Posts

Spooks in Wolf’s Clothing

/15 Comments/in , , /by

We’ve known for some time that the military was rolling out its new-and-improved HUMINT function, the Defense Clandestine Service. But this article–laying out the ambitious goals of the program–is all the more interesting given several events that transpired since the NCS announcement: specifically, the Benghazi attack and the Petraeus resignation.

Part of the logic behind the move, the article explains, is that CIA is already overstretched; this will allow CIA to task DIA resources with the collection driven by military, rather than policy, needs.

The project was triggered by a classified study by the director of national intelligence last year that concluded that key Pentagon intelligence priorities were falling into gaps created by the DIA’s heavy focus on battlefield issues and CIA’s extensive workload.

Over and over, the article suggests the CIA is so busy in part because of its involvement in the drone program.

Through its drone program, the CIA now accounts for a majority of lethal U.S. operations outside the Afghan war zone.

[snip]

The CIA is increasingly overstretched. Obama administration officials have said they expect the agency’s drone campaign against al-Qaeda to continue for at least a decade more, even as the agency faces pressure to stay abreast of issues including turmoil across the Middle East. Meanwhile, the CIA hasn’t met ambitious goals set by former president George W. Bush to expand its own clandestine service.

If the drone program has sucked up CIA’s time, the agency doesn’t appear to be complaining about it. On the contrary, the recently-departed David Petraeus demanded more drones, not more resources for HUMINT.

The suggestion, then, is that CIA is too busy to collect HUMINT because it is so busy being a paramilitary organization. 

But look at the topics DIA is said to be focusing on.

Among the Pentagon’s top intelligence priorities, officials said, are Islamist militant groups in Africa, weapons transfers by North Korea and Iran, and military modernization underway in China.

[snip]

“The CIA doesn’t want to be looking for surface-to-air missiles in Libya” when it’s also under pressure to assess the opposition in Syria, said a former high-ranking U.S. military intelligence officer who worked closely with both spy services. Even in cases where their assignments overlap, the DIA is likely to be more focused than the CIA on military aspects — what U.S. commanders in Africa might ask about al-Qaeda in Mali, for example, rather than the broader questions raised by the White House. [my emphasis]

With the argument thus laid out, Greg Miller might well have said, “DIA needs the DCS to avoid another Benghazi.” Read more →

What If the Insider Threat Memo Is about David Petraeus?

/16 Comments/in /by

In a holiday document dump, President Obama transmitted Minimum Standards for Insider Threat Detection Programs. As mere citizens, we don’t get to see those standards. We only get to see the memo accompanying them, which leaves us guessing what–if anything–to make of the timing and content of the memo. In addition to Steven Aftergood’s general overview, Falguni Sheth, Kevin Gosztola, and Jesselyn Radack have some thoughts.

The simplest explanation for the timing of the memo is that’s when the Insider Threat Task Force developing them finished the Standards. The Standards were due a year after Obama ordered the creation of them on October 7, 2011.

Sec. 6.3. The Task Force’s responsibilities shall include the following:

(a) developing, in coordination with the Executive Agent, a Government-wide policy for the deterrence, detection, and mitigation of insider threats, which shall be submitted to the Steering Committee for appropriate review;

(b) in coordination with appropriate agencies, developing minimum standards and guidance for implementation of the insider threat program’s Government-wide policy and, within 1 year of the date of this order, issuing those minimum standards and guidance, which shall be binding on the executive branch;

That would mean they were due 45 days before Obama transmitted them. Perhaps the delay can be explained by either the election or a review within the White House (and I’m wonder whether Obama’s victory influenced how Obama received these Standards).

So it could well be that this memo was released as a holiday dump through sheer chance, Obama finishing up business before taking time with the family.

The timing of the transmittal might also be explained by personnel changes. James Clapper and Eric Holder (or their designees) would be the mandatory co-Chairs of the Task Force. While reports suggest Holder will stick around for another year, it’s unclear whether Clapper will be.

But then there’s the possibility that the Petraeus scandal influenced this release.

As a threshold matter, the EO mandating these Standards includes CIA involvement (by designees of but not the Director himself) on both the Task Force and Steering Committee on Insider Treats. It also reserves the authority of the Director of CIA with regards to security of information systems under an earlier EO and a National Security Directive. What happens where you’re in the middle of rolling out an Insider Threat Detection Program and one of the key players involved in it is embroiled in an insider threat investigation himself?

The EO also allows the Director of National Intelligence to “issue policy directives” to help the agencies of the Intelligence Community comply with this.

With respect to the Intelligence Community, the Director of National Intelligence, after consultation with the heads of affected agencies, may issue such policy directives and guidance as the Director of National Intelligence deems necessary to implement this order.

Perhaps such “policy directives” no longer seem like such a good idea if the CIA Director can’t even limit his threat profile.

Then there’s the possibility that the behavior of one of the players in the scandal demonstrated that the Standards are not yet being met. While reportedly Petraeus and Paula Broadwell only shared a GMail account–and therefore there is no allegation that they used the classified networks addressed in the EO–we have fewer details about what network General Allen was using to exchange sexy-time emails with Jill Kelley. Furthermore, whlie we know Broadwell had classified information on her computer and in her house, we don’t have much detail on this, either. As a Reserve Officer, her behavior may well have demonstrated holes in the program implemented by DOD.

In other words, it may be that the Standards had been languishing for 45 days after they were completed, but the Petraeus scandal identified that the Insider Threat Detection should have but did not identify some of the activities going on. That might have created some urgency for Obama to transmit them, so he could start cracking heads at the agencies where they standards were not being met. Obama’s memo also promises the standards will “provide the workforce with insider threat awareness training,” so it’s possible the Administration believes that if just its top Generals had a bit more training they might not destroy their careers by compromising security. Though, as Marc Ambinder explained, because he was in the chain of command for the nuclear football, Petraeus would have had extensive indoctrination on potential threats.

Or maybe it’s something else entirely.

Read more →

Petraeus’ Rules for Living, Amended Edition

/35 Comments/in /by

The first two General David Petraeus Rules for Living–at least as captured by his former mistress–are

1. Lead by example from the front of the formation. Take your performance personally—if you are proud to be average, so too will be your troops.

2. A leader must provide a vision—clear and achievable “big ideas” combined in a strategic concept—and communicate those ideas throughout the entire organi­zation and to all other stakeholders.

In this, his moment of crisis, Petraeus appears to have amended those rules to “don’t make a move until your high profile reputation rehabilitator tells you to.”

He has hired Robert B. Barnett, the Washington superlawyer, to handle his future, and friends say he has not even ruled out becoming a talking head on television.

[snip]

Their house, on a verdant Arlington street of $1 million and $2 million homes — for security reasons, the address is listed in no public property records — is expected to be Mr. Petraeus’s center of operations at least until the first of next year, the earliest his friends say he could venture out from the wilderness with a Barnett-approved new job or position.

No matter. Hiding in your home until the PR hack says “jump”–even resorting to a stationary bike when, in the past, the General made a point of running through some of the most dangerous cities in the world–can still be wedged into General David Petraeus Rules for Living. There’s this:

4. There is an exception to every rule, standard operating procedure, and poli­cy; it is up to leaders to determine when exceptions should be made and to ex­plain why they made them.

While he’s cooped up in the “wilderness” of million dollar homes in Arlington, VA, Petraeus just has to think of some reason he has made an exception to his rules about vision and leading by example.

West Gets the Recount He Wanted, Deficit Increases to 2146 Votes, Still No Concession

/14 Comments/in /by

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GqWyzzn4-xI[/youtube]

Displaying the logic that saw him “retire” from the military with a $5000 fine for torture that in effect served as a plea deal to allow him to avoid up to eleven years in a military prison, proclaim that 78 to 81 Democratic members of Congress are communists (as seen in the YouTube) and to conduct a Town Hall meeting where he had radio host Nicole Sandler arrested for daring to ask a question he didn’t like, Allen West finally got St. Lucie County to recount all of the early ballots from the election he narrowly lost to Patrick Murphy in Florida’s newly drawn 18th Congressional District, only to continue not to concede, even when his vote deficit increased from a margin of 0.58% of votes cast to 0.65%. With the revised figures from St. Lucie County, West now trails Murphy by 2146 votes and the margin is well outside the 0.50% margin or less that is needed to trigger a legally mandated recount.

Of course, since this is Florida, the “recount” didn’t exactly proceed normally. The county was required to submit its final vote totals by noon on Sunday, but did not finish the recount until mid-afternoon. As soon as the noon deadline passed, the Murphy campaign declared victory because Florida law states that if a county misses the deadline for certification, the preliminary numbers become final. The West campaign initially considered applying for an emergency exemption to the noon Sunday deadline, but the Miami Herald noted that the results of the recount make that unlikely:

Before the county finally released the results of the recount, West’s attorneys toyed with trying to ascertain an emergency prevented the timely filing, a tall task given the way the law is written. Because Murphy made a net gain of 274 votes, the issue was likely moot. But West’s campaign showed no immediate sign of backing down or offering a concession.

Going back to the Palm Beach Post article, we see that there are additional irregularities:

The results from one precinct could not be fully uploaded during the recount, said St. Lucie County Commissioner Tod Mowery, a canvassing board member. Even though the data were manually entered and the rest of the results were sent to state officials, the board could not certify the results because of the problems with the single cartridge.

/snip/

[West campaign manager Tim] Edson had his own questions. Among them: Preliminary totals showed 900 voters cast ballots in Precinct 93, where only seven voters are registered, Edson said. Another lingering concern is the West team’s request to view the poll sign-in sheets from Election Day. Edson said they had received some sign-in sheets from Palm Beach County but none from St. Lucie County. West’s campaign wants to compare the number of signatures on the poll sign-in sheets to the computer tabulations.

“Today’s actions cast an even greater cloud of suspicion over the results of St. Lucie County than existed before,” Edson said in a statement. “This election is far from over.”

No explanation has been offered for the 900 votes showing up from a precinct where only 7 voters are registered, but that seems to me to be very likely the result of errors by poorly trained poll workers. A precinct with only 7 registered voters certainly would not have its own polling station, so it seems likely that poll workers gave incorrect ballots to voters from adjacent precincts who voted at the same polling place. In fact, they may have even done this in desperation if the supply of ballots for another precinct ran out.

The additional drama underlying all of the recount madness in St. Lucie County is that the County Supervisor of Elections is hospitalized. Again from the Palm Beach Post:

Noticeably absent Sunday was Gertrude Walker, the St. Lucie County supervisor of elections. Walker was hospitalized last week amid legal wrangling over whether the ballots should be recounted.

West’s only option for continuing the fight at this point from a legal standpoint appears to be a formal “contest” of the election, but no announcement has been made as of this writing.

There is one further note that ties the West imbroglio to other current headlines. In January of last year, a strange Op-Ed appeared in the Wall Street Journal calling for David Petraeus to get a fifth star. I did a bit of digging, and found that the people behind this push were from a group called Vets for Freedom, who pushed a number of military veterans for public office. The headliner of their group of candidates at that time was Allen West, but the push by this group to get Petraeus a fifth star certainly looked to me that the move was seen by them as a part of their overall plan to eventually prepare Petraeus for a presidential bid. Interestingly, the website for the group shows the candidates they supported in the 2010 election, but shows nothing for 2012. I’m guessing that they have moved on to working under another name. And now both of their headliners are languishing in humiliating defeats, so they face huge obstacles of rehabilitating their “best” candidates.

Silent Talking Points: Don’t Tell the Terrorists We Know They Exist

/12 Comments/in , , /by

Between the extensive leaking from the so-called closed hearings on Thursday and Friday (Spencer’s got a good wrap-up here) and the Sunday shows (LAT has a good wrap-up here), we’ve got a little better understanding of the Administration’s current understanding of the Benghazi attack.

That said, I’ve got a different set of questions about what those show than most of the pundits commenting on it.

How strongly did Petraeus initially blame al Qaeda-related attackers?

My first question pertains to an apparent discrepancy, not about the testimony last week, but about Petraeus’ initial testimony shortly after the attack.

We know that in his testimony Friday, Petraeus said he knew fairly quickly that Ansar al-Sharia was behind the attack.

He knew “almost immediately” that Ansar al-Sharia, a loosely connected radical Islamist group, was responsible for the attack, as suggested by multiple sources and video from the scene, said the source. At the same time, a stream of intelligence — including about 20 distinct reports — also emerged indicating that a brewing furor over the anti-Islamic video preceded the attack.

The CIA eventually disproved the reports that film-related protests had anything to do with the attack. But this didn’t happen until after Petraeus’ initial briefings to lawmakers, in which he discussed all the possibilities, the source said.

Petraeus blamed some other unnamed intelligence agency for taking out the reference to Ansar al-Sharia (though the talking points came from CIA).

Petraeus testified that the CIA draft written in response to the raid referred to militant groups Ansar al-Shariah and al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb but those names were replaced with the word “extremist” in the final draft, according to a congressional staffer. The staffer said Petraeus testified that he allowed other agencies to alter the talking points as they saw fit without asking for final review, to get them out quickly.

But different lawmakers have differing recollections about what Petraeus originally testified, just days after the attack. Peter King suggested that Petraeus hid the role of terrorists in his September 14 briefing to the House Intelligence Committee.

King said Petraeus had briefed the House committee on Sept. 14 and he does not recall Petraeus being so positive at that time that it was a terrorist attack. “He thought all along that he made it clear there was terrorist involvement,” King said. “That was not my recollection.”

That’s not how Dianne Feinstein (who elsewhere expressed concern about the “suffering” related to the sexy time scandal) remembers a briefing on September 12.

Feinstein, appearing on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” said that the now-former director of the Central Intelligence Agency, David H. Petraeus, had “very clearly said that it was a terrorist attack” in a meeting with lawmakers the day after the attack in Benghazi.

Mind you, those were different briefings–it’s possible just the Gang of Four got briefed on September 12. If that’s the case (and if King is telling the truth), it would mean Petraeus was less forthcoming about terrorist involvement with the full House Committee than with a more select group of lawmakers.

And note this seems to be the reverse of the politics you’d expect. While both DiFi and King vow to get to the bottom of how the talking points were made, King seems to attribute some deceit to Petraeus whereas DiFi seems to believe the suffering Petraeus was forthright–and clear-headed–from the start.

Were we really afraid to let Ansar al-Sharia know we were onto them?

Now consider the excuse Petraeus gave for taking mention of Ansar al-Sharia and AQIM out of the unclassified talking points: we didn’t want the terrorists to know we knew about them.

Testifying out of sight, ex-CIA Director David Petraeus told Congress Friday that classified intelligence showed the deadly raid on the U.S. Consulate in Libya was a terrorist attack but the administration withheld the suspected role of al-Qaida affiliates to avoid tipping them off.

I wonder if that’s the entire story.

I’m not saying the Administration deliberately used inaccurate talking points; if they had, then why did Obama name terrorism even before Susan Rice appeared on the Sunday shows? It’d be a colossal fuckup of a cover-up.

And there are certainly reasons to believe that’s why they withheld this detail. It is true that the conclusions about Ansar al-Sharia and AQIM rely in significant part on–presumably–NSA intercepts of voice communications. Read more →

What If It Were the Real Muslim Housewives of Tampa Bay Scandal?

/96 Comments/in , /by

In all my coverage of the Petraeus scandal, I haven’t really touched on the aspect that regular readers of this blog were presumably least surprised about: the virtually unchecked authority the FBI has to snoop. As always, Chris Soghoian and Julian Sanchez offer worthwhile discussions of that surveillance. Yesterday, Greg Miller and Ellen Nakashima described how folks in DC are freaking out upon discovery of how intrusive all this surveillance can be.

The FBI started its case in June with a collection of five e-mails, a few hundred kilobytes of data at most.

By the time the probe exploded into public view earlier this month, the FBI was sitting on a mountain of data containing the private communications — and intimate secrets — of a CIA director and a U.S. war commander. What the bureau didn’t have — and apparently still doesn’t — is evidence of a crime.

How that happened and what it means for privacy and national security are questions that have induced shudders in Washington and a queasy new understanding of the FBI’s comprehensive access to the digital trails left by even top officials.

I’ve been saying from the start this whole shit-show would be useful if it made some Members of Congress rethink their permissive attitude towards surveillance and lazy oversight.

All that said, it’s important to note that the Petraeus example–at least what we know of it–isn’t even close to as bad as Big Brother gets in this country, even with questions about the predicate of the investigation.

Which is why I wanted to consider how this might be different if, instead of a bunch of mostly-Anglo connected Republicans, this investigation had focused on Muslims (we’ve discussed Jill Kelley and her sister’s interesting story as indebted Arab-Americans; it will be interesting to see how their access is treated going forward).

After all, while it is unlikely the FBI would have responded to a cyber-stalking complaint from an unconnected Muslim, it’s possible the internet traffic involved, particularly if it spanned international boundaries, might have attracted attention in its own right. Alternately, had the anonymous emails reflecting knowledge of the movement of top Generals involved a Muslim rather than a white Reserve Colonel, we would not now be debating whether the FBI had the predicate to investigate her emails further (though I maintain the FBI may have used a Counter-Intelligence predicate to continue the investigation in the first place).

Probably, from there the FBI would have used additional intrusive investigative methods. The National Security establishment is only now focusing on Kelley and her sister’s debt problems. Which leads me to suspect no one bothered to look at their financial records until the press started doing so. What would the FBI have found had they looked at financial records, showing more details about who paid what for whom when? How would the Kelleys’ bogus cancer charity look, for example, if you had more access to their financial records?

And then there’s one big difference. We know–because we’ve heard numerous individual stories and because Ted Olson admitted it in court–that the FBI uses discoveries like the ones they made here to coerce people to turn informant. Legal trouble, financial trouble, marital trouble? All have made people targets for “recruitment.”  And those informants are sent out, with little training or legal protection, to spy on their fellow citizens, often the leaders of their community. The FBI will send out series of informants, for years on end, to target Imams who never do anything illegal but nevertheless either have connections–possibly familial–or First Amendment protected views that lead the FBI to suspect them. In the Muslim community, some people live for years under this kind of surveillance, sometimes ultimately getting caught in an FBI sting, at other times, just living a law-abiding life under the most intrusive scrutiny.

I do hope the Petraeus example scares the shit out of the often more morally and legally compromised people empowered to approve and oversee such surveillance. But I still think the scandal offers the merest glimpse into what our current state of surveillance really looks like.

What Does Dunford’s Confirmation Hearing Tell Us About the Path Forward in Afghanistan?

/30 Comments/in /by

Dunford at the hearing.

Yesterday, both Marcy and I discussed significant events that could have a tremendous impact on what lies ahead for the role of the US in Afghanistan. Marcy found that for the first time, the Treasury Department has named a Taliban figure in Afghanistan as a narcotics trafficking drug kingpin. That means, as Marcy points out, that “We’ve got the Global War on Drugs in Afghanistan now” and could have cover for staying on indefinitely in order to cut the flow of drugs. I pointed out that the negotiations have just begun on developing a Status of Forces Agreement which will define the conditions under which US troops could remain in Afghanistan beyond the scheduled handover of security responsibility to the Afghans at the end of 2014. The US wants to keep a number of troops in place, but only if full legal immunity can be conferred on them. The US failed to achieve an immunity agreement in Iraq and subsequently withdrew all troops. With two years remaining before the handoff deadline, look for the negotiations to go very slowly.

Yesterday also saw the confirmation hearing for General Joseph Dunford, who has been nominated to replace General John Allen in charge of US and NATO troops in Afghanistan. The hearing had been scheduled jointly for Allen’s promotion as head of NATO, but his involvement in an email scandal with Jill Kelley has put that hearing on hold. I was unable to watch the hearing and the video archive of the hearing at the Senate Armed Services Committee website has not yet gone live. (I’ve also been unable to find a transcript. If anyone runs across one, please post the link in comments.)

One key issue revolves around what the recommendation will be for how fast troops should be drawn down leading up to the handoff of security responsibility at the end of 2014. Of course, as mentioned above, the not-yet-negotiated SOFA will dictate whether and how many troops will remain beyond that date, but there still is the strategic question of how quickly combat operations will be drawn down and whether that includes actual troop withdrawals.

Perhaps because Dunford was not nominated for the position until early October, we learned in the hearing that he has not been present during any meetings at which General Allen has been preparing his recommendation for the drawdown plan:

Gen. Joseph Dunford, President Obama’s pick to take command of the Afghanistan war within months, revealed in Senate testimony on Thursday that he has not been included in Gen. John Allen’s highly-anticipated war recommendations currently being deliberated in the White House and Pentagon.

Dunford, under pointed questioning by Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., said he has been kept in the dark, during his confirmation hearing before the Armed Services Committee.

“Do you know what those recommendations are?” McCain asked. Read more →

The Pineapple Patrol IG Investigation

/38 Comments/in /by

The CIA has announced they’re going to investigate David Petraeus to find out whether his demands for perks were designed to facilitate his affair with Paula Broadwell.

Given allegations that he flew to Paris for some sexy time with Broadwell, I guess the investigation is merited.

But I’m very skeptical of the timing of the investigation.

As far as I know, the investigation was first reported in mid-afternoon by the AP.

That would place the announcement between today’s closed hearings with acting CIA Director Mike Morrel and tomorrow’s hearings with Petraeus.

And at least from the leaks about today’s hearing, it is possible that Petraeus, in public statements, may deviate from the CIA story on the attack.

Here’s what Dutch Ruppersberger said about the CIA’s story after today’s briefing.

Mr. Ruppersberger said on Thursday that this criticism was unfair and that the intelligence community’s assessment of what had happened was now roughly what Ms. Rice recounted on several Sunday talk shows. “You had a group of extremists who took advantage of a situation, and unfortunately we lost four American lives,” he said.

Mr. Ruppersberger also underscored what intelligence officials have said for weeks: that the attack on the diplomatic mission seemed disorganized, and without good command and control, but that the second attack, a mortar strike on the C.I.A. base nearly eight hours later, was much more sophisticated. It was clearly the work of terrorists, he said.

And here’s what Petraeus plans to say tomorrow.

[Petraeus] knew “almost immediately” that Ansar al-Sharia, a loosely connected radical Islamist group, was responsible for the attack, as suggested by multiple sources and video from the scene, said the source. At the same time, a stream of intelligence — including about 20 distinct reports — also emerged indicating that a brewing furor over the anti-Islamic video preceded the attack.

The CIA eventually disproved the reports that film-related protests had anything to do with the attack. But this didn’t happen until after Petraeus’ initial briefings to lawmakers, in which he discussed all the possibilities, the source said.

Whereas Morrel was at least reported to be expected to defend the CIA’s confusion about the video, this suggests Petraeus wants to distance himself from that early confusion.

We’ll see whether the announced plan to investigate his junkets (ha!) to Paris changes that testimony.

Updated: Edited for clarity.

Why Was Petraeus Fact-Finding While CIA Was Spinning “Facts”?

/85 Comments/in /by

The WSJ has a story that captures a lot of what I’ve been pointing to in Petraeus Surge-Out. It explains how the investigation played out even as career CIA people objecting to Petraeus’ regimented management style. It describes Petraeus’ intent to stay on nevertheless. And it shows–as I have–how Petraeus was dealing with the investigation even as CIA was attempting to push back on claims it had botched the Benghazi response.

It describes how this all played out in the weeks before Petraeus resigned:

At CIA headquarters in Langley, Va., officials began debating whether the CIA should be more active in countering the criticism. Mr. Petraeus, in particular, advocated a more aggressive defense.

As questions mounted, a Fox News report Oct. 26 alleged that the CIA delayed sending a security force to protect U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and others who were under attack. Mr. Stevens and three other Americans died.

The CIA denied the report, then began pulling together its own timeline of events.

The Pentagon, the State Department and other agencies objected to Mr. Petraeus’s decision to mount a solo defense. “We conveyed our objections. Multiple agencies did,” a senior military official said.

Mr. Petraeus’s decision to release the CIA’s timeline to the press didn’t sit well with Mr. Clapper, who was unaware it would be made public, officials said. Other agencies saw Mr. Petraeus’s decision as a step aimed at presenting the CIA and Mr. Petraeus in the best light and forcing them to accept the brunt of the criticism.

At CIA headquarters, officials believed it was important to make their case. “Clearly, when people are insinuating things about a situation that just aren’t true, there has to be a response,” a senior U.S. official said. The official added that the briefing was considered effective. “The record was corrected,” he said.”Smart people can disagree on the best way to do this, while at the same time agreeing that something must be done.”

Meanwhile, one week after the turf fight over the CIA’s release of its Benghazi timeline, the FBI told Mr. Clapper about Mr. Petraeus’s extramarital affair, said officials familiar with the timeline. [my emphasis]

But this account misses some crucial details of the timeline, which are all important as the Benghazi hearings play out this week.

First, remember that Paula Broadwell made one of the first responses to the Fox story, though she seemingly confirmed their report that (among other things) the CIA delayed its response because it had prisoners.

Consider Petraeus’ actions two weeks ago. The FBI interviewed him in a scandal he believed he could survive. And then–seemingly almost immediately–he hopped on a plane for a “fact-finding” trip in anticipation of this week’s testimony. That conveniently put him out of the country as CIA conducted the spin campaign that–as WSJ reports–top officials and DOD, DNI, and State objected to.

But here’s the most important bit: The CIA put out information at a time and in a manner the rest of the national security establishment objected to. It claimed–and WSJ’s sources still claim–that “the record was corrected,” implying that the CIA offered the truth in its spin on November 1.

If so, then why was Petraeus on a fact-finding trip at all? If they knew enough to know what the record showed, then why did Petraeus have to fly to Libya to find out what the record showed?

The answer may be as simple as Petraeus was just getting out of town to avoid any responsibility for a spin campaign that other NatSec officials objected to.  It may be he went on a junket (ha!) to reflect on whether his diddling might sully his pristine image.

But I doubt that. Given the importance the Intelligence Committees have placed on the report from Petraeus’ trip, and the reluctance CIA has shown in turning over that report, and Petraeus’ initial reluctance to testify to Congress about what he learned on his fact-finding trip,  it seems highly likely that “the record” as reflected in that trip report does not match “the record” the CIA is so satisfied that it fed to reporters (to the WSJ team’s credit, they were by far the least credulous about the CIA’s so-called record).

One of two possibilities must be correct: The CIA deliberately put out a timeline it knew to be incomplete–if not deceptive–at a time and in a way that the rest of the NatSec establishment objected to (which might explain why it is so reluctant to give the now-revised timeline to Congress, because it will be caught in deception). Or, Petraeus’ trip to Libya and other countries had nothing to do with what he claimed it did, fact-finding on Benghazi in anticipation of this week’s hearings.

The reporters who attended the November 1 briefing appear to have been suckered into reporting on CIA’s claimed timeline even while Petraeus was actively trying to learn what that timeline really was. They really ought to ask CIA why that timeline was presented as settled fact, then.

The Part of the Story “Shirtless FBI Guy” Left Out

/78 Comments/in /by

The NYT has a nice story about Frederick Humphries, the FBI Agent who started the investigation into Paula Broadwell’s emails. It talks about how aggressively he pursued Millenium Plotter Ahmed Ressam and other terrorism cases. It quotes two unnamed colleagues vouching for him (though admitting he has conservative political views). It even offers a sort of an explanation for why he sent a shirtless picture of himself to Jill Kelley.

Mr. Berger took issue with news media reports that have said his client sent shirtless pictures of himself to Ms. Kelley.

“That picture was sent years before Ms. Kelley contacted him about this, and it was sent as part of a larger context of what I would call social relations in which the families would exchange numerous photos of each other,” Mr. Berger said.

The photo was sent as a “joke” and was of Mr. Humphries “posing with a couple of dummies.” Mr. Berger said the picture was not sexual in nature.

But it leaves out two key parts of the story. First, his lawyer, Lawrence Berger, rather ridiculously claimed that going to Eric Cantor–rather than someone with oversight over DOJ or Intelligence–constituted normal whistleblower process.

In regard to his client speaking with Mr. Cantor, Mr. Berger declined to address the issue, saying only that his client “had followed F.B.I. protocols.”

“No one tries to become a whistle-blower,” he said. “Consistent with F.B.I. policy, he referred it to the proper component.”

More significantly, though the story repeats the report that Humphries’ superiors believed he was sniffing around the case improperly, the story doesn’t explain what he did to make them think so.

Mr. Humphries passed on Ms. Kelley’s complaint to the cybersquad in the Tampa field office but was not assigned to the case. He was later admonished by supervisors who thought he was trying to insert himself improperly into the investigation.

Given that no one has definitively explained who at FBI told Kelley that Broadwell had sent the emails–which set off a chain that led Broadwell to learning someone knew she was the culprit–there are some very inappropriate ways Humphries might have been involved.

But the NYT does tell a very nice story.