[h=3]Associated Press[/h]WASHINGTON—The scandal that brought down CIA Director David Petraeus started with harassing emails sent by his biographer and paramour, Paula Broadwell, to another woman, and led the FBI to discover the affair, U.S. officials said Saturday.
Associated PressDavid Petraeus in September
Mr. Petraeus quit Friday after acknowledging an extramarital relationship.
The official said the FBI investigation began several months ago with a complaint against Ms. Broadwell, a 40-year-old graduate of the U.S. Military Academy and an Army Reserve officer. That probe led agents to her email account, which uncovered the relationship with the 60-year-old retired four-star general, who has earned acclaim for his leadership of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The identity of the other woman and her connection with Ms. Broadwell weren't immediately known.
Mr. Petraeus is married to Holly Petraeus, the daughter of the West Point superintendent when he was a student at the New York school.
Members of Congress said they want answers to questions about the affair that led to Mr. Petraeus's resignation.
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers, R-Mich., and ranking member Dutch Ruppersberger, D-Md., will meet Wednesday with FBI deputy director Sean Joyce, and CIA acting director Michael Morell to ask questions, including how the investigation came about, according to a senior congressional staffer.
Concerned that the emails Mr. Petraeus exchanged with Ms. Broadwell raised the possibility of a security breach, the FBI brought the matter up with Mr. Petraeus directly, according to the official. The FBI approached the CIA director because his emails in the matter were in most instances sent from a personal account, not his CIA account.
Mr. Petraeus decided to quit, abruptly ending a high-profile career that might have culminated with a run for the presidency, a notion he was believed to be considering.
"Such behavior is unacceptable, both as a husband and as the leader of an organization such as ours," Mr. Petraeus wrote his staff.
Mr. Petraeus handed his resignation letter to President Barack Obama on Thursday, stunning many in the White House, the CIA and Congress. The news broke in the media before the House and Senate Intelligence committees were briefed, officials say.
By Friday evening, multiple officials identified Ms. Broadwell, who spent the better part of a year reporting on Mr. Petraeus's time in Afghanistan.
Her best-selling biography, "All In: The Education of General David Petraeus," was written with Vernon Loeb, a Washington Post editor, and published in January. Since Mr. Petraeus's resignation Friday, the book jumped from a ranking on Amazon of 76,792 on Friday to 111 by mid-Saturday.
The CIA wasn't commenting on the identity of the woman with whom Mr. Petraeus was involved.
Ms. Broadwell, who is married with two young sons, hasn't responded to multiple emails and phone messages. Ms. Broadwell planned to celebrate her 40th birthday in Washington this weekend, with many reporters invited. But her husband emailed guests to cancel the event late Friday.
CIA officers had long expressed concern about Ms. Broadwell's unprecedented access to the director. She frequently visited the spy agency's headquarters in Langley, Va., to meet Mr. Petraeus in his office, accompanied him on his punishing morning runs around the CIA grounds and often attended public functions as his guest, according to two former intelligence officials.
As a military intelligence officer in the Army Reserve, Ms. Broadwell had a high security clearance, which she mentioned at public events as one of the reasons she was well-suited to write Mr. Petraeus's story.
But her access was unsettling to members of the secretive and compartmentalized intelligence agency, where husbands and wives often work in different divisions but share nothing with each other when they come home.
In one incident that caught CIA staff by surprise, Ms. Broadwell posted a photograph on her Facebook page of Mr. Petraeus with actress Angelina Jolie, taken in his seventh-floor office, where only the official CIA photographer is permitted to take photos. Mr. Petraeus had apparently given Ms. Broadwell the photo just hours after it was taken.
Mr. Petraeus's staff in Afghanistan had been similarly concerned about the time Ms. Broadwell spent with their boss on her multiple reporting visits to the war zone. Following standard military procedure with senior officers, they always had another staffer present when she met with him at his headquarters. Military officers close to him insist the affair didn't begin when he was in uniform.
In the preface to her book, Ms. Broadwell said she first met Mr. Petraeus in the spring of 2006. She was a graduate student at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard; he was visiting the university to discuss his experiences in Iraq and a new counterinsurgency manual he was working on.
She had graduated from West Point with academic, fitness, and leadership honors, according to a biography posted on her publisher's website that lists authors available for speaking engagements.
Harvard invited some students to meet with Mr. Petraeus, and Ms. Broadwell was among them because of her military background, which she wrote included being recalled to active duty three times to work on counterterrorism issues after the Sept. 11 attacks.
After Mr. Obama put Mr. Petraeus in charge in Afghanistan in 2010, Ms. Broadwell decided to expand her research into an authorized biography.
Ms. Broadwell has deep ties and friendships throughout the Washington media sphere and was often sought for comment on Mr. Petraeus's viewpoints as he proved harder and harder to reach.
The CIA director had lowered his media profile, stopping his practice of emailing reporters and ending once-common background interviews by the agency. That was especially the case after GOP allegations last spring that the Obama administration was leaking sensitive material to burnish its foreign-policy reputation ahead of the presidential election, after a series of stories appeared about top-secret operations aimed at al Qaeda in Yemen and Iran's nuclear program. A White House-ordered investigation of those leaks continues.
Mr. Petreaus's resignation comes just before a scheduled appearance before congressional Intelligence committees next week to testify on what the CIA knew, and what it told the White House, before, during and after the attacks that killed the U.S. ambassador and three other Americans in Libya on Sept. 11.
Congressional officials say Mr. Petraeus's deputy, Mr. Morell, will testify instead, as acting director of the CIA.
Associated PressDavid Petraeus in September
Mr. Petraeus quit Friday after acknowledging an extramarital relationship.
The official said the FBI investigation began several months ago with a complaint against Ms. Broadwell, a 40-year-old graduate of the U.S. Military Academy and an Army Reserve officer. That probe led agents to her email account, which uncovered the relationship with the 60-year-old retired four-star general, who has earned acclaim for his leadership of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The identity of the other woman and her connection with Ms. Broadwell weren't immediately known.
Mr. Petraeus is married to Holly Petraeus, the daughter of the West Point superintendent when he was a student at the New York school.
Members of Congress said they want answers to questions about the affair that led to Mr. Petraeus's resignation.
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers, R-Mich., and ranking member Dutch Ruppersberger, D-Md., will meet Wednesday with FBI deputy director Sean Joyce, and CIA acting director Michael Morell to ask questions, including how the investigation came about, according to a senior congressional staffer.
Concerned that the emails Mr. Petraeus exchanged with Ms. Broadwell raised the possibility of a security breach, the FBI brought the matter up with Mr. Petraeus directly, according to the official. The FBI approached the CIA director because his emails in the matter were in most instances sent from a personal account, not his CIA account.
Mr. Petraeus decided to quit, abruptly ending a high-profile career that might have culminated with a run for the presidency, a notion he was believed to be considering.
"Such behavior is unacceptable, both as a husband and as the leader of an organization such as ours," Mr. Petraeus wrote his staff.
Mr. Petraeus handed his resignation letter to President Barack Obama on Thursday, stunning many in the White House, the CIA and Congress. The news broke in the media before the House and Senate Intelligence committees were briefed, officials say.
By Friday evening, multiple officials identified Ms. Broadwell, who spent the better part of a year reporting on Mr. Petraeus's time in Afghanistan.
Her best-selling biography, "All In: The Education of General David Petraeus," was written with Vernon Loeb, a Washington Post editor, and published in January. Since Mr. Petraeus's resignation Friday, the book jumped from a ranking on Amazon of 76,792 on Friday to 111 by mid-Saturday.
The CIA wasn't commenting on the identity of the woman with whom Mr. Petraeus was involved.
Ms. Broadwell, who is married with two young sons, hasn't responded to multiple emails and phone messages. Ms. Broadwell planned to celebrate her 40th birthday in Washington this weekend, with many reporters invited. But her husband emailed guests to cancel the event late Friday.
CIA officers had long expressed concern about Ms. Broadwell's unprecedented access to the director. She frequently visited the spy agency's headquarters in Langley, Va., to meet Mr. Petraeus in his office, accompanied him on his punishing morning runs around the CIA grounds and often attended public functions as his guest, according to two former intelligence officials.
As a military intelligence officer in the Army Reserve, Ms. Broadwell had a high security clearance, which she mentioned at public events as one of the reasons she was well-suited to write Mr. Petraeus's story.
But her access was unsettling to members of the secretive and compartmentalized intelligence agency, where husbands and wives often work in different divisions but share nothing with each other when they come home.
In one incident that caught CIA staff by surprise, Ms. Broadwell posted a photograph on her Facebook page of Mr. Petraeus with actress Angelina Jolie, taken in his seventh-floor office, where only the official CIA photographer is permitted to take photos. Mr. Petraeus had apparently given Ms. Broadwell the photo just hours after it was taken.
Mr. Petraeus's staff in Afghanistan had been similarly concerned about the time Ms. Broadwell spent with their boss on her multiple reporting visits to the war zone. Following standard military procedure with senior officers, they always had another staffer present when she met with him at his headquarters. Military officers close to him insist the affair didn't begin when he was in uniform.
In the preface to her book, Ms. Broadwell said she first met Mr. Petraeus in the spring of 2006. She was a graduate student at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard; he was visiting the university to discuss his experiences in Iraq and a new counterinsurgency manual he was working on.
She had graduated from West Point with academic, fitness, and leadership honors, according to a biography posted on her publisher's website that lists authors available for speaking engagements.
Harvard invited some students to meet with Mr. Petraeus, and Ms. Broadwell was among them because of her military background, which she wrote included being recalled to active duty three times to work on counterterrorism issues after the Sept. 11 attacks.
After Mr. Obama put Mr. Petraeus in charge in Afghanistan in 2010, Ms. Broadwell decided to expand her research into an authorized biography.
Ms. Broadwell has deep ties and friendships throughout the Washington media sphere and was often sought for comment on Mr. Petraeus's viewpoints as he proved harder and harder to reach.
The CIA director had lowered his media profile, stopping his practice of emailing reporters and ending once-common background interviews by the agency. That was especially the case after GOP allegations last spring that the Obama administration was leaking sensitive material to burnish its foreign-policy reputation ahead of the presidential election, after a series of stories appeared about top-secret operations aimed at al Qaeda in Yemen and Iran's nuclear program. A White House-ordered investigation of those leaks continues.
Mr. Petreaus's resignation comes just before a scheduled appearance before congressional Intelligence committees next week to testify on what the CIA knew, and what it told the White House, before, during and after the attacks that killed the U.S. ambassador and three other Americans in Libya on Sept. 11.
Congressional officials say Mr. Petraeus's deputy, Mr. Morell, will testify instead, as acting director of the CIA.