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Title: Gen. Petraeus: Too Big to Jail (Petraeus gets a misdemeanor wrist-slap for exposing covert officers and lying about it)
Source:
Blacklisted News
URL Source: http://www.blacklistednews.com/Gen. ... to_Jail/42378/0/38/38/Y/M.html
Published: Mar 5, 2015
Author: Consortium News
Post Date: 2015-03-06 09:07:33 by Deckard
Keywords: None
Views: 581
Comments: 4
While lesser Americans face years in jail for leaking secrets – even to inform fellow citizens of government abuses – retired Gen. David Petraeus gets a misdemeanor wrist-slap for exposing covert officers and lying about it, says ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern, who was jailed just for trying to ask Petraeus a question. The leniency shown former CIA Director (and retired General) David Petraeus by the Justice Department in sparing him prison time for the serious crimes that he has committed puts him in the same preferential, immune-from-incarceration category as those running the financial institutions of Wall Street, where, incidentally, Petraeus now makes millions. By contrast, “lesser” folks – and particularly the brave men and women who disclose government crimes – get to serve time, even decades, in jail. Petraeus is now a partner at KKR, a firm specializing in large leveraged buyouts, and his hand-slap guilty plea to a misdemeanor for mishandling government secrets should not interfere from his continued service at the firm. KKR’s founders originally worked at Bear Stearns, the institution that failed in early 2008 at the beginning of the meltdown of the investment banking industry later that year. Gen. David Petraeus in a photo with his biographer/mistress Paula Broadwell. (U.S. government photo) Despite manifestly corrupt practices like those of subprime mortgage lenders, none of those responsible went to jail after the 2008-09 financial collapse which cost millions of Americans their jobs and homes. The bailed-out banks were judged “too big to fail” and the bankers “too big to jail.” Two years ago, in a highly revealing slip of the tongue, Attorney General Eric Holder explained to Congress that it can “become difficult” to prosecute major financial institutions because they are so large that a criminal charge could pose a threat to the economy – or perhaps what he meant was an even bigger threat to the economy. Holder tried to walk back his unintended slip into honesty a year later, claiming, “There is no such thing as ‘too big to jail.’” And this bromide was dutifully echoed by Holder’s likely successor, Loretta Lynch, at her confirmation hearing in late January. Words, though, are cheap. The proof is in the pudding. It remains true that not one of the crooked bankers or investment advisers who inflicted untold misery on ordinary people, gambling away much of their life savings, has been jailed. Not one. And now Petraeus, who gave his biographer/mistress access to some of the nation’s most sensitive secrets and then lied about it to the FBI, has also been shown to be too big to jail. Perhaps Holder decided it would be a gentlemanly thing to do on his way out of office – to take this awkward issue off Lynch’s initial to-do list and spare her the embarrassment of demonstrating once again that equality under the law has become a mirage; that not only big banks, but also big shots like Petraeus – who was Official Washington’s most beloved general before becoming CIA director – are, in fact, too big to jail. It strikes me, in a way, as fitting that even on his way out the door, Eric Holder would not miss the opportunity to demonstrate his propensity for giving hypocrisy a bad name. A Slap on Wrist for Serious Crimes The Justice Department let David Petraeus cop a plea after requiring him to admit that he had shared with his biographer/mistress eight black notebooks containing highly classified information and then lied about it to FBI investigators. Serious crimes? The following quotes are excerpted from “U.S. v. David Howell Petraeus: Factual Basis in support of the Plea Agreement” offered by the U.S. District Court for the Western District of North Carolina, Charlotte Division: “17. During his tenure as Commander of ISAF in Afghanistan, defendant DAVID HOWELL PETRAEUS maintained bound, five-by-eight-inch notebooks that contained his daily schedule and classified and unclassified notes he took during official meetings, conferences, and briefings. … A total of eight such books (hereinafter the “Black Books”) encompassed the period of defendant DAVID HOWELL PETRAEUS’S ISAF [Afghanistan] command and collectively contained classified information regarding the identities of covert officers, war strategy, intelligence capabilities and mechanisms, diplomatic discussions, quotes and deliberative discussions from high-level National Security Council meetings, and defendant DAVID HOWELL PETRAEUS’s discussions with the President of the United States of America. [emphasis added] “18. The Black Books contained national defense information, including Top Secret//SCI and code word information.” Despite the sensitivity of the notebooks and existing law and regulations, Petraeus did not surrender them to proper custody when he returned to the U.S. after being nominated to become the Director of the CIA. According to the Court’s “Factual Basis,” Petraeus’s biographer/mistress recorded a conversation of Aug. 4, 2011, in which she asks about the “Black Books.” The Court statement continues: “ [Petraeus] ‘Umm, well, they’re really – I mean they are highly classified, some of them. … I mean there’s code word stuff in there.’ … On or about August 27, 2011, defendant DAVID HOWELL PETRAEUS sent an email to his biographer in which he agreed to provide the Black Books to his biographer. … On or about August 28, 2011, defendant DAVID HOWEL PETRAEUS delivered the Black Books to a private residence in Washington, D.C. where his biographer was staying. … On or about September 1, 2011, defendant DAVID HOWELL PETRAEUS retrieved the Black Books from the D.C. private residence and returned them to his own Arlington, Virginia home.” [emphasis added] I would think it a safe guess that Petraeus’s timing can be attributed to his awareness that his privacy and freedom of movement was about to be greatly diminished, once his CIA personal security detail started keeping close track of him from his first day on the job as CIA Director, Sept. 6, 2011. “32. On or about October 26, 2012, defendant DAVID HOWELL PETRAEUS was interviewed by two FBI special agents. … [He] was advised that the special agents were conducting a criminal investigation. … PETRAEUS stated that (a) he had never provided any classified information to his biographer, and (b) he had never facilitated the provision of classified information to his biographer. These statements were false. Defendant DAVID HOWELL PETRAEUS then and there knew that he previously shared the Black Books with his biographer.” [emphasis added] Lying to the FBI? No problem. As “Expose Facts” blogger Marcy Wheeler immediately commented: “For lying to the FBI – a crime that others go to prison for for months and years – Petraeus will just get a two point enhancement on his sentencing guidelines. The Department of Justice basically completely wiped out the crime of covering up his crime of leaking some of the country’s most sensitive secrets to his mistress.” [emphasis added] Talk about “prosecutorial discretion” or, in this case, indiscretion – giving Petraeus a fine and probation but no felony conviction or prison time for what he did! Lesser lights are not so fortunate. Just ask Chelsea (formerly Bradley) Manning who is serving a 35-year prison sentence for disclosing information to the public about U.S. war crimes and other abuses. Or Edward Snowden, who is stuck in Russia facing a U.S. indictment on espionage charges for informing the people about pervasive and unconstitutional U.S. government surveillance of common citizens. Or former CIA officer John Kiriakou who was sent to prison for inadvertently revealing the name of one Agency official cognizant of CIA torture. Here’s what Neil MacBride, U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, said then: “The government has a vital interest in protecting the identities of those involved in covert operations. Leaks of highly sensitive, closely held and classified information compromise national security and can put individual lives in danger.” When, on Oct. 23, 2012, Kiriakou acquiesced to a plea deal requiring two-and-a-half years in federal prison, then CIA Director Petraeus sent a sanctimonious Memorandum to Agency employees applauding Kiriakou’s conviction and noting, “It marks an important victory for our agency … there are indeed consequences for those who believe they are above the laws that protect our fellow officers and enable American intelligence agencies to operate with the requisite degree of secrecy.” [emphasis added] Consequences for Kiriakou but not, as we now know, for Petraeus. If you feel no discomfort at this selective application of the law, you might wish to scroll or page back to the “Factual Basis” for Petraeus’s Plea Agreement and be reminded that it was just three days after his lecture to CIA employees about the sanctity of protecting the identity of covert agents that Petraeus lied to FBI investigators – on Oct. 26, 2012 – about his sharing such details with his mistress. Why Did Petraeus Do It? Old soldiers like Petraeus (indeed, most aging but still ambitious men) have been known to end up doing self-destructive things by letting themselves be flattered by the attentions of younger women. This may offer a partial explanation – human weakness even in a self-styled larger-than-life super-Mensch. But I see the motivation as mostly vainglory. (The two are not mutually exclusive, of course.) Looking back at Petraeus’s record of overweening ambition, it seems likely he was motivated first and foremost by a desire to ensure that his biographer would be able to extract from the notebooks some juicy morsels he may not have remembered to tell her about. This might enhance his profile as Warrior-Scholar-“King David,” the image that he has assiduously cultivated and promoted, with the help of an adulating neocon-dominated media. Petraeus’s presidential ambitions have been an open secret. And with his copping a plea to a misdemeanor, his “rehabilitation” seems to have already begun. He has told friends that he would like to serve again in government and they immediately relayed that bright hope to the media. Sen. John McCain was quick to call the whole matter “closed.” A strong supporter of Petraeus, McCain added this fulsome praise: “At a time of grave security challenges around the world, I hope that General Petraeus will continue to provide his outstanding service and leadership to our nation, as he has throughout his distinguished career.” And Michael O’Hanlon, Brookings’ neocon military specialist who rarely gets anything right, spoke true to form to the New York Times: “The broader nation needs his advice, and I think it’s been evident that people still want to hear from him. … People are forgiving and I know he made a mistake. But he’s also a national hero and a national treasure.” The “mainstream media” is trapped in its undeserved adulation for Petraeus’s “heroism.” It is virtually impossible, for example, for them to acknowledge that his ballyhooed, official-handout-based “success” in training and equipping tens of thousands of crack Iraqi troops was given the lie when those same troops ran away (the officers took helicopters) and left their weapons behind at the first sight of ISIL fighters a year ago. Equally sham were media claims of the “success” for the “surges” of 30,000 troops sent into Iraq (2007) and 33,000 into Afghanistan (2009). Each “surge” squandered the lives of about 1,000 U.S. troops for nothing – yes, nothing – except in the case of Iraq buying time for President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney to get out of town without a clear-cut defeat hanging around their necks. Many of the supposed successes of Petraeus’s Iraqi “surge” also predated the “surge,” including a high-tech program for killing top militants such as Al-Qaeda-in-Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and the formation of the so-called Sunni Awakening, both occurring in 2006 under the previous field commanders. And, Bush’s principal goal of the “surge” – to create political space for a fuller Sunni-Shiite reconciliation – was never accomplished. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “The Surge Myth’s Deadly Result.”] And last, it is important to note that David Petraeus does not have a corner on the above-the-law attitudes and behavior of previous directors of the CIA. The kid-gloves treatment he has been accorded, however, will increase chances that future directors will feel they can misbehave seriously and suffer no serious personal consequence. The virtual immunity enjoyed by the well connected – even when they lie to the FBI or tell whoppers in sworn testimony to Congress (as Director of National Intelligence James Clapper has done) – feeds the propensity to prioritize one’s own personal ambition and to delegate a back seat to legitimate national security concerns – even basic things like giving required protection to properly classified information, including the identity of covert officers. One might call this all-too-common syndrome Self-Aggrandizing Dismissiveness (SAD). Sadly, Petraeus is merely the latest exemplar of the SAD syndrome. The unbridled ambitions of some of his predecessors at CIA – the arrogant John Deutch, for example – have been equally noxious and destructive. But we’ll leave that for the next chapter.
By Ray McGovern
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#1. To: Deckard (#0)
My guess is that Petraeus, as CIA director, had plenty of damaging info on Obama's regime and its failures that explains why he only got his wrists slapped and will continue uninterrupted with his lucrative career making tens of millions at a big investment bank. Obama loves to punish whistleblowers but only the small fry, not someone like Petraeus with enough info to damage them badly.
I am sure Petraeus has made it clear that there are multiple files on secure deposit to be released if anything "happened" to him. He knows the scum he is dealing with since is one of them. Anyone who believes that there is something called American Justice is mentally incompetent or delusional. Hillary Clinton is minimally guilty of exposing US department of state documents to enemy access. Anyone else would be sitting in a federal prison not running for president. What does Hillary have on file?
900+ FBI files, to begin with.
[medicalmalcontent #2] I am sure Petraeus has made it clear that there are multiple files on secure deposit to be released if anything "happened" to him. I am sure Petraeus has plenty of damaging information. I am equally sure that he has not made it clear that he has such and will use it, or that it is on deposit. Such would be unnecessary and dangerous. He knows they know he knows stuff. A point being overlooked is that journalist Paula Broadwell has/had a ton of information. Conveniently, her name is completely absent from the legal documents. No charges against Broadwell were prosecuted. Jill Kelley and Gen. John Allen are barely a memory. The 20-30,000 pages of information found on the Jill Kelley computer are less than a memory. Petraeus acted unlawfully and was slapped on the wrist. Broadwell, as a journalist, is shielded by the First Amendment. Broadwell hired Dee Dee Myers, the former White House press secretary of Bill Clinton. Cyberstalking went away. Marine General John R. Allen retired and whatever he sent to Jill Kelly was squashed. There appeared to be a secret, back-channel shadow chain-of-command outside of normal military channels. This story may spread wider and higher than Petraeus. There is a lot that the public never found out. The journalist, Paula Broadwell, shielded by the First Amendment, may pose a significant threat. They would like her to stay silent. Kelley could pose a threat. There is a scab there that nobody wants to pick. News reports, such as those at the above link, provide much good information and some interesting descriptions of the charges Petraeus pleaded guilty to. US N&WR stated: That is interesting because Petraeus was not even charged with giving or revealing anything to anybody. The actual one-count charge, in its solitary entirety: COUNT ONE Between in or about August 2011 and on or about April 5, 2013, defendant DAVID HOWELL PETRAEUS, being an employee of the United States, and by virtue of his employment, became possessed of documents and materials containing classified information of the United States, and did unlawfully and knowingly remove such documents and materials without authority and with the intent to retain such documents and materials at unauthorized locations, aware that these locations were unauthorized for the storage and retention of such classified documents and materials; All in violation of Title 18, United States Code, Section 1924. Petraeus knowingly removed documents with intent to retain them at unauthorized locations. End of story. That Charge carefully excises any possible involvement of Paula Broadwell. Just as a refresher: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paula_Broadwell https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petraeus_scandal FBI agent Humphries, who was allegedly the one who had initially taken Kelley's case to FBI's field office in Tampa, Florida, also had a personal friendship with Kelley that included sending her shirtless photos of himself. Humphries repeatedly intervened to advance the case to which he was not assigned. In late October 2012 he phoned two US House of Representatives, Republicans Dave Reichert and Eric Cantor, that he believed the US Department of Justice was covering up the case. Humphries became the subject of an ethics probe by the Office of Professional Responsibility. Paula Broadwell may have assumed she and Petraeus were at the top of the food chain in this mess when that may not have been the case. She apparently was blissfully unaware of Kelley's connections. Broadwell became The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest (ref part three of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo trilogy). http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-20308225 Investigators are reported to have found 20-30,000 pages of documents, many of them emails between Gen Allen and Jill Kelley, 37, a married woman from Tampa, Florida. That was reportedly from the Jill Kelley computer. Remember Jill Kelley? http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-21154386 When the FBI investigated, it traced the emails to Petraeus biographer Paula Broadwell, bringing to light her affair with the CIA chief. Earlier reports suggested Gen Allen had exchanged thousands of emails, some described as inappropriate and flirtatious, with Mrs Kelley. The Afghanistan commander had also written a letter to a judge in support of Mrs Kelley's twin sister in a messy child custody dispute. After being contacted by the FBI, Mr Panetta announced the inquiry into Gen Allen and put the commander's nomination on hold. Defence officials told the Washington Post that the full investigation had shown that there were in fact only several hundred emails exchanged between Gen Allen and Mrs Kelley, mostly notes on current news topics and social matters or compliments on Gen Allen's television interviews. Let's see. He sent only a few hundred messages so no problem. Whether they contained 20-30,000 printed pages, including enclosures, that's not worth mentioning or denying. Forget about the number of pages. Without the Defence officials lying, it could be that there were only several hundred emails in question, that they were mostly notes on social matters and such, and that several contained enclosures that amounted to 29 thousand pages full of intelligence stuff or sensitive stuff, or just formed some sore of shadow back-channel communications to be passed on to some persons, foreign or domestic. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jill_Kelley In March 2011, she received the Joint Chiefs of Staff Award for public service for "building positive relationships between the military and the Tampa community". [...] In May 2012, Kelley complained to an FBI investigator of harassing e-mails sent by an anonymous person. In her communication with the FBI, Kelley stated that the e-mails appeared to be an attempt to blackmail General Petraeus. After the threats increased, and included her family's whereabouts, Kelley filed an official report with the FBI in June 2012. The stalker was reported to be Paula Broadwell, mistress of David Petraeus. During the course of the criminal investigation, government officials disclosed Kelley's name as the victim to the Washington Post, along with the evidentiary emails she provided to the FBI. It was followed by revelations that FBI agents searched "years" of Kelley's personal e-mails not pertinent or relevant to the case, which was followed by false descriptions of her personal emails by a series of hints to the press about emails between U.S.’s top commander in Afghanistan, General John Allen. The accusations sparked an investigation by the Department of Defense, in which the Inspector General's report concluded the government leaks and accusations were baseless and the email content was not improper. [...] Kelley became a volunteer social liaison to MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa. Kelley and her husband were known for hosting cigar and caviar parties for military leaders at their home near the United States Central Command. In July 2013, she was sought out by an Afghan Parliament member to create a dialogue between his government and the U.S. around the possibility of the withdrawal of U.S. troops after 2014. In response to the request Kelley said, "I am honored to resume my focus to promote cross-cultural dialogue and global trust for a peaceful and strategic exit to help our U.S. and Coalition forces transition out of Afghanistan". Kelley is a former Honorary Consul General for the Republic of Korea, a title she was given for her connections between high ranking US commanders and South Korean companies and government. Kelley has stated that she was inappropriately removed from the post because she was a figure in the Petraeus scandal.
Consequences for Kiriakou but not, as we now know, for Petraeus.
#2. To: TooConservative (#0)
#3. To: medicalmalcontent (#2)
What does Hillary have on file?
#4. To: medicalmalcontent, Too Conservative (#2)
[TooConservative #1] My guess is that Petraeus, as CIA director, had plenty of damaging info on Obama's regime and its failures that explains why he only got his wrists slapped....
The Justice Department announced this week Petraeus pleaded guilty to giving the books to Broadwell. In exchange, the prosecution agreed to a $40,000 fine and will recommend that he receive probation in place of time in jail.
THE UNITED STATES ATTORNEY CHARGES:
About May 2012 Jill Kelley began to receive emails that she considered to be threatening and harassing. She contacted the FBI, which traced the emails to Broadwell. The emails reportedly indicated that Broadwell suspected Kelley of starting an affair with General David Petraeus, who was a friend of Kelley. Although the sending of the emails was deemed to be insufficient grounds for a criminal charge, the FBI called Broadwell in for questioning, at which time she admitted to the affair with Petraeus. After Broadwell turned over her computer, classified documents were found, leading to further FBI scrutiny of her relationship with Petraeus. Although Petraeus was not identified as the provider of the documents, the affair was revealed in early November 2012 and was cited by Petraeus as the reason for his resignation on November 9.
Media focused on the Kelley-Khawam families and found that both Generals Petraeus and Allen had intervened on behalf of Natalie Khawam (Wolfe), the twin sister of Jill (Khawam) Kelley, in a civilian child custody dispute by writing to Superior Court of the District of Columbia Judge Neal Kravitz who found that Khawam had "misrepresented virtually everything" while Petraeus and Allen said she was "an honorable, loving and reliable mother" which Judge Kravitz ignored as he awarded custody to Khawam's ex-husband Grayson Wolfe.
The widening of the Petraeus affair increases the focus not only on Gen Allen but on the woman he is alleged to have exchanged emails with.
The emails first came to light as part of a wider investigation into email harassment against Mrs Kelley, who knew both Gen Allen and Mr Petraeus, a former general, through social contacts on the Florida military base where US Central Command is headquartered.
Kelley was born in Beirut, Lebanon on June 3, 1975. As the Honorary Ambassador to United States Central Command's Coalition Forces, Kelley is known to be someone with 'connective tissue' to the diplomatic world. Diplomats used Kelley's connections with Central Command senior generals to secure briefings for visiting foreign dignitaries. Kelley was a regular on the DC diplomatic circuit and frequently attended embassy events. She was known to be the go-between for Lebanese and other middle eastern government officials. She was active with dignitaries from the region and invited to functions at various embassies in Washington.
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