CIA chief Petraeus resigns over affair

By Dave Boyer and Shaun Waterman

The Washington Times

Friday, November 9, 2012

CIA Director David H. Petraeus has resigned due to having had an extramarital affair, ending the government career of one of the nation's highest-profile leaders in the decade-long war on terror and adding a question mark to the list of vacancies in President Obama's post-election Cabinet reshuffle.
Gen. Petraeus on Thursday privately submitted his resignation in a letter to Mr. Obama. In an email Friday afternoon to CIA employees, Gen. Petraeus said he quit for "personal reasons," but his departure came amid a swirl of speculation about its circumstances.
Some observers linked it to the growing pressure the agency and the Obama White House have faced over their handling of the Sept. 11 terrorist attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, where the U.S. ambassador and three other Americans were killed.
NBC News reported the resignation was linked to an FBI investigation into the retired Army general's biographer, Paula Broadwell, "for improperly trying to access his email." It cited an unnamed law enforcement official as the source.
The FBI had no comment, and Gen. Petraeus' email message dealt solely with the affair itself, without identifying the other party.
"After being married for over 37 years, I showed extremely poor judgment by engaging in an extramarital affair," Gen. Petraeus said. "Such behavior is unacceptable, both as a husband and as the leader of an organization such as ours. This afternoon, the president graciously accepted my resignation."
Less than 30 minutes after the news became public Friday, Mr. Obama issued a statement calling Gen. Petraeus "one of the outstanding general officers of his generation."
The president said he is "completely confident" in the CIA's ability to carry out its mission, adding that Gen. Petraeus' deputy, Michael Morrell, a career analyst and manager at the agency, would be acting director for now.
"I have the utmost confidence in Acting Director Morrell and the men and women of the CIA who work every day to keep our nation safe," Mr. Obama said.

Speculation and change
Observers and former officials said Mr. Morrell might be in the post for some time, as the White House aims to fill national security openings prompted by the reported desire of Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and, according to some, Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta to leave the administration.
"I expect the White House will be comfortable with having Michael Morrell as acting director for the time being, and that this will be one more job to factor in to other shuffling of high-level positions, with the expected departures of Secretaries Clinton and Panetta," said former senior U.S. intelligence official Paul R. Pillar, now a professor at Georgetown.
Others cautioned that questions about who gets which job are rarely straightforward in Washington.
"I don't think the Obama administration is in any rush to replace Secretaries Clinton and Panetta," said Andrew Schwartz, senior vice president at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "They have both distinguished themselves and are incredibly hard acts to follow."
Mr. Schwartz said that the administration is looking to bring in senior statesmen and promote insiders. "Watch for names like [Democratic Sen.] Jack Reed, [former GOP Sen.] Chuck Hagel and [outgoing independent Sen.] Joe Lieberman at DoD and [National Security Adviser] Tom Donilon at the State Department."
The conventional wisdom that Sen. John Kerry, Massachusetts Democrat, is heir apparent as secretary of state is wrong, Mr. Schwartz said.
"With the strong possibility that [recently defeated GOP Sen.] Scott Brown could win [Mr. Kerry's] Senate seat in a special election, I don't believe the administration will risk that. Jack Reed's [Rhode Island] seat should he be named secretary of defense is a much safer bet to stay in the 'D' column," he said.

A brief farewell
In his statement, Mr. Obama also praised the military career of the 60-year-old Gen. Petraeus, who is "known for his iron discipline and can run two miles in less than 10 minutes."
He said the the general had helped "our military adapt to new challenges," led "our men and women in uniform through a remarkable period of service in Iraq and Afghanistan," and "helped our nation put those wars on a path to a responsible end."
"As director of the Central Intelligence Agency, he has continued to serve with characteristic intellectual rigor, dedication, and patriotism," Mr. Obama said. "By any measure, through his lifetime of service David Petraeus has made our country safer and stronger."
The White House at first stonewalled media inquiries about the CIA director's future. White House press secretary Jay Carney told reporters at about 2:30 p.m. Friday that he had no information on Gen. Petraeus and that Mr. Obama believed he was doing an excellent job.
Mr. Obama delivered a short speech on the economy at 1 p.m. at the White House and, had news of Gen. Petraeus' resignation leaked out before the president's address, it could have overshadowed Mr. Obama's remarks.
Gen. Petraeus wrote to CIA employees: "I want you to know that it has been the greatest of privileges to have served with you, the officers of our nation's Silent Service, a workforce that is truly exceptional in every regard."
The CIA head, who, as a general, won wide praise for his leadership of the military surge that helped turn around the U.S. mission in Iraq, added: "I will always regret the circumstances that brought that work with you to an end."
He closed the letter "With admiration and appreciation, David H. Petraeus."
Military affairs analyst Thomas Ricks reported on his blog that the "surprise to me is that Obama let him go."
Mr. Obama said: "Going forward, my thoughts and prayers are with Dave and Holly Petraeus, who has done so much to help military families through her own work. I wish them the very best at this difficult time."
The general's wife, Holly Petraeus holds a post in the administration as associate director of service member affairs at the newly established Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
Gen. Petraeus was named CIA director in April 2011, replacing Mr. Panetta, who took over at the Pentagon to become defense secretary.
The appointment, confirmed by the Senate in September 2011, was widely viewed as a savvy way of sidelining a man who might otherwise have been a contender for the Republican presidential nomination in the recently completed election.
Before heading the agency, Gen. Petraeus served as commander of the war in Afghanistan from 2010 to 2011. Before that, he served as commander of the U.S. Central Command and commanded U.S. forces in Iraq.

Businessmen as Presidents: A Historical Circle

November 3, 2012

WP

By ROBERT J. SHILLER

WITH so much attention on the income divide between the top 1 percent and the other 99 percent of Americans, it might seem that having enormous business wealth wouldn’t be a great qualification for election as president. And if such a candidate pledged to keep taxes low for the wealthy, he would appear to have no chance at all in a troubled economy.

Mitt Romney’s campaign has been showing that these factors may not be insurmountable. To the contrary, many Americans are showing deep affection for stories of business success — like Mr. Romney’s at Bain Capital — and many are shrugging off the inequality issue.

In some ways, this isn’t so surprising. Americans have long been seen as admirers of business wealth. In 1840, Alexis de Tocqueville observed in “Democracy in America” that “in no country in the world is the love of property more active and more anxious than in the United States.”

And in his 1906 book, “Why Is There No Socialism in the United States?,” the German sociologist and economist Werner Sombart wrote: “If the American prays before the god of Success, he strives to lead a life acceptable to his god. Therefore we see in every American — beginning with the paperboy — restlessness, yearning and compulsion to be way and beyond other people.”

Sombart’s observation about American national identity still looks spot-on. The other day in Chicago, a taxi driver told me that he had emigrated from Romania and had grand plans to develop at a distance a vacation resort in his home country. America continues to attract people who have the utmost respect for wealth.

Not long after, a taxi driver in New Haven confided to me that he was a high-school dropout. When I asked if we should tax the rich more, he replied with an emphatic “No!” He saw himself as a small-businessman who happened to be in the taxi business, and he identified strongly with the rich.

The pursuit of wealth is a real source of identity in America. We are accustomed to seeing ourselves chasing riches, even if we’re not in business the way Mr. Romney was.

Still, Americans haven’t elected many businessmen as presidents. The principal examples come from the Roaring ’20s, a time of huge stock market gains, when faith in business reached all-time highs. Consider our presidents in that decade: Warren G. Harding had been a newspaper publisher in Ohio. Calvin Coolidge, trained as a lawyer, was once a vice president of the Nonotuck Savings Bank in Northampton, Mass., and was known for saying that “the chief business of the American people is business.” And Herbert Hoover was a mining expert who traveled to Australia in its 1890s gold rush and became a mine manager.

But businessman presidents disappeared after the market crash of 1929 and during the Great Depression of the 1930s, when many Americans believed that the business world had failed the nation. Franklin D. Roosevelt, who came from a wealthy family but was never a businessman and never talked like one, handily defeated both Hoover in 1932 and Alf Landon, a banker and independent petroleum producer, in 1936.

Not until the Bush presidencies did businessmen, in the suit-and-tie sense of the word, retake the White House — though it otherwise could be argued that Jimmy Carter, a peanut farmer, was a businessman, too. George H. W. Bush was elected during a soaring stock market, and his son George W. Bush won during a real estate boom. Both men were oil venture entrepreneurs.

You might think that the current economic slump would drain support for businessmen, as it did in the Great Depression. But there are differences. Back then, the United States hadn’t yet reached the pinnacle of economic power. Today, many people worry about an apparent crumbling of American economic growth as emerging markets surge around us. There is a widespread fear that the American wealth machine is faltering — and, as a result, many people are aiming to rediscover the nation’s traditional strengths.

In Connecticut, the typically “blue” state where I live, Linda McMahon, the Republican candidate for senator, is campaigning on a story of self-made riches, and is presenting a serious challenge to the Democrat, Representative Christopher S. Murphy.

Ms. McMahon lacks legislative or governmental experience, but she cites her success in managing World Wrestling Entertainment as evidence that she can be an effective legislator. Her life story — involving an early bankruptcy, then redemption through earning millions running staged wrestling bouts — is a rags-to-riches tale, and she says it demonstrates her capacity to succeed as a senator. Americans have long heard stories of how entrepreneurs from John D. Rockefeller to Steven P. Jobs have achieved phenomenal success, and many derive a sense of identity from seeing themselves as having the qualities that could lead to riches, too.

FOR many voters this year, a central question is how to maintain what they consider as America’s greatness, its exceptionalism. They are concerned with both lowering the unemployment rate and creating good jobs — jobs that are exciting and can create substantial wealth. This attitude may be improving the odds for businesspeople seeking office.

If elected, Mr. Romney wants to enforce a general pro-business mandate and to bolster business confidence. That is quite possible. Still, any such confidence boost will most likely be offset by his promise to drastically cut government spending. The weight of evidence from studies of fiscal austerity indicates that, at least in times like these, it is very costly to economic activity. Big cuts now could easily plunge the country back into a recession.

Yes, many Americans admire business success and believe that business experience is a plus in a president. But Americans have usually also understood that other factors — like wise policies and strong leadership ability — are much more important.

Robert J. Shiller is professor of economics and finance at Yale.