As more details emerged about Petraeus' affair with Broadwell.. AP notes and reports.. JR Comments

Email to Tampa woman touched off Petraeus investigation, military source says

Times staff and wires

The Associated Press and Tampa Bay Times staff writer Amy Scherzer contributed to this report.

Gen. David Petraeus, left, longtime friends Scott and Jill Kelley and Holly Petraeus watch the 2010 Gasparilla parade from the Kelleys’ front lawn.
	[AMY SCHERZER | Times (2010)]

[EDMUND D. FOUNTAIN | Times (2010)] Gen. David Petraeus, shown speaking in Tampa in 2010, served at MacDill Air Force Base between 2008 and 2010.

The woman who reported getting the harassing emails that led to the downfall of CIA Director David Petraeus is, according to a military official, an unpaid MacDill Air Force Base social liaison who once likened the retired general to a grandfather for her daughters.

Jill Kelley, 37, who lives with her husband and three young daughters in a Bayshore Boulevard mansion in South Tampa, has been friends for years with Petraeus and his wife, Holly.

Petraeus served as leader of the U.S. Central Command at MacDill Air Force Base between 2008 and 2010, before he was sworn in as CIA director. The Petraeuses frequently invited the Kelleys to social events held on the base, and the Kelleys likewise invited the Petraeuses to their home.

While he served as head of CentCom, Petraeus in 2010 marked his first celebration of the Gasparilla pirate festival at the Kelleys' nearly 5,000-square-foot house. He and his wife arrived at a white tent on the front lawn of the home with a 28-officer police motorcycle escort.

This past September, Jill Kelley said she had been named "honorary consulate general to South Korea" and also attended a breakfast at the White House.

The Associated Press, quoting an unnamed military official, reported Sunday that Kelley had received harassing emails from Petraeus' mistress, which led the FBI to examine biographer Paula Broadwell's email account and discover her secret relationship.

As the news about her involvement in the scandal broke Sunday, Kelley was holding a birthday party for one of her daughters. Approached on the lawn during the party, Kelley expressed her family's continuing regard for Petraeus. But she declined to discuss the matter further.

Later, Jill and her husband, Dr. Scott Kelley, issued a brief statement: "We and our family have been friends with Gen. Petraeus and his family for over five years. We respect his and his family's privacy and want the same for us and our three children."

Dr. Kelley is listed as a general and oncology surgeon at the Watson Clinic in Lakeland. Previously, he was a physician at Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa.

• • •

As more details emerged about Petraeus' affair with Broadwell, members of Congress said Sunday they want to know when the now ex-CIA director and retired general popped up in the FBI inquiry, whether national security was compromised and why they weren't told sooner.

"We received no advance notice. It was like a lightning bolt," said Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California, who heads the Senate Intelligence Committee.

Petraeus resigned while lawmakers still had questions about the Sept. 11 attack on the U.S. Consulate and CIA base in Libya that killed four Americans.

Lawmakers said it's possible that Petraeus will still be asked to appear on Capitol Hill to testify about what he knew about the U.S. response to that incident.

Rep. Peter King, chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, said the circumstances of the FBI probe smacked of a coverup by the White House.

"It seems this (the investigation) has been going on for several months and, yet, now it appears that they're saying that the FBI didn't realize until Election Day that General Petraeus was involved. It just doesn't add up," said King, R-N.Y.

• • •

Petraeus, 60, quit Friday after acknowledging an extramarital relationship. He has been married 38 years to Holly Petraeus, with whom he has two adult children, including a son who led an infantry platoon in Afghanistan as an Army lieutenant.

Broadwell, a 40-year-old graduate of the U.S. Military Academy and an Army Reserve officer, is married with two young sons.

Broadwell has not responded to multiple emails and phone messages.

Petraeus' affair with Broadwell will be the subject of meetings Wednesday involving congressional intelligence committee leaders, FBI deputy director Sean Joyce and CIA deputy director Michael Morell.

Petraeus had been scheduled to appear before the committees on Thursday to testify on what the CIA knew and what the agency told the White House before, during and after the attack in Benghazi. Republicans and some Democrats have questioned the U.S. response and protection of diplomats stationed overseas.

Morell was expected to testify in place of Petraeus, and lawmakers said he should have the answers to their questions.

But Feinstein and others didn't rule out the possibility that Congress will compel Petraeus to testify about Benghazi at a later date.

The Associated Press and Tampa Bay Times staff writer Amy Scherzer contributed to this report.

Updates with details, background. With AP Photos.

By RICHARD LARDNER

Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Your emails are not nearly as private as you think.

The downfall of CIA Director David Petraeus demonstrates how easy it is for federal law enforcement agents to examine emails and computer records if they believe a crime was committed. With subpoenas and warrants, the FBI and other investigating agencies routinely gain access to electronic inboxes and information about email accounts offered by Google, Yahoo and other Internet providers.

"The government can't just wander through your emails just because they'd like to know what you're thinking or doing," said Stewart Baker, a former assistant secretary at the Department of Homeland Security and now in private law practice. "But if the government is investigating a crime, it has a lot of authority to review people's emails."

Under the 1986 Electronic Communications Privacy Act, federal authorities need only a subpoena approved by a federal prosecutor -- not a judge -- to obtain electronic messages that are six months old or older. To get more recent communications, a warrant from a judge is required. This is a higher standard that requires proof of probable cause that a crime is being committed.

Public interest groups are pressing Congress for the law to be updated because it was written a quarter-century ago when most emails were deleted after a few months because the cost of storing them indefinitely was prohibitive. Now, "cloud computing" services provide huge amounts of inexpensive storage capacity. Other technological advances, such as mobile phones, have dramatically increased the amount of communications that are kept in electronic warehouses and can be reviewed by law enforcement authorities carrying a subpoena.

"Technology has evolved in a way that makes the content of more communications available to law enforcement without judicial authorization, and at a very low level of suspicion," said Greg Nojeim, a senior counsel at the Center for Democracy & Technology.

The chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Patrick Leahy, has proposed changing the law to require a warrant for all Internet communications regardless of their age. But law enforcement officials have resisted because they said it would undercut their ability to catch criminals.

A subpoena is usually sufficient to require Internet companies to reveal names and any other information that they have that would identify the owner of a particular email account. Google, which operates the widely used Gmail service, complied with more than 90 percent of the nearly 12,300 requests it received in 2011 from the U.S. government for data about its users, according to figures from the company.

Even if a Gmail account is created with a fictitious name, there are other ways to track down the user. Logs of when messages are sent reveal the Internet address the user used to log onto the account. Matching times and dates with locations allow investigators to piece together the chain.

A Gmail account figured prominently in the FBI investigation that led to Petraeus' stunning resignation last week as the nation's spy chief. Petraeus, a retired Army general, stepped down after he confessed to an extramarital affair with Paula Broadwell, an Army Reserve officer and his biographer.

The inquiry began earlier this year after Jill Kelley, a Florida woman who was friends with Petraeus and his wife, Holly, began receiving harassing emails. Kelley is a Tampa socialite. That is where the military's Central Command and Special Operations Command are located.

Petraeus served as commander at Central Command from 2008 to 2010.

FBI agents eventually determined that the email trail led to Broadwell, according to two federal law enforcement officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the sources were not authorized to speak about the matter on the record. As they looked further, the FBI agents came across a private Gmail account that used an alias name. On further investigation, the account turned out to be Petraeus's.

The contents of several of the exchanges between Petraeus and Broadwell suggested they were having an affair, according to the officials. Investigators determined that no security breach had occurred, but continued their investigation into whether Petraeus had any role in the harassing emails that Broadwell had sent to Kelley, which was a criminal investigation.

Petraeus and Broadwell apparently used a trick, known to terrorists and teen-agers alike, to conceal their email traffic.

One of the law enforcement officials said they did not transmit all of their communications as emails from one's inbox to the other's inbox. Rather, they composed some emails in a Gmail account and instead of transmitting them, left them in a draft folder or in an electronic "dropbox." Then the other person could log onto the same account and read the draft emails there. This avoids creating an email trail which is easier to trace. It's a technique that al-Qaida terrorists began using several years ago and teen-agers in many countries have since adopted.