According to news reports President-elect Trump is considering 4 candidates for Secretary of State, with no announcement being expected this week. From various reporting, Rudy Giuliani, a Trump loyalist supreme, has business interests around the world that are red flags to conflict of interest problems, if he were to become Secretary of State. On November 15, 2016, the New York Times reported:
“But Mr. Giuliani’s business ties are a major red flag. He built a lucrative consulting and speechmaking career after leaving City Hall. His firm, Giuliani Partners, has had contracts with the government of Qatar and the Canadian company that is building the Keystone XL oil pipeline, and Mr. Giuliani has given paid speeches to a shadowy Iranian opposition group that until 2012 was on the State Department’s list of foreign terrorist organizations.
In one year — 2006 — Mr. Giuliani reported in a financial disclosure report that he had made 124 speeches, for as much as $200,000 each, and had earned a total of $11.4 million. He often made extravagant demands in return for agreeing to make a speech, including that the private plane that flew him to the engagement be a certain size.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/16/us/politics/donald-trump-cabinet-rudy-giuliani.html
Mitt Romney faces an avalanche of vitriol from Trump loyalists, who view Romney’s public comments during the campaign, about Trump being a fraud, as disqualifying. Senator Bob Corker has been mentioned as a contender and had more than one meeting with Trump.
Then there’s retired General David Petraeus, who has made public noises that he would like to be considered and Trump, being easily dazzled by military stars, can’t get enough of hobnobbing with these retired generals and feeding off of their aura of being “strong leaders”. How on earth David Petraeus is even being considered remains a mystery to me, but then again, he is part of this cult of personality among the Washington elite, where past transgressions disappear or get whitewashed from the public bio and voilá, the person emerges with a new PR blitz, replete with the transgressions scrubbed and a happy face bio repeated constantly. There were reports that retired General Jack Keane had been a Trump favorite for Secretary of Defense, but turned it down and that General Keane recommended General Petraeus to Trump… go figure.
So it is with the “great” General David Petraeus, a man who LIED to the FBI and tried to shut down the investigation into his mishandling highly classified information. The media often tiptoes around top brass military leaders, often unwilling to probe or challenge them or their conduct and too many Americans, to include Donald Trump, stand in awe of generals and confer an almost untouchable status to them. There are good generals and bad generals, but sadly the American people and too many reporters remain dazzled by those stars.
General David Petraeus has demonstrated he is unfit to ever hold a high position of trust in the United States government! Facts matter to me, but apparently many other people are willing to use flimsy legalistic arguments to ignore the “facts” about Petraeus’ behavior. So, once again, here’s a review of the “great” David Petraeus’ conduct during the FBI investigation into his mishandling classified information:
Let me repeat this from a LB post from November 8, 2016:
To me he grossly mishandled highly sensitive information, that could have jeopardized American lives in the field – end of conversation. He lied to try and cover up. For me, when people do this, I no longer trust them and I believe they are a security risk to the United States of America.
I don’t really care that he had Clinton lawyer, David Kendall, work out a plea agreement, so he got off on way lesser charges. The actual FACTS, which aren’t disputed, are he handed over his black books and other classified information to his mistress/biographer, to aid her in writing his biography. Petraeus supporters hype that his mistress, a US Army trained intelligence officer, had a security clearance, as a point to exonerate General Petraeus.
Here are the FACTS on her having a security clearance. A security clearance is a privilege given to people, entrusting them to handle our nation’s sensitive national security information. The clearance allows access to sensitive information to carry our your official duties. The clearance is not for personal, partisan-political, random curiosity or any other purposes. It is NOT for writing a book. She was a trained intelligence officer, who had classified information, that was not secured in her home, but she also had hundreds of classified documents on her home computer unsecured. So, her having a security clearance and being a trained intelligence officeractually makes her actions worse, in my opinion, for the same reason General Petraues’ actions make me have no interest in listening to anything he has to say, they should have known better. General Petraeus and his mistress put personal interest above the safety of soldiers in the field, by such “extremely careless” handling of highly sensitive information. Here are some of the FACTS reported from the FBI affidavit:
“FBI agents found hundreds of classified documents on Paula Broadwell’s home computers in Charlotte during their investigation into her relationship with then-CIA Director David Petraeus, according to newly unsealed FBI documents obtained by the Observer.
More than 300 of those documents were classified as secret,according to a 2013 FBI affidavit accompanying the agency’s request to search Petraeus’ Arlington, Va., home.”
And this: “The affidavit is signed by a Charlotte-based FBI agent. Its allegations include:
“The documents show that when confronted by the FBI, both Broadwell and Petraeus appeared to mislead investigators about their extensive exchange of classified material, most of it involving military and diplomatic operations during Petraeus’ years as commander of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan”
And this: “The FBI gathered recordings Petraeus made as military commander in the Middle East in which he discussed informationclassified as “Top Secret” with reporters.
In an audio file taken from Broadwell’s home in November 2012, Petraeus can be heard discussing “sensitive military campaigns and operations” with reporters from the Washington Post. His only demand was to be referred to in the subsequent stories “as a senior military officer,” the affidavit says.”
And this: “Petraeus tried to stop the FBI investigation as soon as he heard about it. According to the affidavit, the FBI began its probe in Tampa, Fla., after a person identified as “Witness 1,” who is clearly Tampa socialite and Petraeus confidante Jill Kelly, complained of receiving threatening emails from someone who had access to the CIA director’s schedule – a potential breach of security.”
And this: Broadwell, a married mother of two, and Petraeus, also married, took steps to hide their correspondences. The affidavit says the two used pre-paid cellphones and email accounts “using non-attributable names.”
Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-world/national/article82469027.html#storylink=cpy
An interesting thing about people who break rules for their own convenience is they usually have a pattern of this behavior, not just a single moment of bad judgment (they become CORRUPT). Oh my, how dare I use the word “corrupt” when referring to the sainted General David Petraeus, well, because that is the correct word to describe the behavior chronicled in the FBI affidavit.
Most Americans don’t pour over FBI notes, Hillary emails or Wikileaks leaked emails. Instead, they let “reporters” do the digging and accept the reporters’ reports on what they found. It’s easy to get buried in mountains of information, with tens of thousands of Hillary emails, or the 650,000 emails reported to be on the Weiner/Abedin laptop or a Wikileaks dump, like the other day:
“WikiLeaks releases more than half a million US diplomatic cables from the momentous year of 1979”
By Julian Assange
“Today, 28 November 2016, marking the six-year anniversary of “Cablegate”, WikiLeaks expands its Public Library of US Diplomacy (PLUSD) with more than half a million (531,525) diplomatic cables from 1979.”
So, Assange dumped a half million diplomatic cables, starting from 1979, a couple days ago, which assuredly will take months to review, even by professional researchers. Herein comes my issue with the Weiner/Abedin email search of 0ver 650,000 emails, done in days. Sure, all sorts of computer programs can sort, sift through and analyze a lot of data, but it takes a human analyst to tie loose threads of previous information in a case with new bits of information to weave together a fact pattern.
With General Petraeus, on October 22, 2016, FOX News’ Catherine Herridge reported:
“Roughly 1,000 emails between Hillary Clinton and Gen. David Petraeus were thought to be missing from the 30,000 emails provided by Clinton’s team to the State Department in December 2014, according to the newly released FBI investigative files.
In a heavily redacted FBI interview summary from Aug. 17, 2015, a State Department employee from the Office of Information and Programs and Services (IPS), which handles Freedom of Information Act requests, discussed how Petraeus’ records apparently were not among the work-related emails provided by the former secretary’s team.”CENTCOM records shows approximately 1,000 work-related emails between Clinton’s personal email and General David PETRAEUS, former Commander of CENTCOM and former Director of the CIA,” said the employee, whose name is redacted, according to the summary. “Most of those 1,000 emails were not believed to be included in the 30,000 emails that IPS was reviewing. Out of the 30,000 emails, IPS only had a few emails from or related to PETRAEUS as well as a few related to Leon PANETTA, former Secretary of Defense.””
The actual FBI Notes information, Herridge referred to can be found on page 44 – HERE.
General Petraeus did not turn over approximately 1,000 work-related emails between him and Hillary Clinton, yet he turned over his black books and hundreds of classified government records to his mistress, that he was hoarding, unsecured, in his home… Petraeus and Hillary retain the legal counsel of David Kendall, the Houdini of making Clinton scandals disappear. Heck, the FBI Notes suggest that Kendall’s office did not turn over 2 bank boxes of documents – page 40 of FBI Notes, so one can only wonder what more we will eventually find out, but I feel confident to say there’s way more incriminating information being hidden. David Petraeus should explain what happened to his approximately 1,000 missing emails between him and Hillary Clinton, that CENTCOM says existed.
Why would anyone trust David Petraeus with highly sensitive information??? He has already proven that he is untrustworthy – that’s a FACT. And beyond that, since there’s still a lot of unknowns in his missing emails with Hillary, that makes him a prime target for blackmail, by the hostile foreign intelligence services that have ALL of Hillary’s private server emails.
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