Thursday November 15, 2012

Petraeus mistress loses security clearance

WASHINGTON: Paula Broadwell, the woman at the center of the scandal that felled former CIA director David Petraeus, has been stripped of her security clearance amid an FBI investigation, CNN said Wednesday.

The military clearance allowed Broadwell, a major in the US army reserve and a graduate of the West Point military academy, to have access to some classified US government documents.

FBI agents searched her North Carolina home this week and seized several boxes of documents. US media reports said her computer contained classified material, but no official has yet suggested that she will face charges.

Pentagon spokesman Lieutenant Colonel James Gregory Pentagon told AFP that "appropriate actions with regard to this officer's clearance and access have been taken" but refused to elaborate further.

Broadwell met Petraeus when she was a graduate student at Harvard University who attended a lecture he gave. She traveled to Afghanistan to write a fawning biography of the general.

The affair - both Broadwell and Petraeus are married with children - began last year after the acclaimed general who led international forces in Iraq and Afghanistan took up his CIA post.

It ended four months ago, according to a friend of Petraeus.

President Barack Obama told a news conference at the White House earlier that there was no evidence that classified documents had been disclosed due to the affair, saying the scandal had not compromised national security.

Federal authorities first caught wind of the affair when Broadwell allegedly sent threatening emails to Jill Kelley, a Florida socialite with ties to the military described as a family friend of Petraeus.

Kelley asked an FBI agent to investigate the angry messages and has since been linked through a trove of flirtatious emails with the top allied commander in Afghanistan, General John Allen. - AFP

News

Thursday November 15, 2012

Petraeus mistress loses security clearance