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.
Reconsidering The Petraeus Hagiography
Doug Mataconis
Tuesday, November 13, 2012
http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/reconsidering-the-petraeus-hagiography/
Excerpt:
Bernard Finel touches on that point in his comments about the entire Petraeus-Broadwell relationship, which he points out is about a lot more than just sex:
It wasn’t a private affair. Broadwell wasn’t some random family friend. She was his de facto official biographer. He’d used his position, first in the military and then at CIA, to enhance her visibility and reputation precisely because she was able and willing to burnish his public image. Petraeus’ conduct with Broadwell was abhorent even before he had sex with her. He used government resources to promote himself personally and to leverage that popularity in order to back elected officials into a corner in order to get what he wanted both in terms of policy and in terms of personal advancement. This is a public affair and it speaks directly to Petraeus’ abuse of power and position throughout the last decade.
I’ll also note that many of his defenders, particularly those trotting out the “private affair” line of argumentation are similarly compromised. Ricks, Boot, Andrew Exum, Mike O’Hanlon, and many others were all part of the same dirty little quid-pro-quo, where they got career boosts and access in return for building up the Petraeus cult.
Again, this is not a private affair. Broadwell was part of a general pattern of abuse of power and violation of civil-military norms by David Petraeus. Focusing on the sex is just a nice way to deflect from the deeper corruption here.
From the link posted by Swarthmore mom:
Petraeus the paper tiger
November 12, 2012
by Joshua Foust
“And at the CIA, he has pushed the final transformation of an agency known more for its human element into a paramilitary engine of assassination – leaving a huge gaping hole where the country’s human intelligence capabilities used to be.
This is not a man who should be drummed out of office for having an affair. He should have been drummed out of office for not living up to his own legend. David Petraeus is a paper tiger: his personality cult looks impressive until you get close enough, and then the whole façade crumbles away.
Lost in the Petraeus affair is a very simple question: do we want a man who judged his subordinates’ intellectual capacity by how well they can hold a six-minute mile on his morning run to lead our premier intelligence agency? It was Petraeus’ lack of intellectual integrity and incredible narcissism that should prompt us to reevaluate his legacy, not who he chose to sleep with.”
(Thanks for the link, Sm.)
Bron, There are also many firefighter and police groupies. They hang out in bars where they congregate.
Bron, Reports are Broadwell is an Allman Brothers fan and her favorite album is the classic, Eat A Peach.
Elaine, I’m sure Feinstein is correct, but if ANYONE thought he wouldn’t testify they’re not very bright. It’s good he won’t need to be subpoened.
David Petraeus will testify on Benghazi
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1112/83829.html
Excerpt:
Gen. David Petraeus will testify before the Senate Intelligence Committee, Senate Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein told POLITICO Wednesday morning. But the exact schedule has not been set for his testimony.
“Mr. Petraeus has indicated his willingness [to testify]. He is eager to come before the committee so we will work out the details,” Feinstein said.
Smom:
My wife and I didnt even know their were military groupies.
I hear Broadwell is calling her next book “In and Out”.
I am president of my Co-op Board and I know there are boundaries between myself and the shareholders . Apparently, there are no boundaries for these generals with admiring females.
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/need-to-know/opinion/petraeus-the-paper-tiger/15445/
“Paula Broadwell and I clashed a few years ago when, in the course of shadowing Petraeus for her biography (which is also the topic of her dissertation, and on whose dissertation committee Petraeus sits), she wrote glowingly of a decision, to demolish several Afghan villages in Kandahar province, approved by Petraeus himself. It was a dehumanizing, disgusting effort, one she bragged came straight from the General himself.”http://www.pbs.org/wnet/need-to-know/opinion/petraeus-the-paper-tiger/15445/
nick, I am not sure about that. Farewell to Petraeus and his sleazy military groupies.
A lot of layers…
“Petraeus famously warned his staff that the White House was “(f)ucking” with the wrong guy.” -Michael Hastings
“General David Petraeus’s fatal flaw: not the affair, but his Afghanistan”surge
“The CIA director’s resignation over a sex scandal has obscured how badly his counterinsurgency strategy failed in Afghanistan”
by Michael Cohen
Tuesday 13 November 2012
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/nov/13/general-david-petraeus-flaw-surge-afghanistan
“The greatest indictment of Petraeus’s record is that, 18 months after announcing the surge, President Obama pulled the plug on a military campaign that had clearly failed to realize the ambitious goals of Petraeus and his merry team of COIN boosters. Today, the Afghanistan war is stalemated with little hope of resolution – either militarily or politically – any time soon. While that burden of failure falls hardest on President Obama, General Petraeus is scarcely blameless. Yet, to date, he has almost completely avoided examination for his conduct of the war in Afghanistan.
In an age in which military officers are practically above public reproach – glorified and exalted by politicians and the media – the repeated failures of our military leaders consistently escape analysis and inquiry. This can have serious national security implications. As Joshua Rovner, associate professor of strategy and policy, US Naval War College, said to me in an email conversation, this lack of scrutiny has had grave consequences:
“[W]e have misunderstood our recent history in Iraq and Afghanistan; we have created new myths about strategy that will persist for many years despite their manifest flaws; and we may make bad decisions about intervening in other civil wars based on these myths.”
The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were more than just bad strategy; they reflected poor military tactics and generalship. Self-interested and incomplete interpretations of what happened in Iraq led to predictably disastrous results in Afghanistan.
Perhaps we should spend a bit more time looking at that issue, rather who was sleeping with whom.”
Jill Kelley and her twin sister obviously don’t worry about the 3rd amendment. Soldiers are more than welcome in their homes.
SWM, “Never let them see you sweat.” It’s going to get a lot hotter so pace yourself, this is a marathon, not a sprint.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/14/opinion/dowd-reputation-reputation-reputation.html
” Petraeus’s Icarus flight began when he set himself above President Obama.
Accustomed to being a demigod, expert at polishing his own celebrity and swaying public opinion, Petraeus did not accept the new president’s desire to head for the nearest exit ramp on Afghanistan in 2009. The general began lobbying for a surge in private sessions with reporters and undercutting the president, who was trying to make a searingly hard call.
Petraeus rolled the younger commander in chief into going ahead with a bound-to-fail surge in Afghanistan, just as, half-a-century earlier, the C.I.A. had rolled Jack Kennedy into going ahead with the bound-to-fail Bay of Pigs scheme. Both missions defied logic, but the untested presidents put aside their own doubts and instincts, caving to experience.
Once in Afghanistan, Petraeus welcomed prominent conservative hawks from Washington think tanks. As Greg Jaffe wrote in The Washington Post, they were “given permanent office space at his headquarters and access to military aircraft to tour the battlefield. They provided advice to field commanders that sometimes conflicted with orders the commanders were getting from their immediate bosses.”
So many more American kids and Afghanistan civilians were killed and maimed in a war that went on too long. That’s the real scandal. ” Maureen Dowd NYT
The David Petraeus scandal – quiz
Have you been paying attention to the unfolding Petraeus revelations? Take our test …
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/shortcuts/quiz/2012/nov/14/david-petraeus-scandal-quiz
Elaine is correct, this appears to be just the surface of this scandal. Broadwell’s father claims this stuff isn’t the story, there’s a much bigger one. He may be blowing smoke, but as I’ve said when this first broke, the timing is a big red flag. I don’t think this is going away and unlike many of the “scandals” in DC, this appears to be a real one. The press conference today should be interesting.