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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsPetreus is resigning from CIA
Because . . . . . . had had an affair?!?!?!?!?
Wow.
Breaking now on MSNBC
Drunken Irishman
(34,857 posts)kelliekat44
(7,759 posts)Renew Deal
(81,866 posts)Stinky The Clown
(67,816 posts)Renew Deal
(81,866 posts)That must be some affair! Maybe a subordinate?
Myrina
(12,296 posts)No DUplicitous DUpe
(2,994 posts)Andrea just read the letter on air (msnbc)
No DUplicitous DUpe
(2,994 posts)librechik
(30,676 posts)Z_I_Peevey
(2,783 posts)is taking care of business.
randome
(34,845 posts)sufrommich
(22,871 posts)a personal reason like this. I'd be very disappointed if he did,not that I believe he did.
SoapBox
(18,791 posts)what the hell is wrong with these guys...keep it in you pants, dude.
If they can't keep these issues under control...how the devil can they do the job they are supposed to do, with a clear mind.
idiot.
Renew Deal
(81,866 posts)What kind of affair would it take to force him to resign? Cheating on your wife isn't exactly a high crime in DC.
SoapBox
(18,791 posts)cheating with a man?
Renew Deal
(81,866 posts)MineralMan
(146,322 posts)As far as I know, anyhow.
Stinky The Clown
(67,816 posts)MineralMan
(146,322 posts)In any case, adultery is punishable because it interferes with "good order." Same is true in the CIA, I imagine. Or it could be Benghazi, I suppose. I can't see that it matters, really. He's outa there.
Renew Deal
(81,866 posts)Is he still in the military?
MineralMan
(146,322 posts)He may well be. In any case, the reason adultery can be punished in the military is because it interferes with the mission. The same could be said for the CIA, I think. It's not so much a legal or criminal thing as it is a violation of good order.
It may also be an excuse to get rid of him without mentioning Benghazi.
Stinky The Clown
(67,816 posts)warrprayer
(4,734 posts)under UCMJ? When they are actually trained in the art of seduction to procure info from targets? (not making this up - this was actually part of training all the way back to the O.S.S.)
woodsprite
(11,918 posts)THEN he might be giving up his job. I can see that happening.
...my take would be "you're resigning because of marital infidelity?" THAT is stupid.
Secret marital infidelity? something someone could potentially use to get leverage over you and compromise your position? Yeah, problem. KNOWN marital infidelity? Irrelevant to your job duties. Completely. If he's coming out with it in public anyway the resignation is pointless unless there is some other factor that isn't being mentioned.
Popcorn 51
(84 posts)something else is going on here
leveymg
(36,418 posts)are more likely the real cause.
Z_I_Peevey
(2,783 posts)Renew Deal
(81,866 posts)Transition is more than enough of a reason.
malaise
(269,114 posts)leveymg
(36,418 posts)CIA also came under criticism for its inadequate security and response to the attack. The State Dept. Mission in Benghazi was really an annex to the larger CIA station there. CIA had primary control over security there. If there was a Libyan arms pipeline to Syria, that involved leaking MANPADs, the CIA would have been running that operation.
malaise
(269,114 posts)was he the leak (or more) to the ReTHUGs?
malaise
(269,114 posts)Renew Deal
(81,866 posts)Seems like a bit much. I think the affair is legit, but it must be pretty bad.
malaise
(269,114 posts)Fuckie Todd says this is on the level - it's the affair and there is no tolerance of affairs at the highest level of the CIA.
leveymg
(36,418 posts)Lord knows, Allen Dulles, the first CIA Director, had dozens of them.
The only one that came close to that in recent times, off the top of my head, is Deutch, who was accused of using his secure laptop to view internet porn, but there were other more substantial allegations made against him that prompted his resignation in 1996.
Usually, resignations under fire come out of some major policy difference with the White House or because the Director falls on his sword when lesser plausible deniability fails after some catastrophe that was actually ordered by the President.
leveymg
(36,418 posts)Blue_Tires
(55,445 posts)not sure we'll ever find out the real reason, though...
Stinky The Clown
(67,816 posts)This may even have been a sword fall.
leveymg
(36,418 posts)I sort of doubt there was a serious policy difference between Petraeus and the White House on anything we've done in the Mideast. But, someone had to take the fall for losing the Ambassador.
SoapBox
(18,791 posts)on and on and on and on...
blah, blah, blah.
HappyMe
(20,277 posts)I guess it's better to resign before the shit hits the fan.
SoapBox
(18,791 posts)malaise
(269,114 posts)B
justiceischeap
(14,040 posts)during Benghazi investigation. And that President Obama would be happy to see him go.
SoapBox
(18,791 posts)...and was Issa going to be involved at all in these hearings (or were they going to be hearings by the Senate?)
That ass would have blabbed it right there, just to bring him down.
warrprayer
(4,734 posts)... was all in the line of duty for spooks? Has no one ever seen "James Bond"?
What a riduculous reason to fire a perfectly good spy.
bluedigger
(17,087 posts)That is an offense subject to termination in his agency. It leaves one open to being compromised. He can't fire people for something he is equally guilty of in good conscience.
WinkyDink
(51,311 posts)OregonBlue
(7,754 posts)He seemed very serious and very distracted. Just another one of my paranoid theories?
Z_I_Peevey
(2,783 posts)When you consider the enormous amounts of dark money in the campaign, the various factions left in place from the Bush/Cheney years and the pre-loaded outrage over Benghazi from the right...well, anything is possible.
warrprayer
(4,734 posts)We weave...
"The Soviets used sex not only for direct recruitment, but as a contingency where an American officer might need to be compromised in the future. The CIA itself made limited use of sexual recruitment against foreign intelligence services. "Coercive recruitment generally didn't work. We found that offers of money and freedom worked better."[11] If the Agency found a Soviet intelligence officer had a girlfriend, they would try to recruit the girlfriend as an access agent. Once the CIA personnel had access to the Soviet officer, they might attempt to double him.
Examples of people trapped by sexual means include:
Clayton J. Lonetree, a US Marine Sergeant embassy guard in Moscow, was entrapped by a female Soviet officer in 1987. He was then blackmailed into handing over documents when he was assigned to Vienna. Lonetree is the first US Marine to be convicted of spying against the United States.
Roy Rhodes, a US Army NCO serving at the US embassy in Moscow, had a one-night stand (or was made to believe he had) with a Soviet agent while drunk. He was later told the agent was pregnant, and that unless he co-operated with the Soviet authorities, this would be revealed to his wife.
Irvin C. Scarbeck, a US diplomat, was entrapped by a female Polish officer in 1961, and photographed in a compromising position. He was blackmailed into providing secrets.
Sharon Scranage, a CIA employee described by one source as a "shy, naive, country girl", was allegedly seduced by Ghanaian intelligence agent Michael Soussoudis. She later gave him information on CIA operations in Ghana, which was later shared with Soviet-bloc countries.
Mordechai Vanunu, who had disclosed Israeli nuclear secrets, began an affair with an American Mossad agent, Cheryl Bentov, operating under the name "Cindy" and masquerading as an American tourist, on September 30, 1986. She persuaded him to fly to Rome, Italy, with her on a holiday. Once in Rome, Mossad agents drugged him and smuggled him to Israel on a freighter.
John Vassall, a British embassy official in Moscow, who was guided by the KGB into having sex with multiple male partners while drunk in 1954. The KGB then used photographs of this incident to blackmail Vassall into providing them with secret information.
Bernard Boursicot, a French diplomat, was entrapped by Shi Pei Pu, who was working for the Chinese government. Shi Pei Pu, a male Chinese opera singer, successfully masqueraded as a woman and told Boursicot he was carrying Boursicot's child. The situation was fictionalized into the play M. Butterfly.
Katrina Leung, indicted as a double agent working for both China and the FBI, seduced her FBI handler, James J. Smith, and was able to obtain FBI information of use to China through him. She also had an affair with another FBI officer, William Cleveland.
In 2006, the British Defence Attaché in Islamabad Pakistan, was recalled home, when it emerged that he had been involved in a relationship with a Pakistani woman, who was an intelligence agent. While the British Government deny that secrets were lost, others sources say that several Western operatives and operations within Pakistan were compromised.[13]
In May 2007 a female officer serving in Sweden's Kosovo force was suspected of having leaked classified information to her Serbian lover who turned out to be a spy.[14]
Won Jeong-hwa, who was arrested by South Korea in 2008 and charged with spying for North Korea, is accused of using this method to obtain information from an army officer.[15]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clandestine_HUMINT_asset_recruiting#Love.2C_honeypots_and_recruitment
I think it is fairly safe to say if the U.S.S.R. employed these tactics, we trained our agents in them as well. What a silly bunch of puritan sheep we have in this backward country.
calico1
(8,391 posts)There's got to be more to this.
Maybe he was hoping for a Romney win?
randome
(34,845 posts)Renew Deal
(81,866 posts)or more liberal than people think, so I doubt it.
sufrommich
(22,871 posts)That is between him and his wife. Strange.
progressoid
(49,992 posts)If the affair was with a co-worker?
Jennicut
(25,415 posts)Sounds like someone knew...
randome
(34,845 posts)Renew Deal
(81,866 posts)That makes sense though.
flamingdem
(39,314 posts)and he's self-firing for a good reason I imagine. Shame, it's good at what he does
Lucy Goosey
(2,940 posts)I worked for a while for a (Canadian) federal agency that had strict security requirements. To get cleared, I had to take a polygraph and was grilled about things that could potentially be used against me - affairs, homosexual experiences, abortions, psychiatric care, whatever. To be clear, they didn't care if I had had any of those things per se - they cared if they thought I would betray my country to keep any of those things secret. I have, in fact, been a patient of a psychiatrist in the past, and I disclosed it and still got cleared.
And all of this was just for a Secret clearance for a mid-level finance policy job, nothing approaching the sensitivity of head of the CIA.
I mean, obviously I have no idea what the whole story is with Petraeus, but I thought of my polygraph experience as soon as I read that he was resigning over an affair. It's not entirely impossible that it is just about the affair.
HopeHoops
(47,675 posts)Tierra_y_Libertad
(50,414 posts)Our governments use of thugs, assassins, torturers, blackmailers, is appalling. Not to mention embarrassing to an allegedly civilized nation.