This is getting curiouser and curiouser…
Presumably Betrayus went for a specific reason, not just touring Giza. Since we’ll assume he was on a mission [and he apparently was working on Syria as well] one would expect he told something to someone when he returned. President Obama may yet be dragged into this, since at the very least I would expect a trip like this to be a topic on the exit interview of 11/8-9 time frame.

Now, in Betrayus’ defense here, did any meeting get scheduled with the Gang of Eight? One assumes Boehner must be crawling out from under the ivy by now….

You know ‘ol Bibi likes to distract, inflict most damage under the cover of, well, anything. And considering his connection to worm Cantor, and possibly even direct involvement, well, why not?

There is enough intrique in the story of arms movements in the post-Spring world to command attention without all the petty interest around power and sex. It seems to me the Petraeus story is what it is: An Army pensioner who could not stand against the threat and perhaps the appropriateness of prosecution under the UCMJ given the requirement of integrity in his current position. Given the indefensible aspect of his postion in light of military moral regulation, the mere apperence of security breaches emergent in the wake of his invovlement with Broadwell surely is enough to suggest an understanding that he had to go.

@JThomason:

as fun as sex is to participate in,

and as fun as it is to gossip about it, (aided by the fact that human relations are something we all actually know something about),

i am nonetheless of your opinion:

“There is enough intrique in the story of arms movements in the post-Spring world to command attention without all the petty interest around power and sex…”

i sh

It just gets better and better

“However, supervisors soon became concerned that the initial agent might have grown obsessed with the matter, and prohibited him from any role in the investigation, according to the officials.

The FBI officials found that he had sent shirtless pictures of himself to Ms. Kelley, according to the people familiar with the probe.”
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324439804578115410189757452.html

The tabloid headlines reporting style going on about this story is certainly fixating on the lurid details, but the emering timelines are actually bringing more questions up than they are answering.

A few posts back, I asked why the headof the spook group would think it was safe to use private unenc=rypted email accounts to talk about an affair and try to lure the woman back, especially with the NSA monitoring email communications. It is trivial to trace ip addresses, most people using a computer to get on the ‘net already have the tools to do so on their computer. Here is a wiki entry that tells you just how to do it:

http://www.wikihow.com/Trace-an-IP-Address

These methods will usually get you to within a few zip code numbers from the physicial location of the computer. Beyond that you need a court order to get better location info from the ISP. (side note 1: this is why 911 calls are tricky when you use your computer to make them, the IP inof is not that accurate> side note 2: The NSA, being good friends with Google –Gmail provider– would have almost immediately known what was up.)

Remember, bmaz telling us that the FBI does not respond to email threats even when severe. The tabloid headline stories do not have the threats in the emails being worse than school-kid taunts.

The tabloid headline story tellers are saying that the crack FBI cyber-team discovered the connection by overlaying the mistress’ hotel stay info to the IP address info contained in the email address header info. This does not work unless the FBI alreadsy knew who they were looking for and had advanced info from the ISP — without the necesaary court order, which they (the FBI) then turned around to use to get the court order allowing them to moniter P&B.

Perhaps I’m barking up the wrong tree here, so pardon the somewhat off-topic post, but Jill Kelley continues to be more interesting to me than to others here, and I want to keep making the case. Here’s the Tribune’s latest:

>Jill Kelley regularly kept in touch with then-Gen. Petraeus when he became commander of the Afghan war effort, the two exchanging near-daily emails and instant messages, two of his former staffers say. But those messages were exchanged in accounts that his aides monitored as part of their duties and were not romantic in tone, the staffers said.

What does the general email a “socialite, hostess for Tampa military events” about on a daily basis?

Again, she’s of Maronite heritage, the family having moved from Lebanon roughly when she was born, so she’s a likely native Arabic speaker. Her identical twin has a masters in public health and a law degree from Georgetown, suggesting she is likely to be a pretty intelligent individual with aspirations. She moved to Tampa sometime between 9/11 and the launch of the Iraq war. She emails the general daily while he’s on another continent, on his government account. And he replies. They have no romantic interest in one another.

But she’s just a socialite? It doesn’t add up.

@PollyUSA: The CIA in that WSJ article officially states: A CIA spokesman said there were no militant prisoners there, noting that President Barack Obama ended CIA authority to hold detainees in 2009. “Any suggestion that the agency is still in the detention business is uninformed and baseless,” said the spokesperson.

That may be literally true, but a response perhaps designed to avoid the real truth. It may be that militant prisoners are instead being detained by the US military. JSOC?

If one were to staff Libya for tracking shoulder-fired Surface to Air missiles and other missing military equipment, would you assign the task to the CIA or to US military personnel most familiar with such equipment?

@jerryy: They didn’t use private unencrypted accounts. They used a private unencrypted account, in which they saved to draft their messages to each other. These wouldn’t have been picked up by normal NSA monitoring.

@GulfCoastPirate: Wired is one place:

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/11/gmail-location-data-petraeus/

The Verge also is covering it, etc.

@emptywheel: Yeah, and on an ‘almost closed case’ they are removing documents, computers, and files. WTF

So Patraeus knew about the harassing emails and told Broadwell to knock it off last summer.

The new information shows that Petraeus told Broadwell this summer to stop sending the harassing e-mails after Kelley told him about them.

{…}

At some point this summer, Kelley told Petraeus about the e-mails and named Broadwell as the person who had sent them. Apparently in response, the CIA director sent e-mails to Broadwell telling her to stop the harassment, two law enforcement officials said.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/petraeus-told-biographer-to-stop-harassing-family-friend-officials-say/2012/11/12/6ccb325c-2d00-11e2-a99d-5c4203af7b7a_story_2.html

SO: what if Broadwell’s ‘back off!’ emails weren’t because she saw Jill Kelley as a romantic rival but because she had discovered Kelley’s socialite pose was cover for a foreign power’s spying? What if Broadwell’s papers, currently being retrieved from her home, contain possible proof of Jill Kelley’s role? What if Petraeus has been compromised by one — or both? — of these women, acting on behalf of a hostile, or friendly, power, entirely throughout his prosecution of war in the Iraq and Afghan theatres?

Another mystery – why would such a smart overachiever/West Point and Harvard grad, PhD student – need a ghostwriter to write a biography? Especially given that the biography was supposedly a rewrite of her dissertation?

What remains unclear is why, after it was decided that criminal charges would not be filed, Clapper was informed about the investigation. Another question is why the notification was made on Election Day about a case the Justice Department had declined to pursue weeks earlier.

“I don’t know if it would have taken this course without Cantor,” a person close to the investigation said.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/petraeus-told-biographer-to-stop-harassing-family-friend-officials-say/2012/11/12/6ccb325c-2d00-11e2-a99d-5c4203af7b7a_story_2.html

@ryanwc:

tx

very useful info.

@jerryy:

I read that they were both using a gmail account under pseudonyms, he was drafting an email but not sending it, and she was logging in and reading the draft. This is a known way of communicating without sending revealing emails.