March 3, 2015

Did you hear the one where the top guy at the CIA cuts a deal for handing over classified material to his mistress? He might get a whole year in prison for it, but it looks more likely he'll get a slap on the hand and maybe even keep his security clearance.

Yes, that's real.

About the plea deal: He pleads guilty to one single count of unauthorized removal and retention of classified documents.

The deal will allow Petraeus, who rose to the rank of a four-star general before becoming director of the CIA, to avoid a trial and plead guilty to a misdemeanor. He'll also avoid a prison sentence, if a federal court agrees with the plea deal's terms.

The charge's maximum possible punishments include a fine of $100,000 and a one-year prison sentence. Instead, prosecutors agreed that Petraeus should serve a two-year probation and pay a fine of $40,000.

But wait until you see what they had on him. Contrary to Republicans' outcries of persecution, he really did let himself be guided by his ego and, evidently, his penis.

The Daily Beast:

David Petraeus, a retired four-star general and former director of the CIA, pleaded guilty Tuesday to giving highly classified information to his ex-mistress. The information came in the form of eight black books that contained everything from identities of covert officers to discussions with President Obama.

The Justice Department and Federal Bureau of Investigation alleged back in 2012 that Petraeus gave secret information to Paula Broadwell, but the seriousness of the information wasn’t clear until now.

While he was commander of coalition forces in Afghanistan, Petraeus “maintained bound, five-by-eight inch notebooks that contained his daily schedule and classified and unclassified notes he took during official meetings, conferences and briefings,” the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of North Carolina writes in a statement of fact regarding the case.

The notebooks had black covers with Petraeus’s business card taped on the front of each of them.

All eight books “collectively contained classified information regarding the identifies of covert officers, war strategy, intelligence capabilities and mechanisms, diplomatic discussions, quotes and deliberative discussions from high-level National Security Council meetings… and discussions with the president of the United States.”

The books also contained “national defense information, including top secret/SCI and code word information,” according to the court papers. In other words: These weren’t just ordinary secrets. This was highly, highly classified material.

There are a couple of other mind-blowing facts in that Daily Beast article.

First, he still has the power to wreck careers.

Neither the news that Petraeus’s name appears as the defendant on a charging sheet or that he lied to federal investigators from his Langley office shook his standing in the military community—or so it seemed.

Even those who are outraged would never publicly say so. The lingering fear that confronting Petraeus could end one’s careers remains within the ranks.

Yeah, that philandering idiot who thought turning over black books with national security information in them to his mistress was a good idea still has the clout to destroy careers. Let that one sink in, before I get to the next disturbing bit of news.

It’s unclear if Petraeus would be stripped of his security clearance, which he kept after resigning from the CIA.

Seriously? This is unclear? The man handed off black books with the deepest secrets about our national security and they think he might not lose his security clearance?

Will Chaffetz open an investigation into this? Will Congress have the balls to do the proper oversight?

If the Beltway press wants to actually work, they could start looking at all the national security leaks over the past few years and see just how many of them point back to BetrayUs Petraeus.

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