A colleague of former CIA director David Petraeus offers some revealing details on how Paula Broadwell “got her claws into him”.
The unidentified senior military source told Business Insider that David Petraeus’s biographer, Paula Broadwell, relentlessly followed the married general to private events and “went from someone very likeable to a shameless self-promoting prom queen” in the years she spent profiling him for her book, All In.
“The timing of the rumors of the administration throwing him under the bus after the election is suspect, but in the end I believe she got her claws – so to speak – in him,” that source said.
“He had enough honor to know that a cover-up is much worse than a public admission.
“As a result, I think he can recover and continue to be a player on the national stage, but she’s toast. Her reputation is unrecoverable, in my opinion.”
David Petraeus was caught by investigators after exchanging sexually explicit emails with his 40-year-old mistress and bombarding her with thousands of messages even after she had broken off the affair.
The racy communications between the four-star general and Paula Broadwell were uncovered when the FBI began an investigation after suspecting corruption between the pair.
David Petraeus resigned on Friday after confessing to cheating on his wife of 37 years, Holly.
He issued a statement acknowledging the affair after President Barack Obama accepted his resignation, which was announced by the CIA soon after.
“After being married for over 37 years, I showed extremely poor judgment by engaging in an extramarital affair,” he said in the statement.
“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.”
After being sworn in as CIA Director on September 6th, 2011, Paula Broadwell broke up with David Petraeus, but he continued to pursue her, sending her thousands of emails over the last few months – raising questions about his judgement which led in part to his resignation.
Paula Broadwell, who spent three years doing researching for her book, had extensive access to David Petraeus in Afghanistan. Yet sources told NBC it is unlikely she will face criminal charges after the alleged hacking, stressing that David Petraeus himself is under no investigation.
Sources at the FBI said that the investigation of the former CIA boss began in spring of this year and that federal agents pored over his emails from that point and from when he was stationed in Afghanistan between July 4th 2010 and July 18th 2011.
David Petraeus met Paula Broadwell in 2006 at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government as she was finishing up her Master’s degree there.
Paula Broadwell, who served in the military for more than a decade, lives in Charlotte, North Carolina with her radiologist husband, Dr. Scott Broadwell, and their two young sons, Lucien and Landon.
