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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”

  1. Holly Petraeus is supposedly quite good at her job and very well respected. -Swarthmore mom

    Sm, I’ve heard the same thing. Someone had asked about $$$ and I saw her salary listed with his, so I posted it. It was a statement w/o any judgement attached. 😉

    I’m edging in here late and might have missed it, but I’ve also heard that Broadwell has ties to PNAC. It may be old news by now.

    “She’s also very good at her main job … her husband.” (Blouise)

    I agree, Blouise, but would throw their children into the mix. It would seem that she’s been the consumate military wife and mother — and it’s not an easy road…

    And what Gene H. said so very well.

    As to “shades of 1933″…? Oh, yeah. (Walk a mile…)

    “The house of government needs to be cleaned.” -Gene H.

    Oh, yes, it does.

  2. If Obama is smart (and the least bit principled), Dick Cheney and his Oil/MIC connections should be the most worried people in the country right now. If I controlled the Executive, the FBI and the DOJ would be down this rabbit hole like angry dachshunds and I’ll tell them to flush out this den to expose what on the surface appears to be the edges of a conspiracy possibly aimed at subverting the American government from the inside for private purposes and financial gain no matter who ends up going to prison, current or previous administration included.

    The house of government needs to be cleaned. Now is the rational time to do it. But given his own unconstitutional power grab for the unitary executive, I strongly except him to do nothing of the sort. Some will pay the price and rest he’ll use what he learns as leverage instead of as a tool to bring justice and restore democracy. He has proven that he’s a politician above being a defender of the Constitution so far. I don’t expect him to change now.

  5. gbk,

    Curiouser and curiouser.

    ***************************

    Blouise,

    **cough*cough*cough*Dick Cheney*cough*cough*cough**

    This whole thing is the edge of something far more troublesome and far more threatening to democracy than just a General who can’t keep his thing in his pants. And I mean shades of 1933.

  6. Blouise, and Id,

    You’re both welcome.

    Yeah, the fact that Broadwell has ties to the Hudson Institute says a lot to me. Hudson was the only place that would hire Douglas Feith after his departure from the Office Of Special Plans (OSP). He tried to get a seat at Harvard, UC Berkeley, and if memory serves me right the Hoover Institute.

    If anyone remembers it was Feith that ran the OSP under Wolfowitz at the Pentagon which fed un-vetted intelligence (Chalabi’s fantasies) to Cheney and Scooter Libby, who would feed the lies to Judith Miller of the New York Times who would publish the anonymous source claims of Iraq’s involvement with Al-Qaeda and the existence of massive amounts of WMDs. Then the Shrub administration would use the New York Times reports to justify their reasons for invasion, because the CIA analysts and UN inspectors (even under the control of an American general) were saying the exact opposite.

    Then Larry Franklin, who worked for Feith at the OSP, got arrested by the FBI for passing confidential material to two AIPAC employees (Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman) after an almost three year surveillance/wiretapping effort. Franklin confessed, and Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman of AIPAC never went to trial.

    With Broadwell having a tie to Hudson, I’m pretty sure the rabbit hole goes pretty deep in this current debacle.

  11. Blouise, She appears to be taking care of everyone but herself. Maybe someone will intervene on her behalf.

  13. SwM,

    Of course she is. She’s also very good at her main job … her husband.

    How do you think that political General, her husband. got as far up the ranks as he did. And look at the mess he got himself into when he wasn’t in partnership with her.

    Ask Bill Clinton.

  14. Do you all notice that over time, say since WWII, our military people have accumulated more ribbons and stars and stripes on their chests than they formerly sprouted? If we would just ramp up the hats a bit then they would match the outfits that the Stalinsts wore back in 1945.

  15. ap, Holly Petraeus is supposedly quite good at her job and very well respected.

  19. Heh,

    365 days times the two years equals the 730 that I divide into the 20,000 to 30,000 emails exchanged between Jill and General Allen between 2010 and 2012. By my arithmetic, that leaves 27.39 @20,000 and 41.09 at 30,000, emails a day between these two sexters. So we take the average and get 34.24 emails a day 7 days a week. Of course when I am preoccupied 34 times a day thinking about that hot strange I am probably not maintaining a proper focus on keeping all the enlisted men and women safe in a hostile theatre like I should be.

    So would sombody answer two questions for me?

    1. Why are Obama and Pannetta still supporting this guy, and
    2. Does anybody realy believe that Jill and Allen went beyond text # 3,000 before the general figured out a way back to Tampa to consumate the affair?

    By the way, how much are we paying these four star generals to not be doing their job, anybody know?

  20. gbk,

    Oh boy … that moves the point of view. The ol’ shirtless agent was hoping to take down the President but Cantor recognized that was never going to happen so held out for the Petraeus take down, and all for a war with Iran which would be based on Israeli desires rather than American interests?

    If that is what’s going on then the White House, the CIA, the FBI and all other U S intelligence agencies need to get crackin’ ’cause there’s some real treason being plotted.

    Thanks for the links … very interesting.

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