{"id":58568,"date":"2015-03-05T07:30:55","date_gmt":"2015-03-05T12:30:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=58568"},"modified":"2015-03-05T16:37:08","modified_gmt":"2015-03-05T21:37:08","slug":"about-the-petraeus-deal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=58568","title":{"rendered":"About the Petraeus Deal . . . ."},"content":{"rendered":"

Jonn\u2019s written a couple of articles (here<\/i><\/a> and here<\/i><\/a>) recently concerning former GEN David Petraeus\u2019 recent plea-bargain deal. And in truth, I generally (no pun intended) agree with Jonn\u2019s assessment.<\/p>\n

But I have to say that I agree with him for very different reasons.<\/p>\n

Many have castigated Petraeus for his carrying on an affair with his biographer, former USAR MAJ Paula Broadwell.\u00a0 (Yes, former MAJ; her promotion to LTC was reportedly revoked, and she no longer seems to be a member of the USAR.)\u00a0 While I don\u2019t condone such behavior, for a number of reasons that\u2019s not my primary problem Petraeus\u2019 actions.<\/p>\n

Why?\u00a0 Well, for starters the affair was consensual, and reportedly began after<\/em> Petraeus had left active duty.\u00a0 While IMO such conduct is morally wrong, no one is perfect.<\/p>\n

Further, expecting perfection in senior leadership is IMO foolish.\u00a0 I don\u2019t really think we want \u2013 or should expect \u2013 either senior military leaders or the head of the CIA to be saints.\u00a0 Intel can be a dirty business, and exceptionally few GOs\/FOs are Chaplains.\u00a0 Saints aren\u2019t normally the people you\u2019d expect to excel in such roles.<\/p>\n

My issue is with a different failing \u2013 and its potential effects, which we may not yet have seen or even know about.<\/p>\n

Petraeus has pleaded to unauthorized retention of classified materials.\u00a0 That\u2019s bad.\u00a0 But here\u2019s a quote from one published article<\/i><\/a> concerning the recent plea deal that describes just what he retained.\u00a0 I\u2019ve added emphasis (italics) in the quote below.<\/p>\n

All eight books \u201ccollectively contained classified information regarding the identifies of covert officers<\/em>, war strategy, intelligence capabilities and mechanisms, diplomatic discussions, quotes and deliberative discussions from high-level National Security Council meetings\u2026 and discussions with the president of the United States.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Those notebooks were apparently stored unsecurely at times.\u00a0 They were reportedly kept by Petraeus \u201cin a rucksack\u201d, and were loaned for a period of several days to his biographer and mistress – Broadwell – for her perusal.<\/p>\n

That means we don\u2019t really know who else might have seen them<\/em>.\u00a0 We know Petraeus and Broadwell have.\u00a0 But do we truly know if anyone else looked them over – with or without their permission?<\/p>\n

Maybe no one else has in fact seen them.\u00a0 As this point, that appears to be the case.\u00a0 But if access to them was achieved clandestinely . . . we might not know that for a while.<\/p>\n

Some might ask if that\u2019s really a \u201cbig deal\u201d, or “what difference does it make?”\u00a0 For anyone asking those questions, let me refer you to Dmitri Polyakov, Adolf Tolkachev, Sergei Motorin and Leonid Poleshchuk.\u00a0 You can ask them<\/span> if being exposed by-name is a \u201cbig deal\u201d or “makes a difference”.<\/p>\n

Or, more precisely:\u00a0 you can ask their surviving family and friends.\u00a0 Each of those individuals was reportedly executed by Soviet authorities not terribly long after being exposed by Aldrich Ames and\/or Robert Hanssen as a US intelligence source.<\/p>\n

Intel isn\u2019t a game.\u00a0 And in real life, sometimes exposure as an intel source or operative ends more than that an individual’s usefulness.<\/p>\n

No, General \u2013 that risk wasn\u2019t<\/span> worth it.\u00a0 And I can certainly see why you jumped at this deal.<\/p>\n

You got off damn <\/em>easy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jonn\u2019s written a couple of articles (here and here) recently concerning former GEN David Petraeus\u2019 recent … About the Petraeus Deal . . . .<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":623,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[185,15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-58568","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-crime","category-legal"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58568","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/623"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=58568"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58568\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=58568"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=58568"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=58568"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}