Obama’s CIA fiasco
What could be more awkward for U.S. President Barack Obama than losing a Central Intelligence Agency chief to a tacky sex scandal in the midst of a covert cyberwar on Iran, a crisis in Syria, a probe into the CIA’s role in the assault on a consulate in Libya, an unfinished struggle with Al Qaeda and drone strikes in Pakistan?
Seeing the White House look woefully uninformed leaps to mind; so does having the Federal Bureau of Investigation look shifty.
CIA Director David Petraeus’ “lightning bolt” resignation Friday after just over a year on the job was inevitable, once his affair with his biographer Paula Broadwell came to light. A man whose No. 1 rule was Lead by example . . . take your performance personally would never have lived down the ridicule had he tried to brazen out his betrayal of his wife with another married woman. But prudery is the least of it.
After Bill Clinton, Arnold Schwarzenegger and others, sex scandals have long since lost their shock value. Still, clandestine affairs leave officials open to emotional threats, blackmail, mental stress and lapses in judgment. As America’s top spook, Petraeus had to go.
Yet the surgical CIA shakeup doesn’t begin to put a lid on this fiasco. Questions are building up.
The FBI probe of harassing emails that Broadwell reportedly sent to another of Petraeus’ friends, Jill Kelley, went on for four months. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor knew of it in October. So did others. Yet apparently the U.S. justice department only got around to telling Director of National Intelligence James Clapper at 5 p.m. on Election Day that Petraeus was compromised. Until then Obama and his office were out of the loop.
Americans are left asking just what the FBI knew, and when. And why the president didn’t. They want to know whether FBI Director Robert Mueller or Attorney General Eric Holder ought to have informed the White House, its legal counsel and Congress much sooner. And some wonder whether the FBI held back to avoid affecting a closely fought election. Petraeus was an Obama appointee, but Republicans held him in high regard as well.
Canadians know how problematic a police probe can be during a campaign. Running against the scandal-plagued Liberals in 2006, Stephen Harper’s Conservatives got a boost from a highly unusual Royal Canadian Mounted Police announcement that the Liberals were under investigation for allegedly giving investors advance notice of an income trust initiative. The Tories ended up with their first minority, and the RCMP public complaints commissioner later chided the force for revealing a sensitive investigation in the middle of a campaign.
While he’s worrying about the “fiscal cliff,” Obama has some explaining to do about White House oversight, the FBI’s credibility, and national security.