The reduction of the nation’s former most senior field general to the level of a diminished pygmy has no real parallel in US history. Yet this public flaying is much less concerned with Petraeus than the real and present peril to the presidency if the truth about Benghazi should emerge.
So far the score reads thus: Petraeus, down and out; General John Allen, who wrote more e-mails to the temptress Kelley than there were scrolls in the Alexandrian Library before it was set ablaze, stumbling and probably out. Next in frame is Susan Rice, ambassador to the UN, who finds herself impaled on the Benghazi hook to such an extent that her chances of succeeding Hillary Clinton at the State Department may be disappearing fast.
Rice was the patsy put up to propagate the official White House/State Department mantra that a mob inflamed by a profane YouTube clip demeaning the prophet of Islam responded by furiously assaulting the consulate in Benghazi.
In her latest utterances Rice claims that she relied on the most reliable briefings then available. Her ‘briefings’ came from the State Department, so we ask: why was Rice the duck in the shooting gallery, and not the shrinking violet Secretary Hillary Clinton?
Clinton is of course now tarred with her famous remark that security at the Benghazi consulate was ‘adequate’ to protect ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and his staff, even though at the moment of their deaths the consulate had no security at all.
Now King David has come out of his corner with the revealing statement that the CIA knew that the assault on the consulate was organized and deliberate and nothing whatsoever to do with the offending YouTube clip. I find this to be the most important slip of the tongue so far in this maze of lies and misleading information. Petraeus seems to be implying that the CIA had foreknowledge of the impending assault.
If that is true, then the next conclusion, that the CIA had gained foreknowledge from agents on the ground, leads to the famous LIHOP equation. In spook parlance this translates as Let It Happen On Purpose.
This tactic was often used to infiltrate and manipulate Left-wing urban guerrilla protest movements in Europe in the 1970’s and 80’s. Sleepers planted by the secret services would commonly intercept plots to attack prominent persons and cause explosions, and then quietly look the other way.
The propaganda harvest from these violent attacks was supposed to shepherd electorates towards the pens of safe Right-wing governments. The ‘years of lead’ coincided with the nervous obsession of NATO and western intelligence that the Cold War was inconveniently petering out, thus placing the entire western security strategy at risk. The violence sweeping Europe – nearly all of it counterfeit – was a political wake up call. [See my new book Gladio, linked below].
Benghazi has all the appearance of Gladio-style designer terrorism. Undercover agents first penetrate the various factions swarming around the more or less lawless city, discover their intentions, report to superiors, and then sit on their hands in quiet anticipation of the outcome.
This is one scenario. The second, more sinister explanation allows for deliberate manipulation of terrorist organization to carry out attacks which served western interests.
Benghazi seems to be pitched somewhere between the two.
If the CIA had foreknowledge of the attack on the compound then it must have emanated from CIA Special Forces in the city. Perhaps this accounts for another intriguing slip of the tongue from Susan Rice, namely that Ambassador Stevens and his people were protected by a strong force inside the compound.
According to the official tally of victims, this could only have been the two ex-Navy SEALSs deployed as security contractors. But what of unidentified figures hovering on the fringes?
Whoever the actors, terrorism always calls for political gains. Petraeus is now being painted as a clueless bungler, plainly uncomfortable in civvies, lost in the usual seas of plotting and conspiracies swirling around Langley. But not too clueless, it seems, to be entirely in the dark concerning events in Benghazi.
In any event, it would be grossly deficient if the CIA did not have operatives on ground in Benghazi, or the Director was shielded from incoming intelligence, especially as he was regarded by CIA pros as an unwanted organ transplant.
That Benghazi was the spigot controlling the Libyan Arms for Syria follow-on from Iran-Contra is now indisputable.
As the guardian of such toxic information, King David calls for controlled demolition like one of those statutes of Lenin after the fall of communism. Thus we now discover that his mistress-hagiographer Paula Broadwell was privy to classified documents, boxes of which she apparently stored at home for consideration at leisure.
The FBI originally ignored the security risks of the goings-on between the pair, just as they buried all the original reports of the affair. Suddenly the files are active again, which suggests very strongly that both Broadwell and Petraeus might be subpoenaed. What else can explain the sudden switch from cool to red hot?
Broadwell’s own behaviors may well supply the answer. She simply cannot stop talking. She waltzes around Washington as though she’s just made the grade as a Hollywood movie star, gabbling on endlessly about her next projects and prospects, enough to make the blood of every General of the Army run cold.
She’s hotter than La Monica and she’s loving it.
Petraeus is being sold down the river for a host of reasons. He is now an enemy of the state. The Justice Department has important questions to answer about why it concealed information from the president regarding the fact that his personal pick for the CIA had been caught with his trousers down in highly charged political circumstances. Ditto Clinton’s State Department, the FBI and even the CIA itself, although one can imagine that most of Langley was beside itself with glee at the discomfiture and embarrassment of the squatting interloper on agency turf.
Another echo of Watergate and Iran-Contra: the first reaction of embattled presidents caught up in some scandal is to bluff it out. This time around the incumbent – the man who goes around with a little box of tricks to blow up the world – didn’t get a quiet whisper in his ear concerning the Petraeus high jinks until after the election. This is so transparently ridiculous it is not worth considering, unless of course – a chilling thought – the president is regarded by his minders as a mannequin.
Jeffrey Archer’s pot-boiler Shall We Tell The President? springs to mind. If the story had come out before the election, it is a moot point whether the Romney campaign might have got a supercharged boost. National security matters generally ring loud alarm bells.
The entire sex scandal doesn’t make any sense divorced from the events in Benghazi and, for that matter, what is happening now in the White House. The sex romp cover story is not working out. So now Petraeus the fallen hero is painted as a man of immature judgment who gave his floozy confidential documents for bedtime reading. He dished out the army’s second highest honor available to the vamp Kelley in return for her outstanding bravery at the front – giving lavish parties at her Tampa mansion for regiments of top brass.
The spin machine is working overtime. The plot line is of an infatuated man, honored by the president himself with the privilege of ‘leading America through dark days’ (Obama’s own words) reciprocated by behaving like an over-sexed GI on leave in some steaming Asian fleshpot.
The problem with the confidential documents’ dirty washing is that it leads directly to the White House. Secrets are big business in a state which makes an industry of creating them. The FBI are speaking quiet, soft talk of going through the files, drumming their fingers until the orders come to either drop the whole business or press the red button.
Meanwhile the chip-chip briefing continues. Holly Petraeus wonders aloud about ‘other women’, in short, what sort of score her husband might have run up.
I would not be in the least surprised if another Dark Lady pops up with interesting tales of amour amid the dunes, or wherever. The slow, steady demolition of Petraeus, in order to create a cordon sanitaire around the president, is the chief driving energy of the White House.
As to the outcome, much depends on John McCain, who has a discomfiting history of blowing hot and cold. He will either come out fighting when the new Congress assembles, determined to uproot an incipient Democrat monarchy, or cave into blandishments of national honor and so forth.
We need to understand and see much more on the dirty washing front to make a constructive estimate. That includes more revelations from Benghazi.
At the moment the odds point towards a Watergate-style inquiry. Kicking up such a storm around the personal character and failings of Petraeus may indeed earn, to employ everyday CIA parlance, substantial ‘blow-back.’
Impeachment of the president, anyone?
Richard Cottrell is a writer, journalist and former European MP (Conservative).
Note: Don’t forget to read Richard’s latest articles, “Petraeus-Benghazi-Gate: the new Watergate moment that may shatter Obama’s presidency” and “General betrayal: the CIA, the murder of Ambassador Stevens and the return of Iran-Contra“
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