General Petraeus; more than meets the eye?

The resignation of General Petraeus from head of the CIA should provide rich tilth for the conspiracy theorists, but it must be said that there is a whiff of sulphur about the whole affair.

 

The story so far is that the FBI received complaints from women of abusive and threatening  e-mails. On investigation, it turned up e-mails from Petraeus that showed he was having an affair with his biographer.

 

But the CIA was kept in the dark about this investigation until the very last minute. The Director of National Intelligence was similarly not kept informed. Obama was only told on election night. The Head of the Senate Intelligence committee was not told at all.

 

Are we seeing a reversion to the pre-9/11 shambles in which the intelligence agencies refused to co-operate with one another? In which they spent much time on spying on each other instead of on their legitimate targets? Even a replay of the J Edgar Hoover practice of keeping secret records on prominent people for purposes which were not exactly in the line of duty?

 

Or is there another story?

 

In the wake of the murder of the US Ambassador in Benghazi, we were initially told that it was a rioting mob. Then it was a terrorist attack. Then it was a renegade Libyan militia. And finally, one of the wilder stories is that it was a CIA operation  to set-up a prisoner exchange that went wildly wrong, a story so patently absurd that it might just be true.

 

The Ambassador was dragged form his car en-route to a safe house, sodomised and killed. Or he asphyxiated through smoke-inhalation in the Consulate after it was set on fire.

 

Congress was due to question Petraeus shortly. Presumably he can be subpoenaed to appear even though he has no official position, but he could also refuse to be forthcoming without any substantial repercussions because he is no longer in Government service.

 

When Obama appointed Petraeus well before the Republicans had chosen their POTUS candidate, he removed a potential threat because Petraeus was being trailed as a possible rival. Petraeus has served his purpose and can now be safely discarded.

 

And the received wisdom is that Petraeus is now tainted with adultery which rules him out as a threat to the Democrats next time around.

 

Or so it is said. But if that particular sin is a disbarment from high office, it never applied to Roosevelt, Ike (whose long affair with Kate Somersby was common knowledge for years), JFK, and, of course, the champion Bill Clinton.

 

One for Tom Clancy or Frederick Forsyth, perhaps? Or Matt!

 'I wouldn't call that shock and awe!'