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Petraeus resigns over affair, as criticism grows of CIA response in Libya

Officials will want to know if there was any link between David Petraeus’s extramarital activities and what has been increasingly criticized as the CIA’s weak performance during the Benghazi attack.

David Petraeus, the retired four-star general renowned for taking charge of the military campaigns in Iraq and then Afghanistan, abruptly resigned Friday as director of the CIA, admitting to an extramarital affair. (Nov. 9)

CIA Director David Petraeus abruptly resigned Friday, citing an extramarital affair and the need to sort out the “personal and professional issues” involved.

The former commander of forces in Iraq and Afghanistan had built a stellar and nearly unassailable reputation – but mounting criticism of the Central Intelligence Agency’s response to the Benghazi, Libya, terrorist attack in September was beginning to tarnish that reputation.

Word of Mr. Petraeus’s resignation sent ripples of stunned surprise through both the intelligence and military communities, raising questions that revolved around how long the affair had been going on and how an officer known for his rigorous self-discipline – and attention to his reputation within the media — could have made such a lapse in judgment.

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In a letter of resignation accepted by the White House, Petraeus said he had been married 37 years but had exercised “very poor judgment” in choosing to enter into an extramarital affair.

Petraeus, who was widely celebrated as a military commander and even occasionally mentioned as a potential presidential candidate, was sworn in as head of the CIA in September 2011 – and had kept a low profile since. Now speculation is sure to proliferate over whether that low profile resulted from Petraeus focusing on America’s intelligence gathering or on personal matters.

In particular, members of Congress and other officials demanding answers about the Benghazi attack on the US consulate that resulted in the deaths of four Americans – including the US ambassador to Libya, Christopher Stephens, and two CIA agents – will want to know if there was any link between Petraeus’s extramarital activities and what has been increasingly criticized as the CIA’s weak performance on the night of the Benghazi attack.

More broadly, the reason for Petraeus’s departure will raise questions about any compromising of US covert operations and intelligence. The potential for blackmail of intelligence officers is always a concern about the spy corps, but the involvement of the nation’s top spy in an extramarital affair takes the concern to a new level.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation has been probing Petraeus and the potential security risks posed by his affair, CNN reported late Friday afternoon.

In the weeks since the Benghazi attack, officials have leaked information, including how Petraeus kept information on the CIA’s role in Benghazi so private that even Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton was left to call Petraeus as the attack unfolded to try to get intelligence information from him.

Last week, CIA officials revealed that in fact, the intelligence agency’s operations in Benghazi dwarfed diplomatic operations at the consulate and that the CIA maintained what was described as an “annex,” about a mile from the diplomatic mission.

State Department officials have said there was an informal understanding that the annex and its agents would come to the assistance of the consulate (which had private contractors providing security) if a need arose. CIA officials insist their agents responded to the consulate’s distress calls within a half-hour.

In a statement released Friday afternoon, President Obama praised Petraeus for his “extraordinary service” to the country, adding, “By any measure, through his lifetime of service, David Petraeus has made our country safer and stronger.”

In a statement, Sen. John McCain (R) of Arizona highlighted Petraeus’s role in Iraq, saying that his “inspirational leadership and his genius were directly responsible – after years of failure – for the success of the surge in Iraq.”

But Petraeus’s success in Iraq and Afghanistan was a result to a certain extent of his focus on a counterinsurgency strategy that involved large numbers of troops fighting the enemy by incorporating nation-building into the battle. When Mr. Obama named Petraeus to head the CIA, it was widely interpreted as the president’s signal that he intended to wind down America’s wars and shift from a counterinsurgency strategy to counterterrorism.

Obama did not cite Petraeus’s reason for resigning but did say, “Going forward, my thoughts and prayers are with Dave and Holly Petraeus, who has done so much to help military families through her own work. I wish them the very best at this difficult time.”

Mrs. Petraeus is the assistant director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, where she supports veterans and troops facing difficulties as a result of the financial crisis.

Obama initially tried to convince Petraeus not to resign, according to some souces. “I am told that President Obama tried to talk Petraeus out of resigning, but Petraeus took the samurai route and insisted that he had done a dishonorable thing and now had to try to balance it by doing the honorable thing and stepping down as CIA director,” Tom Ricks reports in his blog “The Best Defense.”

Such a move is in keeping with the military culture in which Petraeus rose to the rank of four-star general.

Under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, adultery is a punishable offense for soldiers if the conduct is shown to be detrimental “to good order and discipline in the armed forces or was of a nature to bring discredit upon the armed forces.”

Obama said that Michael Morell, deputy director of the CIA, would take over as acting director. Mr. Morell served briefly as acting director after Leon Panetta left the agency last year to become Defense secretary.

Petraeus was set to testify Thursday at a closed-door session of the Senate Intelligence Committee on the Benghazi attack, but it was unclear if his resignation would alter that schedule.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D) of California, the Intelligence Committee chair, told NBC News that Petraeus’s personal mistake should not have led to his resignation.

“I would have stood up for him,” she said. “I wanted him to continue. He was good, he loved the work, and he had a command of intelligence issues second to none.”

Obama, after winning reelection Tuesday, was already expected to make some changes in his national security team for a second term, but early speculation had been that Petraeus would stay on at the CIA. Now the job of spy chief will be added to the new-team mix.

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Read this story at csmonitor.com

Victims to testify in Afghan massacre hearing

Associated Press/Lois Silver - File-In this detail of a courtroom sketch, U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Robert Bales, center, is shown Monday, Nov. 5, 2012, during a preliminary hearing in a military courtroom at Joint Base Lewis McChord in Washington state. An Afghan National Army guard who reported seeing a U.S. soldier outside a remote base the night 16 civilians were massacred in March said the man did not stop even after being asked three times to do so. The guard, named Nematullah, testified by live video from Kandahar, Afghanistan, on Friday Nov. 9, 201 during an overnight session for a hearing in the case against Staff Sgt. Robert Bales. At right is Investigating Officer Col. Lee Deneke, and at left is Bales' attorney, Emma Scanlan. (AP Photo/Lois Silver) TV OUT

JOINT BASE LEWIS-McCHORD, Wash. (AP) — An Afghan National Army guard who reported seeing a U.S. soldier outside a remote base the night 16 civilians were massacred in March said the man did not stop even after being asked three times to do so.

The guard, named Nematullah, testified by live video from Kandahar, Afghanistan, on Friday night during an overnight session for a hearing in the case against Staff Sgt. Robert Bales.

"I told him to stop," the guard said, through an interpreter, though he did not say whether the man was Bales. He said the man came toward him, said "how are you" in Pashto and went inside the base.

Under cross-examination from Bales' attorney, John Henry Browne, who traveled to Afghanistan to question the witnesses, the guard said he saw the man but could not identify him.

Browne pressed further, asking if the guard could describe the soldier at all. The guard said he was white and well built, but those were the only details he could provide.

Nematullah also said the soldier was coming from the north, which is the direction of a village that prosecutors say Bales attacked first in the nighttime rampage March 11.

Bales could face the death penalty if he is convicted in the massacre. The preliminary hearing will help determine whether he faces a court-martial.

The hearing was also expected to feature testimony from two victims and four relatives of victims.

The villagers will speak to a military courtroom at Joint Base Lewis-McChord during the overnight session to accommodate the time difference.

Bales, a 39-year-old Ohio native and father of two from Lake Tapps, Wash., faces 16 counts of premeditated murder and six counts of attempted murder in the attack in southern Afghanistan.

Prosecutors say that Bales wore a T-shirt, cape and night-vision goggles — no body armor — when he slipped away from his remote post, Camp Belambay. He first attacked one village, returned to the base, and headed out again to attack another village, they say.

In between, he woke a fellow soldier, reported what he'd done, and said he was headed out to kill more, the soldier testified. But the soldier didn't believe what Bales said, and went back to sleep.

Nine children were among the victims, and 11 of the victims were from the same family.

Another Afghan National Army guard who reported seeing a soldier return to Belambay and then leave again was also scheduled to testify.

On Thursday, a U.S. Army DNA expert testified that Bales had the blood of at least four people on his clothes and guns when he surrendered.

The blood of two males and two females was discovered on Bales' pants, shirt, gloves, rifle and other items, said Christine Trapolsi, an examiner at the Army's Criminal Investigation Laboratory.

To preserve the evidence, she said she only tested a portion of the bloodstains, and it's possible more DNA profiles could be discovered through additional testing.

Another forensic expert from the Criminal Investigation Lab, fiber specialist Larry Peterson, testified that a small piece of fabric that matched the cape Bales reportedly wore was discovered on a pillow in one of the attacked compounds.

Prosecutors referred to the cape as a blanket, but Peterson said it was more like a decorative covering for a window or doorway.

Bales has not entered a plea and was not expected to testify. His attorneys, who did not give an opening statement, have not discussed the evidence, but say Bales has post-traumatic stress disorder and suffered a concussive head injury during a prior deployment to Iraq.

A U.S. agent who investigated the massacre has testified that local villagers were so angered it was weeks before American forces could visit the crime scenes less than a mile from a remote base.

By that time, bodies had been buried and some bloodstains had been scraped from the walls, said Special Agent Matthew Hoffman of the Army's Criminal Investigation Command.

Other stains remained, on walls and floors. Investigators recovered shell casings consistent with the weapons Bales reportedly carried.

Hoffman also said Bales tested positive for steroids three days after the killings.

Bales leaned back in his chair at the defense table and did not react as an Army doctor, Maj. Travis Hawks, gave clinical descriptions of treating the wounded villagers as they arrived at a nearby forward operating base.

One girl had a large bullet wound in the top of her head, he said. She was unresponsive at first, but survived after treatment.

A woman had wounds to her chest and genitals, but she and her relatives insisted that the male doctors not treat her. Prosecutors showed photos of the victims being treated.

___

Johnson can be reached at https://twitter.com/GeneAPseattle

Afghan victims say only one U.S. soldier attacked

TACOMA, Washington (Reuters) - An Afghan villager and two of his sons, who survived a night-time shooting rampage in March, testified on Saturday that they saw only one U.S.soldier attacking their compound, backing the U.S. government's account.

Military prosecutors are seeking the death penalty for Army Staff Sergeant Robert Bales, accusing him of killing 16 villagers, mostly women and children, when he ventured out of his remote camp on two revenge-fueled forays over a five-hour period in March.

The shootings in Afghanistan's Kandahar province marked the worst case of civilian slaughter blamed on an individual U.S. soldier since the Vietnam War and damaged already strained U.S.-Afghan relations.

The U.S. government says a coherent and lucid Bales acted alone and with "chilling premeditation".

Some villagers told reporters shortly after the attacks that more than one U.S. soldier was involved, but there have been no sworn statements to that effect made publicly.

Early on Saturday, three survivors answered questions via video-link from Kandahar Air Field to a hearing at a U.S. Army base in Washington state - the first time Afghan witnesses have testified under oath about what transpired on March 11.

"He shot me right here," said Haji Mohamed Naim, the father of nine sons in the village of Alkozai, the scene of the first shootings.

Speaking through an interpreter, he said all he could see was a strong light on the head of asoldier who was not more than half a meter (yard) away from him when he started shooting.

Naim said he was awoken in the night by sounds of shots and dogs barking, and then children from the next door house knocked on his door. He then described how an "American" jumped from a wall before confronting him and starting to shoot.

Two of Naim's sons, who were also in the compound, said they saw only one U.S. soldier on the night in question.

"Yes, I saw him, he came after me, I went to another room," said Naim's son Sadiquallah, who said he was 13 or 14 years old. He described how he hid behind a curtain in a storage room with one other child, and was hit in the ear with a bullet, but did not see who fired the shot.

"How many Americans did you see?" one of the prosecution attorneys asked Sadiquallah. "One," he replied.

His older brother Quadratullah, who said he was 14, was unscathed in the attack, but said he saw a U.S. soldier shooting other children.

"Yes I saw the American," he answered a government attorney. "I said 'We are children, we are children', and he shot one of the kids," Quadratullah said, through an interpreter.

"We saw only one American," he added.

At a courtroom at the Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Bales sat impassively throughout the proceedings, watching the witnesses on a TV screen in front of him.

FIRST AFGHAN TESTIMONY

The Afghan villagers testified on the fifth day of a hearing to establish whether there is enough evidence to put Bales before a court martial.

A veteran of four combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, Bales faces 16 counts of premeditated murder and six counts of attempted murder, as well as charges of assault and wrongfully possessing and using steroids and alcohol while deployed.

Prosecutors have presented physical evidence to tie Bales to the crime scene, with a forensic investigator saying a sample of blood on Bales' clothes matched a swab taken in one of the compounds where the shooting occurred.

Bales' lawyers have not set out an alternative theory, but have pointed up inconsistencies in testimony and highlighted incidents before the shooting where Bales lost his temper easily or appeared unbalanced, possibly setting up an argument that he was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.

Gathering evidence and witness statements was complicated by the speedy burial of victims, the inability of U.S. investigators to access the crime scenes for three weeks after the violence for fears of revenge attacks, and the dispersal of possible witnesses after treatment at a Kandahar hospital.

Bales' lead civil defense attorney John Henry Browne, who is in Kandahar to question the witnesses, complained early in the investigation that his team was denied access to villagers wounded in the attacks.

(Reporting by Bill Rigby; Editing by Cynthia Johnston and Alistair Lyon)

RT: Ron Paul: America has already gone over the fiscal cliff

Published: 09 November, 2012, 22:48

Former Republican presidential candidate, Representative Ron Paul (T.J. Kirkpatrick/Getty Images/AFP)

US President Barack Obama demanded from Congress immediate action to prevent America from falling of a so-called fiscal cliff, but Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) says it might be too late to keep the country afloat.

Speaking with Bloomberg Television on Thursday, the lawmaker who ran against Pres. Obama during the last two elections said he expects that America’s financial woes are beyond repair.

“We’re so far gone,” said the congressman, who will retire from the Hill this year after serving 12 terms in the House. “We’re over the cliff. We cannot get enough people in Congress in the next 5 to 10 years who will do the wise things. We have to prepare for having already fallen off the fiscal cliff.”

On the campaign trail leading up to the Nov. 6, 2012 election, Rep. Paul proposed an array of ideas he said would save the country from economic disaster, including returning to a gold standard and abolishing the Federal Reserve, America’s central bank. On his part, Pres. Obama vowed to keep the company in tact if elected to a second term, and Friday told reporters at the White House that he expects Congress to come to his side and do what’s right to prevent what Rep. Paul says is inevitable now.

“I’ve invited leaders from both parties to the White House next so we can start to build consensus around the challenges that we can only solve together,” said the president in reference to worries over America’s fiscal standing next year. “At a time when our economy is still recovering from the great recession, our top priority has to be jobs and growth.”

“We can’t just cut out way to prosperity,” said Obama. “If we’re serious about reducing the deficit, we have to combine spending cuts with revenue. That means asking the wealthiest Americans to pay a little more in taxes.”

“I’m not wedded to every detail of my plan,” he said. “I’m open to compromise; I’m open to new ideas.”

According to Rep. Paul, that’s just more pandering from the president.

“They’re just looking for the truth,” said the congressman. “They say, ‘Well, all we need is a little compromise.’ Well nobody expects that because they do not admit the truth, and the truth is that we are broke.”

“How do you compromise? The only way you can compromise is if you agree on what to cut.”

From the White House on Friday, the president said, “The American people voted for action, not politics as usual,” and insisted that “What the American people are looking for is cooperation,” consensus and common sense from the government. “Most of all they want action,” he added, insisting, “I intend on delivering for them during my second term.”

Rep. Paul tells Bloomberg it’s a “bad sign” that the public, not the president, is on the receiving end of however the White House tries to fix the country’s financial woes. “People do not want anything cut,” he said. “They want all the bailouts to come. They want the Fed to keep printing money. They do not believe we have gone off the cliff or are close to going off the cliff.”