CIA Director resigns over affair
Doug Heye said Cantor, a
Republican, had a conversation with the whistleblower about the affair
and national security concerns involved in the matter.
The New York Times
reported Saturday that on October 31, Cantor's chief of staff phoned the
FBI to inform the agency about the call between the congressman and the
FBI official. The Times reported Cantor learned of the whistleblower
through Rep. Dave Reichert, R-Washington.
A spokeswoman for
Reichert told CNN Sunday that the Times article was accurate but that
the congressman had no further comment on his involvement in the case.
Petraeus' affair came to light when an FBI investigation looked into a complaint that his biographer, Paula Broadwell, was sending harassing e-mails to another woman close to the retired four-star general, a U.S. official told CNN Saturday.
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Petraeus resigns from CIA post
During the investigation,
other communications surfaced between Petraeus and Broadwell, a married
mother of two, according to the official.
A U.S. official said Sunday that Petraeus used a personal account to e-mail Broadwell and not his CIA account.
CNN has not been able to reach Broadwell for comment.
The official did not
identify the woman who made the initial complaint and did not know the
nature of her relationship with Petraeus.
The FBI interviewed
Petraeus, said the official, who stressed that the CIA director was
never the target of the investigation and his communications were never
compromised. The official did not know whether Broadwell was
interviewed.
The official could not
say if the investigation is still ongoing. The Times reported the
investigation had already begun by the time Cantor talked with the
whistleblower.
Questions have arisen about why congressional leaders were not informed of the investigation immediately.
According to a
congressional aide familiar with the matter, the House and Senate
intelligence committees weren't informed that there was an FBI
investigation into the situation until Friday.
"The committees are
required to be kept informed of significant intelligence activities,"
the aide said Saturday. "If there was an official investigation that was
looking, at least in part, at information that was compromising the CIA
director, then I think there's a solid argument to say that the
committee leadership should have been notified to at least some level of
detail."
Petraeus' resignation
comes days before he was slated to testify before the Senate
Intelligence Committee about the September 11 attack on the U.S.
Consulate in Benghazi, Libya. The attack, in which four Americans were
killed, became a point of contention during the presidential campaign.
Some have even suggested
that the timing of Petraeus' stepping down is suspect, given the
expected grilling in Congress. Acting CIA Director Michael Morell will
testify instead.
CNN has confirmed that
Petraeus was in Libya recently to meet with the CIA station chief to
discuss the Benghazi attack and other issues.
"It just doesn't add
up," Rep. Peter King, R-New York, told CNN chief political correspondent
Candy Crowley on Sunday. "You have this type of investigation. The FBI
investigating e-mails, the e-mails leading to the CIA director, and
taking four months to find out that the CIA director was involved. I
have real questions about this. I think a timeline has to be looked at
and analyzed to see what happened."
A senior U.S. official said Petraeus' departure wasn't connected to the Benghazi hearing.
"Director Petraeus'
frank and forthright letter of resignation stands on its own," said the
official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the
sensitivity of the topic. "Any suggestion that his departure has
anything to do with criticism about Benghazi is completely baseless."
Broadwell spent a year
with Petraeus in Afghanistan interviewing him for the book she co-wrote,
"All In: The Education of General David Petraeus."
His resignation Friday appeared to be an abrupt end to a spectacularly successful career in public service.
"After being married for
over 37 years, I showed extremely poor judgment by engaging in an
extramarital affair. Such behavior is unacceptable, both as a husband
and as the leader of an organization such as ours," Petraeus said in a
letter to colleagues, explaining his decision to step down.
Before his nomination as
CIA director, Petraeus was considered the nation's most well-known and
popular military leader since Colin Powell.
He helped turn the tide
against insurgents while commanding forces in Iraq and Afghanistan and
literally wrote the book on counterinsurgency techniques by overseeing
the development of the Army/Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Manual.
Earning praise from both sides of the political aisle, the retired four-star general took the helm of the CIA in September 2011.
Petraeus, 60, and his wife, Holly, live in Virginia. They have two adult children.
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