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Jill Kelley Claims “Honorary” Diplomatic Status In Latest Twist In Petraeus Scandal

Last night, while discussing the Petraeus scandal on CNN, the network played a 911 call from one of the four major figures in the scandal: Jill Kelley. The call is perfectly bizarre in which Kelley, a Florida socialite, claims “honorary diplomatic” status to get the police to stop people from walking across her lawn. The dispatcher listens patiently and appears to resist the temptation to tell her that he will be sending over some honorary police to protect their honorary diplomatic residence.

Kelley is the woman who went to a friend in the FBI to complain about threatening emails from an anonymous source — emails that led the FBI to Paula Broadwell and ultimately Gen. David Petraeus. She and the agent are a rather odd couple. He sent her shirtless pictures of himself and was eventually removed from involvement in the case. She is described as a “nice, bored, rich socialite” who volunteered with the military as a self-described “social liaison” and cultivated relationships with generals. This included a questionable relationship with Gen. John Allen, commander of the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan, involving a remarkable number of emails described by some sources as a bit raunchy and “like phone sex.”

Just when you thought the scandal could not get more weird, it did. Last night, we heard this 911 call for “diplomatic protection:”

“Thank you and you know, um, I don’t know, but by any chance because I’m an honorary council general, so I have inviolability so I should… they should not be able to (cross) this property, I don’t know if you want to get diplomatic protection involved as well.

Kelley has been described as invoking her diplomatic status previously. She was given the unpaid title of “honorary ambassador” to CENTCOM, the Department of Defense Central Command. This gives her about the same diplomatic status as the hostess at an International House of Pancakes.

What is strange is that she is protected by the non-honorary title of a citizen of Tampa from trespass. She is allowed to demand the removal of people from her property so long as it is not a public space or a private space with a form of constructive easement.

She might want to stick with the Tampa title because “Honorary ambassador” does not fit neatly into the the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations (1961). However, if she wishes to claim to be an honorary diplomat, it would allow Tampa to declare her persona non grata but it is not clear what country she would be expelled to since she is claiming diplomatic immunity in her own country. It might be just easier to get a “No Trespass” sign at Home Depot.

284 thoughts on “Jill Kelley Claims “Honorary” Diplomatic Status In Latest Twist In Petraeus Scandal”

  2. “For all public servants, “character is not a private issue,” writes Navy Capt. Chuck Hollingsworth, who recently commanded the Navy’s Center for Personal and Professional Development. “Regardless of one’s spiritual inclination, professional and ethical behavior can and should be the expectation.”

    Federal workers serve the highest ideals of a nation, not just a boss or a set of rules. For the military, especially, failure to live up to those ideals can result in tragedy.

    Thus the urgency of the Pentagon’s review of its ethical training. The defense chief wants a plan on the president’s desk by Dec. 1. Given the publicity of both the Petraeus and Allen scandals, the military needs quick action to not only restore its reputation but further shore up the conscience of every officer and soldier.”

    http://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/the-monitors-view/2012/1116/Pentagon-can-recover-from-Petraeus-and-Allen-scandals

  4. ap,

    Thanks kiddo.

    Don’t you find it rather interesting the way everybody is trying to get out in front of this story. This affair must be a real boon to all those firms that specialize in “reputation enhancement”.

  5. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/16/jill-kelley-white-house_n_2145871.html

    “As for Broadwell, she at no time set foot in the Executive Mansion, the White House official said. Her June 2009 visit was to meet a national security staffer working on Afghanistan-Pakistan policy matters. In the June 2011 visit, Broadwell was one of 20 participants in a briefing on Afghanistan-Pakistan policy that occurred shortly before Obama delivered a national address announcing the start of troop withdrawals from Afghanistan.

    The White House official said that meeting was not listed in public White House visitor logs because it met a national security exemption to White House disclosure policy.”

    (And Happy Birthday, Blouise!)

  6. this is hilarious:

    “TAMPA — Does Bubba the Love Sponge Clem have anything to say about Mayor Bob Buckhorn calling him a “complete moron” in an e-mail to south Tampa socialite Jill Kelley?

    Does he ever.

    “For Bob Buckhorn to call me a moron? I mean, are you kidding me? Let’s talk about moron status,” he told the Tampa Bay Times.

    Clem slammed red light cameras as a public “shake-down” and mocked the six-foot rule Buckhorn pushed years ago to keep performing strippers that far from patrons. He also criticized the mayor for officially honoring his radio rival Todd “MJ” Schnitt.

    “At the end of the day, you wouldn’t hear any of this nonsense from Pam Iorio,” Clem said of the former mayor. “She was calculated. She didn’t call names. She didn’t get voted on a whim.”

    Jill Kelley contacted Buckhorn earlier this year, saying then-CIA director David Petraeus and General John Allen were emailing her about a plan Clem had to “deep fat fry” the Koran, and “getting this dealt with.” She said she expected a call from Afghanistan from Allen to discuss a next step.

    Clem said the officials that got him to stop it were his lawyer and the heads of the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office and Tampa Police Department, but “probably, she did get intel to have me stop it, and that’s the problem itself.”

    A Bubba’s Army truck circled the Bayshore Boulevard block of the Kelley home for about a half-hour this morning, pumping a parody to the tune of Falco’s “Rock Me Amadeus” about Petraeus.

    “I hope Bob Buckhorn gets looped into it,” Clem said of the scandal.

    “This guy is a joke. He’s messing with the wrong guy, and I will make it my mission to destroy this guy. I am his political death sentence…

    “Unless he apologizes to me and gives me a key to the city.”

  8. Just to change the subject, here’s the guy who was chief of staff to Colin Powell being interviewed.

    Some nice person posted the same site discussing who would be a good replacement for Petraeus—-as CIA chief I hasten to add. And one interview led to another. It provides interesting views on Republicans and the need for dual competence in a President (military and civil)—maybe character would be good one to add too. Petraus has shown what the lack can give us.
    ================================

    http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=6873

    WILKERSON: Yeah. And he got real close to being president of Sears and Roebuck: vice president. So I guess I’d have to say at the same time that I was being disabused of my naivete with regard to the Armed Forces and what the country used them for, I was also being disabused of my naivete about the Republican Party. Not to say that it hasn’t transmogrified in those years. It has. It’s not nearly what it was. My icon in that would be Dwight Eisenhower. Dwight Eisenhower–. And here again you had a man who merged both worlds, the ultimate military responsibility with the ultimate civilian responsibility. We don’t get those kind of people very often. Now, here’s a man who knew both worlds in a sense that he knew the bad and the good from both worlds. He once said, according to his granddaughter Susan Eisenhower, God help the United States if anybody ever sits in the Oval Office who doesn’t understand the military the way I do. This is a man who understood what was happening to post-World War America, that it was turning into a military-industrial-congressional-dominated national security state. And the Republicans have cheered that transmogrification–cheered it. Indeed, they’ve gained their power, their political power, from helping it, from moving it in the right direction when it needs to be moved, so that now you have guys like Mitch McConnell and Darrell Issa and Eric Cantor from Virginia, my state.

    JAY: And Kyl.

    WILKERSON: And Kyl. They live, breathe, drink, and sleep the military-industrial complex. They love war, they love this business, because it keeps them in power

  15. Paula Broadwell’s big mistake
    She thought she was covering her tracks. But in the age of frictionless surveillance, Big Brother can’t be stopped
    BY ANDREW LEONARD
    FRIDAY, NOV 16, 2012
    http://www.salon.com/2012/11/16/paula_broadwells_big_mistake/

    The funny thing is, Paula Broadwell and David Petraeus thought they knew what they were doing. They were careful, more careful than the average American fooling around outside the bounds of marriage tends to be. When Broadwell wanted to warn off the other woman she suspected of messing with her man, she set up an anonymous email account and only used it away from home, usually on the Wi-Fi networks of hotels she was staying in. Broadwell and Petraeus also thought they could avoid having their emails intercepted in transit by technically avoiding “sending” them at all. Instead, they saved their messages to each other as “drafts” in a Gmail account to which they both enjoyed access.

    But if they thought they were being smart, they were wrong. Broadwell and Petraeus were undone, says ACLU privacy and technology expert Christopher Soghoian, by their “lack of knowledge of operational security” and “poor tradecraft.” “Draft” messages are stored in Gmail’s server cloud just like all other sent and received messages. And the FBI turned out to be more than capable of correlating the Internet Protocol addresses that identified the origin of Broadwell’s supposedly “anonymous” emails with hotel records that showed Broadwell as a guest at the same time the messages were sent.

    If Broadwell had taken greater precautions, she might never have been caught. She could have covered her tracks with any one of myriad commercially available Virtual Private Network programs or, if she was looking for some heavy-duty protection, she could have downloaded the Tor Project’s anonymizing browser. We should all takes notes from her misfortune. For those of us who have been able to look beyond the shirtless-pic-sending FBI agents and Tampa socialite “honorary consuls” and overly flirtatious four-star generals, the obvious lesson to take away from this mess is that if we’re going to play hanky-panky with the director of the CIA, we’d better make sure we’re using the best privacy protection tools available.

    But there’s another, more important lesson to be gleaned from this tale of a biographer run amok. Broadwell’s debacle confirms something that some privacy experts have been warning about for years: Government surveillance of ordinary citizens is now cheaper and easier than ever before. Without needing to go before a judge, the government can gather vast amounts of information about us with minimal expenditure of manpower. We used to be able to count on a certain amount of privacy protection simply because invading our privacy was hard work. That is no longer the case. Our always-on, Internet-connected, cellphone-enabled lives are an open door to Big Brother. Just ask Paula Broadwell.

  16. John McCain’s Benghazi Committee Plan Would Give Senator New Relevance
    By Ryan Grim & Sabrina Siddiqui
    Posted: 11/16/2012
    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/16/john-mccain-benghazi-committee_n_2145457.html

    Excerpt:
    WASHINGTON — Just four years ago, John McCain was the leader of the GOP. Today, he’s the highest-ranking Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, a perch from which the former fighter pilot is deeply engaged in the national conversation over war, terrorism and intelligence gathering.

    But in January, the Arizona senator will lose his top-ranking committee seat due to term limits. The only ranking Republican spot available to him next session will be on the Indian Affairs Committee.

    Unless, that is, the Senate creates a brand-new select committee. On Wednesday, McCain, flanked by Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.), proposed just that: a select committee with extensive authority to investigate the Benghazi, Libya, attack and the U.S. government’s response.

    The Republican most likely to hold the ranking spot on such a panel would be, of course, John McCain, giving the Arizona senator a new burst of relevance.

    McCain, who lost the 2008 presidential race to Barack Obama, undermined his effort to create the select committee on the same day he proposed it, when he skipped a private congressional briefing on Benghazi and instead held a press event to complain about not getting briefed enough on Benghazi — and then became aggressive with a reporter who questioned him about it.

  17. rafflaw,

    The Republicans are upset because their countrymen elected a Black Muslim Kenyan Socialst Fascist Anti-Christ to the presidency.

    😉

  18. Elaine,
    Great link, but the Republicans will not be satisfied ever on this issue. I have very little hope that they will come to their senses over the economic issues. I think if we go over the so-called cliff, the Dems will be in a stronger position because the tax cuts for the wealthy will be already ended automatically.

  19. David Petraeus didn’t settle partisan divide on Benghazi
    By Ken Dilanian
    November 16, 2012
    http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-pn-petraeus-benghazi-20121116,0,7486142.story

    Excerpt:
    WASHINGTON – Appearing before two congressional committees in closed-door sessions, former CIA Director David Petraeus did little to dispel the partisan divide over whether Obama administration officials misled the public in the days after heavily armed militants killed four Americans in Benghazi,Libya, lawmakers said Friday.
    Petraeus told the House and Senate intelligence committees that he believed almost immediately that the Sept. 11 assault was an organized terrorist attack, according to lawmakers and staff sources. But he said the administration initially withheld suspicion that specific Al Qaeda affiliates were involved to avoid tipping off the terrorist groups.

    Petraeus also said some early intelligence reports appeared to support Susan Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, when she said five days after the deadly raid that it had grown out of a protest that was hijacked by extremists, comments that some Republicans contend were meant to downplay the significance of the attack before the election. Even now, the intelligence community has evidence that some attackers were motivated by protests earlier that day in Cairo over an anti-Islamic video, sources familiar with the intelligence said.

    “The general completely debunked the idea that there was some politicization of the process,” said Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Burbank).

    Petraeus, who has not appeared in public since he resigned from the CIA on Nov. 9 after admitting that he had an extramarital affair, avoided a throng of reporters and cameras before and after the two back-to-back sessions. Lawmakers lined up to speak after the hearings, however.

    Democrats defended Rice and the administration, while some Republicans said they were unshaken in their belief that intelligence was misused to bolster White House claims that it had decimated the leadership of Al Qaeda. Some Republicans, including Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), have vowed to block any effort to make Rice the next secretary of State to replace Hillary Rodham Clinton, who has said she will step down next year

    Rice relied on unclassified written guidance, known as talking points, from the CIA, Democrats said. But some key words were changed from initial drafts as other agencies weighed in, Republicans countered. The word “attack” was changed to “demonstration,” for example, and the phrase “with ties to Al Qaeda” was removed, a senior Republican congressional official said.

    Precisely who made the changes is not yet clear. “If it was altered by somebody not within the intelligence community, we should know that,” the official said.

    The CIA ultimately signed off on those changes, the official said. Intelligence officials say the changes were part of a normal vetting process for public comments, and was consistent with the CIA’s assessment at the time. That assessment later was revised to discount the video as a motivating factor before armed militants stormed and burned the State Department mission in Benghazi, and hours later, launched a mortar barrage on a CIA compound 1½ miles away by road.

  20. How does Congressional hearing work?

    Don’t they have transcripts from P’s first session. For thet matter instant cueable of pre-marked or in transcript cues to the same video moment to confront Petraeus with?

    A man who has lied to the nations is not sworn in!

    Another journalist had King noting Petraeus meeting criticism at the first hearing with assertions that CIA had been on top of Al Qaeda for months, and because this had been a spontaneous demonstration which go out of hand, that iw had not been visible on their radar.

    Which lie do we buy? Release the security redacted transcript!

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