If You Were Saying to Yourself, ‘This Petraeus Scandal Isn’t Crazy Enough …’

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You’re going to love this news: Jill Kelley — whose report of threatening e-mails led to revelations of Gen. David Petraeus’s affair with Paula Broadwell — has a “psychologically unstable” twin sister. And when the sister needed a reference in her child custody case, Petraeus provided it:

The four-star general’s letter to the court — written in the past two months — supported a motion to overturn a ruling made nearly a year earlier by a judge who resoundingly denied custody to Kelley’s sister, Natalie Khawam, because of serious reservations about her honesty and mental stability, court records show.
Petraeus wrote his letter amid a bitter divorce and custody battle between Khawam and Grayson Wolfe, a partner in a DC-based private venture firm.
The letter was filed in DC Superior Court, where the father of Khawam’s 4-year-old son filed for divorce three years ago, two sources said . . .
A judge in November 2011 gave Wolfe sole custody of the couple’s son after finding that Khawam, a lawyer, repeatedly lied under oath and filed bogus domestic-violence and child-abuse claims against her husband after their one-year marriage began crumbling in 2009.
That judge also found that Khawam routinely defied court orders to let the child see his dad and sent harassing e-mails to Wolfe’s friends and business partners that “excoriated Mr. Wolfe for being a horrible father and husband.”
The judge blasted Khawam for giving false evidence, and noted that a court-ordered shrink had found her domestic-violence allegations to be “part of an ever-expanding set of sensational accusations . . . that are so numerous, so extraordinary and [so] distorted that they defy any common-sense view of reality.”
The judge also noted that she “is a psychologically unstable person.”

Let’s pause here, dear reader.

Petraeus is one of the nation’s most decorated military officers. He commanded U.S. forces in Afghanistan and Iraq and was recently made director of the Central Intelligence Agency. Yet here he is, immersing himself in a swirling cesspool of raw craziness:

  • An affair with his worshipful biographer.
  • Using a trick to hide e-mails to his mistress.
  • His “family friend” Jill Kelley exchanging thousands of potentially inappropriate e-mails with his successor in command in Afghanistan, Marine Gen. John Allen.
  • Vouching for the good character of Jill’s crazy sister.

This looks a lot like a belated mid-life crisis, or else maybe Petraeus’s reputation as a responsible adult was more image than substance. Were there other affairs before Paula Broadwell? Are we supposed to believe that the general, having resisted temptation for more than three decades of married life, suddenly found himself confronted by the one woman no CIA director could possibly resist? Color me skeptical.

Mark Steyn called this the “missing piece of the puzzle,” and that was before we learned that Gen. Allen had also intervened on behalf of Jill Kelley’s crazy twin sister — you know, the divorceé who made up “an ever-expanding set of sensational accusations” against her ex.

Because that’s what four-star Marine generals do, y’know: Vouch for mental cases in custody battles. It’s right there between the “halls of Montezuma” and the “shores of Tripoli.” Tim Stanley of the London Daily Telegraph writes:

How does this comedy relate to the horror of Benghazi, when four American citizens were killed at the tail end of what increasingly looks like an intelligence operation gone bad? It testifies to the extraordinary incompetence at all levels of the federal security state.

What is really interesting, however, is that this lurid and tawdry soap opera may have accidentally turned up the best explanation for why the Obama administration lied through its teeth about the Benghazi attack, as Townhall’s Katie Pavlich observes:

It isn’t the affair itself that gives us more information, but the affair bringing attention to words spoken by Broadwell in Denver on October 26. She said the CIA was holding prisoners at the annex in Benghazi and Fox News has confirmed with another source this was the case.
This explains two things. The U.S. consulate in Benghazi was being repeatedly attacked because prisoners were being held and because President Obama signed an executive order in 2009 banning secret CIA prisons, they had to find an alternative story to cover-up what really happened, hence the YouTube video.

Wow. So if Broadwell was right — and obviously, she was in a position to know — then either (a) the Obama administration was secretly violating its own announced policy, or (b) some in the CIA had gone “rogue,” and the deliberate obfuscation of what happened in Benghazi was a cover-up of this secret violation of the president’s executive order.

If so, then it bears a resemblance to the Iran-Contra scandal, and if it turns out that things went wrong in Benghazi because the folks in charge were too busy chasing poontang to do their actual jobs, then this story is a long way from being over.

Fausta’s right: Focus, focus focus.

34 comments

  2. Here’s another bit of weirdness. As per Bryan Preston over at the PJTatler, linking to a MyFox Tampa Bay story,Jill Kelly is apparently claiming Diplomatic status in 911 calls.

  3. If you accept the David Petraeus claim that he did not give Paul Broadwell the classified documents found in her home, then there must be at least one more person in this scandal.

  4. “…obviously, she was in a position to know…”

    In more ways than one. Or more than one position.

    IYKWIMAITTYD.

  6. Well, both officers could be going through some midlife, hormonal, feeling like risking a lifetime reputation, honor and a bigass pension to retire on…….or, she has something else on these guys to blackmail them with as incentive to write letters to vouch for unstable self. Pretty horrifying to think this may only be six tits on a much bigger iceburg and all of it may only be a diversion from much more ghastly stuff going on. Like, a couple of square blocks in Indianapolis that got flattened in what looks like a targetted heavy weapons attack in a war zone which I’m personally a whole lot more concerned about than who’s boinkin’ Broadwell unless it answers bigger questions about Benghazi……but people died in Indianapolis too and no one knows yet what hit those folks? Bullshit. Ok, I’m going to go to the couch now.

  7. It’s hard to believe that these men went through their entire
    military service without being caught in compromising positions before
    now.

    This looks a lot like a belated mid-life crisis, or else maybe
    Petraeus’s reputation as a responsible adult was more image than
    substance. Were there other affairs before Paula Broadwell? Are we
    supposed to believe that the general, having resisted temptation for
    more than three decades of married life, suddenly found himself
    confronted by the one woman no CIA director could possibly resist? Color
    me skeptical.

    Hmmm…great minds think alike. Or Not.

  8. Damn, if I find out that Moochell was involved in “Real Housewives of the Pentagon,” I’m moving to Antartica.

  16. It blows my mind that someone like Patreus would throw/risk his career on a piece of ass, however this seems to happen more and more with these high profile Pols. I blame progressivism.

  17. Wow! Generals get Groupies!!!! Who knew that? I knew there was some reason some of those politically correct idiots stayed in the Military all those years.

    And now I know why!

    Sadly, I didn’t notice an excess of Patriotism or sense of Duty in a lot of them here lately, but the Groupies explain it.

  18. My experience has been that usually one twin is a little more tightly wrapped than the other. Sometimes it’s hard to tell by how much. They live in a strange world that you or I can NEVER travel to. They see themself as another living being every day of their life and even when apart they know a part of them is wandering around somewhere. It messes with their heads I think.

    Any way all that is the lead in for my suspicion that the supposed “stable” twin? Ain’t so much. And that Broadwell might have had good and sufficient reason to be threatened by her(them).

    Don’t folks have to undergo periodic recertification of their top secret clearances? If so then who let this slide?

  19. They never believe they’ll get caught. This is the criminal mindset. A criminal NEVER thinks they’re going to get caught. If they think of it at all they might take a few precautions but most don’t. They lack impulse control and reason.

    What’s Petraeus’ excuse? Damned if I know. Mid life crisis? If it turns out she’s the only one and he has been busy with the twins, then it most likely is access did him in. That and all the ego stroking she probably did.

    If he did the twins also then he’s a power predator using his position and authority to circumvent the normal safeguards against this sort of nonsense.

    Good thing he didn’t get nominated by anyone yet.

  21. Why don’t you google Grayson Wolfe, and point out his connections to deep power, Iraq, Bush, seems odd you don’t do that, but brand JIll Kelly’s sister as nuts, as if taht ENDS all the Story. CASE CLOSED

  25. “(a) the Obama administration was secretly violating its own announced policy”

    It has been reported the executive order contained a small loophole through which barry crawled to allow the “temporary” holding of prisoners. If we’re lucky the loophole will turn into a noose by which he hangs.

  26. Charles, what he gave her and what she was in a position to obtain because of access and proximity are two different things.

  27. and allowed team obama to execute their favorite play against enemies and the inconvenient – use a sex scandal/messy divorce to their political advantage (a compliant media helps)

  31. […] Secrets within secrets, all conveniently swept under the rug until after the election. Wow. So if Broadwell was right — and obviously, she was in a position to know — then either (a) the Obama administration was secretly violating its own announced policy [remember, the President Obama EO in 2009 banning secret CIA prisons?? – admin], or (b) some in the CIA had gone “rogue,” and the deliberate obfuscation of what happened in Benghazi was a cover-up of this secret violation of the president’s executive order. […]

  34. What is the deal of the twin SIS, Natalie, who is deemed the unstable one, the LAWYER, getting a
    $ 300,000 loan from Senator John Kerry’s Finance Guy, Gerald Harrington.
    This Harrington lawyer lobbies lobbies for Military Housing for some entity, who does a lot of work on ARMY bases, all over. Now that Natalie is declaring bankruptcy in Florida, this Harrington, money is looking funny, what was the loan for….? Seems Harrington is real omerta on matters. STRANGE

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