James Bond, the legendary creation of novelist Ian Fleming, routinely bedded femme fatales–and sometimes killed them. But he never faced indictment for romancing them.
That’s the difference between Bond and real-world spying.
And David Petraeus, former director of the Central Intelligence Agency, should have known this better than anyone.
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Movie poster for Thunderball (1965)
In January 2015, the FBI and Justice Department decided to bring criminal charges against Petraeus for sharing–as CIA director–classified information with his then-mistress and biographer, Paula Broadwell.
FBI agents found classified information on a personal computer Broadwell used–and determined that Petraeus had supplied it.
As an Army General, Petraeus had successfully led U.S. troops in Afghanistan and Iraq and was thought to be a potential candidate for president.
In 2011, he won appointment to CIA director–which ended abruptly in 2012 with the revelation of his extramarital affair with Broadwell.
Petraeus is one of the most highly educated men in the United States:
- Alumnus of the United States Military Academy at West Point–graduating among the top 5% of his 1974 class.
- Earned an M.P.A. in 1985 and a Ph.D. in International Relations in 1987 from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University.
- Served as Assistant Professor of International Relations at the United States Military Academy
David Petraeus
And Paula Broadwell is one of the most highly educated women in the United States:
- Graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point in 1995, majoring in political geography.
- Earned a master’s degree in international security from the University of Denver’s Joseph Korbel School of International Studies in 2006.
- Earned a Master of Public Administration from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University in 2008.
In addition, Petraeus, as director of the CIA, knew the importance of secrecy in keeping clandestine affairs (military and personal) out of sight.
So did Broadwell, having earned a reputation as an expert on counter-terrorism.
Paula Broadwell
Yet they both violated the most basic rules of security.
They exchanged emails using a cyber trick known to both terrorists and teenagers: Sharing a private email account, or “dropbox.”
In this they composed drafts to each other in order not to directly transmit messages to one another. Each could log onto the same account and read the draft emails there.
By doing so, they flagrantly left a cyber-trail of their infidelities. (Broadwell was also married.)
It was Niccolo Machiavelli, the father of political science, who warned: If you don’t want it known, don’t write it down.
More than 500 years ago, in his masterwork, The Discourses, he warned:
Niccolo Machiavelli
…You may talk freely with any one man about everything, for unless you have committed yourself in writing, the “Yes” of one man is worth as much as the “No” of another.
And therefore one should guard most carefully against writing, as against a dangerous rock, for nothing will convict you quicker than your own handwriting….
Nor were Petraeus and Broadwell the only ones guilty of thumbing their noses at this most basic of precautions.
General John Allen, the top American commander in Afghanistan, exchanged thousands of emails with Jill Kelley, a Florida socialite.
Although charged with directing American military efforts against the Taliban, Allen found time to exchange 20,000 to 30,000 pages’ worth of emails with Kelley between 2010 and 2012.
The scandal began when Kelley began receiving harassing emails from an unidentified woman. So she complained to the FBI.
The emails allegedly came from Broadwell, who thought that Kelley was trying to move in on “her man”–Petraeus. Apparently, Broadwell didn’t feel similarly threatened by Holly, Petraeus’ wife.)
The FBI investigation ultimately led to the discovery of the Petraeus/Broadwell affair.
There are several lessons to be learned from this behavior by Petraeus, Broadwell, Allen and Kelley:
- They believed they were so privileged–by education, status and/or wealth–that conventional rules of morality didn’t apply to them.
- They believed they were so clever they could violate the most basic rule of security and common sense–and get away with it.
- They were so caught up in their illicit passions that they threw caution to the winds.
- David Petraeus, a highly disciplined man, clearly expected Paula Broadwell to behave in a similarly disciplined manner–and do nothing to compromise their lives.
- Petraeus felt so confident about the secrecy of his affair he had his wife and mistress present when he appeared before the Senate Intelligence Committee in 2011 to become CIA director.
General David Petraeus’ CIA confirmation hearings. His wife, Holly (in white) and mistress, Paula Broadwell (in black).
- Petraeus didn’t imagine that Broadwell suspected another of his admirers–Jill Kelley–of having romantic designs on him.
- And he was utterly surprised when her harassing emails to Kelley led the FBI to uncover his illicit relationship.
In March, 2015, Petraeus agreed to plead guilty in federal court to a charge of unauthorized removal and retention of classified information. On April 23, 2015, a federal judge sentenced Petraeus to two years’ probation plus a fine of $100,000
Thus does hubris meet its punishment in Nemesis.
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HEROES: NOT WHAT THEY USED TO BE
In Bureaucracy, History, Military, Politics, Social commentary on April 21, 2017 at 12:20 amSteven Pressfield is the bestselling author of several novels on ancient Greece.
Steven Pressfield
In Gates of Fire (1998) he celebrated the immortal battle of Thermopylae, where 300 Spartans held at bay a vastly superior Persian army for three days.
In Tides of War (2000) he re-fought the ancient world’s 25-year version of the Cold War between the Greek city-states of Athens and Sparta.
n The Virtues of War (2004) he chronicled the military career of Alexander the Great–through the eyes of the conqueror himself.
And in The Afghan Campaign (2006) he accompanied Alexander’s army as it waged a vicious, three-year counterinsurgency war against native Afghans.
Besides being an amateur historian of armed conflict, Pressfield is a former Marine. His novel, Gates of Fire, has been adopted by the Marine Corps as required reading.
So Pressfield knows something about the art–and horrors–of war. And about the decline of heroism in the modern age.
Consider the events of November 9, 2012.
On that date, General David Petraeus suddenly resigned his position as director of the Central Intelligence Agency. He had held this just slightly more than a year.
The reason: The revelation of–and his admission to–an extramarital affair with Paula Broadwell, the woman who had written an admiring biography of him called All In.
Ironically, this happened to be the same day that “Skyfall”–the latest James Bond film–opened nationwide.
Since Bond made his first onscreen appearance in 1962’s “Dr. No,” England’s most famous spy has bedded countless women. And has become internationally famous as the ultimate ladykiller.
But real-life doesn’t quite work the same way.
What is permitted–and even celebrated–in a fictional spy is not treated the same way in the real world of espionage.
Prior to this, Petraeus had been the golden boy of the American Army–the best-known and most revered general since Dwight D. Eisenhower.
David Petraeus
The man who
As President Barack Obama put it:
“General Petraeus had an extraordinary career. He served this country with great distinction in Iraq, in Afghanistan and as head of the CIA.
“I want to emphasize that from my perspective, at least, he has provided this country an extraordinary service. We are safer because of the work that Dave Petraeus has done.
“And my main hope right now is that he and his family are able to move on and that this ends up being a single side note on what has otherwise been an extraordinary career.”
It’s why Pressfield candidly admits he prefers the ancient world to the present:
“If I’m pressed to really think about the question, I would answer that what appeals to me about the ancient world as opposed to the modern is that the ancient world was pre-Christian, pre-Freudian, pre-Marxist, pre-consumerist, pre-reductivist.
“It was grander, it was nobler, it was simpler. You didn’t have the notion of turn-the-other-cheek. You had Oedipus but you didn’t have the Oedipus complex. It was political but it was not politically correct.”
To illustrate what he meant, Pressfield cited this passage from Thucydides’ The Peloponnesian War, on how ancient-world politics took on its own tone of McCarthyism:
To fit in with the change of events, words, too, had to change their usual meanings. What used to be described as a thoughtless act of aggression was now regarded as the courage one would expect to find in a party member.
To think of the future and wait was merely another way of saying one was a coward. Any idea of moderation was just an attempt to disguise one’s unmanly character. Ability to understand a question from all sides meant that one was totally unfitted for action.
As if speaking on the scandal involving David Petraeus, Pressfield states:
“Our age has been denatured. The heroic has been bled out of it.
“The callings of the past––he profession of arms, the priesthood, the medical and legal professions, politics, the arts, journalism, education, even motherhood and fatherhood–every one has been sullied and degraded by scandal after scandal.
“We’re hard up for heroes these days, and even harder up for conceiving ourselves in that light. That’s why I’m drawn to the ancient world. It’s truer, in my view, to how we really are.
“The ancient world has not been reductified and deconstructed as ours has; it has not been robbed of all dignity. They had heroes then. There was such a thing, truly, as the Heroic Age. Men like Achilles and Leonidas really did exist.
“There was such a thing, truly, as heroic leadership. Alexander the Great did not command via satellite or remote control. He rode into battle at the head of his Companion cavalry; he was the first to strike the foe.”
Today, generals command armies while stationed thousands of miles from the front. And they face more danger from heart attacks than enemy bullets.
And commanding American generals is Donald Trump, a five-times draft-dodger who equates avoiding sexually-transmitted diseases with surviving the Vietnam war: “It is my personal Vietnam. I feel like a great and very brave soldier.”
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