married man.

and chick 2 tried to claim diplomatic status.

Oh and chick 2 is of middleeastern decsent

"there's a long tradition of insulting people we disagree with here, and I'll be damned if I listen to your entreaties otherwise."-OVB

"Obviously not a Berkut-commanded armored column.  They're not all brewing."- CdM

"We've reached one of our phase lines after the firefight and it smells bad—meaning it's a little bit suspicious... Could be an amb—".

CountDeMoney

Interesting piece on Broadwell, climber and not-so-honest resume-polisher:

QuotePaula Broadwell's drive and resilience hit obstacles
The Washington Post
By Greg Jaffe and Anne Gearan, Published: November 15

Paula Broadwell was a rising star who seemed destined for a sparkling career in foreign policy. A West Point graduate who excelled in triathlons, she was pursuing a doctorate at Harvard University and had found a mentor in Gen. David H. Petraeus, an iconic U.S. military leader.

But in 2007, Broadwell was asked to leave the doctoral program at Harvard, where she had met Petraeus a year earlier, because her coursework did not meet the university's demanding standards, according to people familiar with what happened there.

What Broadwell did next was a signature feature of her resilience and drive — and what detractors say is her tendency to overstate her credentials.

Broadwell eventually leveraged her unfinished dissertation into a best-selling biography of Petraeus, a project that gave her almost unlimited access to the general when he commanded U.S. troops in Afghanistan and later when he was director of the CIA. That access led to the extramarital affair that ­upended Petraeus's career and shined a bright light on Broadwell's.

A few months after leaving Harvard in 2008, Broadwell began a full-bore effort to remake herself as a highly visible player in Washington's insular foreign policy community. At the time, she and her husband, a radiologist, were raising toddlers and preparing to move to Charlotte, where he was setting up his practice.

In the summer of 2009, Broadwell told several prominent experts on counterinsurgency warfare that she had been asked by Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the newly installed commander in Afghanistan, to assemble a team of first-tier academics and experts to conduct an outside evaluation of McChrystal's highly anticipated review of his war strategy.

She pressed experts in Washington and Cambridge, Mass., to join the panel and lobbied senior U.S. military officials in Kabul to back her fledgling "red team" effort, military jargon for an outsider evaluation. The prospective team held a couple of meetings, according to one person who was involved.

But senior military officials who were on McChrystal's staff said Broadwell was not asked to spearhead an evaluation. The officials, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss Broadwell and Petraeus, said her attempt to assemble a red-team review panel was rejected after McChrystal's aides decided that her experience, her connections and her academic credentials were too thin.

"She was trying to pull together something way over her head," said Mark R. Jacobson, a former deputy NATO senior civilian representative in Afghanistan whom Broadwell approached to serve on the team. Jacobson said he admired Broadwell's pluck. "It was the kind of move you make in Washington when you are trying to make a name," he said.

Others who had been approached to be part of the group said they questioned her assurances that she had the backing of top military officials. In a 2010 interview on a Web site focused on leadership, Broadwell was still saying that McChrystal had asked her to assemble the leadership team.

Broadwell, 40, has not responded to e-mail and telephone messages since the Petraeus scandal broke last week. Her attorney, Robert F. Muse, did not respond to a request for comment on the specific information in this article. Harvard declined to comment on Broadwell's time there.

Going to Afghanistan


Broadwell eventually found her way to Afghanistan. In June 2010, President Obama removed McChrystal as commander because of comments his aides made to a journalist. The president turned to Petraeus to replace him.

Throughout his career, Petraeus had developed a reputation as an intensely competitive and ­talented officer who sometimes came off as desperate for praise. He could be a generous mentor to junior officers, but he often alienated his peers with his determination to win every prize and award, no matter how insignificant. The general's staff officers said that Broadwell played to Petraeus's ego.

Petraeus, 60, has told friends in recent days that he admired Broadwell's "combination of intellect and physical prowess," said retired Col. Peter Mansoor. "She looks like a female version of him in some respects," Mansoor said.

Broadwell stayed in touch with Petraeus as part of her research. She visited him at U.S. Central Command headquarters in Tampa, where he served as commander before being assigned to Afghanistan.

When Petraeus moved to Kabul, Broadwell began making regular trips to the war zone. By then, she had decided to turn her academic research into a book about Petraeus, and her access to him helped her win a six-figure book deal — and a way into the elite foreign policy circles in Washington.

Broadwell was born in Bismarck, N.D. As a high school student there, she dreamed of a career as a globe-trotting diplomat. She was homecoming queen in 1990, and she excelled in track, basketball and orchestra. "God has given me all of these gifts to use to the best of my ability," she said in a yearbook entry.

She was appointed to the U.S. Military Academy, graduated in 1995, and served five years as an active-duty intelligence officer in Europe and South Korea. She remained an active-duty officer until 2000, when she transferred to the Army Reserve and rose to the rank of lieutenant colonel.

Some of her classmates and other reservists, who later spent time fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, complained that Broadwell was being treated as a counterinsurgency expert without ever having been deployed to a combat zone.

Others praised her for using her contacts and tireless energy to help other women navigate the male-dominated world of foreign policy and balance family with work.

In e-mails to friends, she talked about the strains of her frequent trips to Afghanistan. "The only way I can survive is because of my awesome husband and my mother," she wrote in 2011. "Everybody is getting tired of it and I have a serious sleep deficit, but I'm having a blast! No complaints."

Meeting at Harvard

Broadwell first met Petraeus in 2006 when she was a 33-year-old student at Harvard's Kennedy School. She was invited to a small-group discussion with the general, who had recently completed his second tour of Iraq and was rewriting the Army's guide to fighting guerrilla wars.

"I introduced myself to then-Lt. Gen. Petraeus and told him about my research interests," she would write in her book, "All In: The Education of Gen. David Petraeus." She said the general handed her his business card and offered to put her in touch with other researchers working on similar issues. "I later discovered that he was famous for this type of mentoring and networking, especially with aspiring soldiers-scholars," she wrote.

While pursuing her doctorate at Harvard, Broadwell decided to write her dissertation on military leadership, which would include a long case study on Petraeus. After several e-mail exchanges, Petraeus, an avid runner, invited her to discuss her project during a run along the Potomac River.

When she was later asked to leave Harvard's doctoral program, Broadwell completed a master's degree there in 2008 and then picked up her doctoral studies at King's College London.

In Washington, she became a frequent television guest and speaker at conferences sponsored by some of Washington's most prestigious foreign policy think tanks.

Broadwell's "contribution was based on a close relationship with and close observation of Petraeus in Afghanistan. That was her currency and what drew the attention of the Washington policy community," said John A. Nagl, a Petraeus loyalist and former president of the Center for a New American Security. "It was a very unique story. . . . She had begun to transcend the Petraeus relationship and was being sought out on her own as a smart, attractive and poised speaker."

She wrote combat dispatches on Foreign Policy magazine's Web site and made frequent appearances at think tank events as an expert on counterinsurgency, Petraeus and the Afghan war.

"The level of access she got with the level of experience she had was exactly the sort of thing that makes people in Washington jealous," said Jacobson, the NATO deputy, who worked with Broadwell in Afghanistan and Washington. "She had an opportunity that many in Washington dream of. She was playing with the big boys and girls."

A 'higher standard'

Broadwell's book was published in January 2012, and she launched a big publicity tour that included an appearance on "The Daily Show With Jon Stewart." In speeches and interviews touting the book and her life, she talked about her access to Petraeus and her accomplishments. The New York Times and Inspired Women Magazine reported after interviews with Broadwell that she was ranked No. 1 overall in fitness in her class at West Point.

A spokesman at the military academy said Thursday that Broadwell did not win the fitness award, which went to another female cadet in her graduating class.

As Broadwell's profile in Washington soared, she picked up many backers and won plaudits for her work raising money for charities that provided aid to wounded veterans.

"She was a networker, a facilitator, a convener," Jacobson said. "I think she is a good person who made a horrible mistake."

Petraeus has told former staff officers and friends that his affair with Broadwell did not begin until he retired from the military and joined the CIA in September 2011.

In July 2012, Broadwell appeared on a media panel at the Aspen Security Forum. "I was embedded with General Petraeus in Afghanistan," she said. She acknowledged that her dual role as a biographer and a military reservist with the highest top-secret clearances allowed her to view "secure compartmentalized intelligence" and caused confusion for some in Petraeus's headquarters, who saw her as a journalist.

Before the panel discussion began, she warned journalists on it about the dangers of leaking classified material and e-mailed them a report from the conservative American Enterprise Institute detailing the five most damaging security leaks of the past year.

On the panel, she said, she though that she was often held to a "higher standard, because I could lose my clearance."

Shortly before her appearance at the conference, Broadwell became the target of an FBI investigation that was sparked by anonymous e-mails she had sent to a woman in Tampa warning her to stay away from Petraeus. The investigation exposed the affair between Petraeus and Broadwell.

As part of the investigation, FBI agents discovered low-level classified material on Broadwell's personal computer. On Wednesday, the Army announced the suspension of her clearance.

viper37

#11
Quote from: CountDeMoney on November 15, 2012, 11:26:24 PM
Quote from: garbon on November 15, 2012, 11:22:17 PM
Aka you haven't paid attention. :P

No, I don't believe he has been.

Petreaus is now retired, Viper.  DCIA is a civilian position.
I thought so, but in the news here they keep saying he could face punishment for an extra-marital affair as it's against the code of conduct of the military.

So they didn't pay enough attention and misinformed me. :P

I haven't had the time to read the US newspapers, so I don't really know.  But it's ok then, things are as I figured them.
I don't do meditation.  I drink alcohol to relax, like normal people.

If Microsoft Excel decided to stop working overnight, the world would practically end.

garbon

Quote from: viper37 on November 16, 2012, 09:06:20 AM
Quote from: CountDeMoney on November 15, 2012, 11:26:24 PM
Quote from: garbon on November 15, 2012, 11:22:17 PM
Aka you haven't paid attention. :P

No, I don't believe he has been.

Petreaus is now retired, Viper.  DCIA is a civilian position.
I thought so, but in the news here they keep saying he could face punishment for an extra-marital affair as it's against the code of conduct of the military.

So they didn't pay enough attention and misinformed me.

I haven't had the time to read the US newspapers, so I don't really know.  But it's ok then, things are as I figured them.


They did pay attention. If the affair started while he was still in the military, he could face punishment from them.
"I've never been quite sure what the point of a eunuch is, if truth be told. It seems to me they're only men with the useful bits cut off."
I drank because I wanted to drown my sorrows, but now the damned things have learned to swim.

CountDeMoney

Quote from: garbon on November 16, 2012, 09:16:34 AM
They did pay attention. If the affair started while he was still in the military, he could face punishment from them.

He said it didn't start until he retired.  Either he's telling the truth, or covering his ass.  Hmmmm.

viper37

Quote from: garbon on November 16, 2012, 09:16:34 AM
They did pay attention. If the affair started while he was still in the military, he could face punishment from them.
I thought it was clear it started while he was at the CIA.
I don't do meditation.  I drink alcohol to relax, like normal people.

If Microsoft Excel decided to stop working overnight, the world would practically end.