re: #80 Daniel Ballard
Ohh bioy. Reminds me of “Doctors Hate This!!”
Huffpo headline
Two Simple Spy Tricks That David Petraeus Could Have Used To Hide His AffairThey suggest that Petraus and his mistress should have just encrypted their emails Hmmm. No reason to think a CIA official using encryption in non official emails would raise any red flags at all right?
Oh and they could have just erased them right away and akll would have been fine. Huh? Are emails not in long term archives at ISP’s to say nothing of the FBI black boxes at ISP’s?
Here’s my take on the whole deal, and the Obama administration’s handling of it.
First of all, Petraeus is the one who had the affair. Not a single item that happened afterward would have taken place, had that fact not happened.
Second, it is my belief that Obama would have allowed him to quietly retire at some time during the second term, upon his learning of the affair. Typically, this is how similar issues are handled within the beltway - minimal political impact to all individuals involved.
Finally, the game changer here was the fact that Petraeus may well have leaked confidential information to his mistress. When the FBI notified both the President and Cantor over this, all bets were off. He was pretty much given an ultimatum of immediately stepping down. Keep in mind, he was still spared the humiliation of being publicly fired by the administration, which given the facts as we know them now, he had every right to do.
The fact that Eric Cantor (who knew of the affair well before the White House did) didn’t raise a huge pre-election stink over this is extremely telling, because a potential scandal like this could have severely damaged Obama politically if he blew the whistle before Election Day - there’s no way in hell that the Republicans would have given a pass on this unless they had a really good reason to do so.