General Indiscretion By The Generals Should Not Give The FBI The Right To Conduct General Searches

I’ve been on the road so blogging is slow.  I’m fascinated by Jill Kelly and the whole situation surrounding her.  This brings the FBI into focus like nothing else we have seen before. If the stories here did not catch your eye, go back and read them again.

Jill Kelly’s maiden name is Khawam.  She has a twin sister Natalie. Their parents are from Lebanon. Both live in Tampa where we have some high level military command post called Central Command that directs the operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.  Jill apparently throws parties for the high brass at the post.

It seems she was so close to some of the people there that General Petraeus’s former girl friend Paula Broadwell accused her of a touching affair with Petraeus.  It wasn’t that was so bad, but it now turns out that General John Allen, the commander in Afghanistan, has had the time over the last couple of years to send 20,000 to 30,000 emails to Jill who has been described as a “nice, bored, rich socialite“.  I really cannot even begin to imagine sending anyone that many emails but what is it that our general who is directing our operations in Afghanistan finds so fascinating with Jill that he spends that much time communicating with her.

We’ll find out more about the ladies and generals as time go on.  If Jill had two generals, would she have stopped at them?  This we are apt to find out.  I don’t want to speculate too much on it because it will be beat to death.

I want to talk about the FBI.  One agent has already sent topless picture of himself to Jill.  He is apparently not working on the case anymore.  But what we learn about the FBI from this is the inability of anyone to know what it is doing or to supervise it.  One of the higher-ups in the Bureau said it did not inform Congress of what was going on because the matter was under investigation.  No one seems bothered by this.  It is the excuse it uses to cover up all the things it is doing.  When it turned out it was still using killers as top echelon informants about a year and a half ago and was asked about it, the FBI responded it was under investigation.  It still is.  It may be under investigation forever.

In my book Don’t Embarrass The Family, I write about the need to bring certain controls to the FBI.  No one oversees it as we can see from this incident. It’s likely we would never have heard of it had it not been for some FBI agent who knew about it leaking it to Eric Cantor the Republican Minority  leader hoping to embarrass Obama. Once the FBI knew it was out it had to act.

Apparently Jill got emails from Paula Broadwell in the summer of 2012 and she went to the FBI to find out if they could tell who was sending them.  We’re told they were threatening but probably were not since we’re also told there have been no crimes connected with Paula’s emails. The FBI agent Jill went to is the same one who sent her photographs of himself.

I assume the FBI quickly figured out Paula was sending the emails.  But while it was doing that, it was also reading all of Jill’s emails.  I don’t know what gives it the right to do that since she wasn’t accused of any crimes but anyway it did read them.  When it identified Paula, it then read all of her emails without any reason to do that.  That’s how love struck Petraeus was discovered.

Then the FBI must have decided to read all of Petraeus’s emails, or at least those on his G mail account, to see who else he was writing to.  Don’t you see what’s happening and what no one seem concerned about?  We’ll soon all know all about Jack and Jill and Paula and Dave but we won’t know what gave the FBI the right to be reading all these emails.

No one will be looking at the FBI’s actions in going far beyond any need.  The emails – non threatening – came from Paula.  That should have been the end of the inquiry.  We should be a lot more concerned with the end of our right to privacy rather than the dalliances of the generals.

4 Comments

  1. Agreed the FBI is and has been out of control for a long time.

    Just like under the Hoover years no one in government seems to have the courage to attempt to control them.

    Is this entire CIA debacle just an attempt by the FBI to embarass Obama ?

    Mueller has been the FBI director now through two different Presidents and has strong connhections to Whitey Bulger and other corruption in Boston, what does he know that appears to be allowing him to operate with impunity?

    • JK – notaboyo

      The FBI is really out of control in that no one controls it. It is clearly shown by the Petraeus matter. It decided whether to investigate a matter that is normally a local police matter. Why? It decided to look at all the emails of Jill rather than those just that related to the harrassment. Why? When it found Paula Broadwell as the sender, why did it continue to investigate her account? No crimes were committed. Paula’s emails do not appear even threatening. I’m sure Jill went to the FBI just to find out who the sender was? The FBI went off on a wild chase violating every person’s privacy.
      Did it try to embarrass Obama? We know someone in the FBI tried that by releasing the information anonymously to Eric Cantor who tried to confirm it but couldn’t. The FBI then knew the cat was out of the bag so it waited until after the election to advise others about it. This was probably a favor to Obama.
      The thing to watch about Mueller, aside from his involvement in the Whitey case, is whether Obama again reappoints him. Maybe Mueller holding back the information was his bid to Obama to get another extension. After J.Edgar Hoover’s term of 48 years Congress wisely decided that no one man should have that much power again. It imposed a ten year term limit on FBI directors. Mueller is in his eleventh year. Congress gave him a two year extension which it never should have done. Is Obama creating another Hoover in Mueller. This bears watching.
      Thanks for writing.

  2. Excellent point. Who gave the FBI permission to go digging through Gen. Allen and Gen. Petraeus e-mails? Do they have no constitutional right to privacy because they are in the military even if they used non-military e-mailing accounts? So much more is going on in this scandal than sex.

    • Neena

      I asked some former prosecutors and judges that question today. One answered: 9/11. None seemed bothered by it as much as I am. One answered what you suggested that as members of the military they give up some rights. I don’t agree with that. I think the Patriot Act pretty much insulated the FBI from any oversight. To my way of thinking they had the right to look at the half dozen or so emails between the ladies and figure out who sent them. That’s it. There was no national security issue. It’s just that no one is watching them so the agents sloughed through every email they could find especially those that appealed to their prurient interests. You’re right about the extent of this being far beyond sex. It’s about the lifestyle of the generals when the kids are being killed.
      Thanks for writing.