NEW YORK, Nov 12: Influential Congressional lawmakers have expressed deep concern that they were left in the dark along with the White House about an FBI investigation into David Petraeus that led to his resignation as CIA Director, according to American news media.
The lawmakers also said they were puzzled that it came to a head within hours of President Obama’s re-election. The report that the FBI had knowledge of the affair as far back as July this year did not sit well with them.
Senator Dianne Feinstein, a Democrat from California who chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee, said she wanted to know why the FBI had not notified her and other committee leaders about the former general’s affair. She learned of the stunning revelations only from news reports on Friday.
Questioned on Fox News on Sunday Feinstein said she wanted to know why the FBI did not notify her committee beforehand.
The incident could have had an effect on national security, she said.
She also said there was absolutely not a link between the resignation of Petraeus and the Sept 11 attack on the United States mission in Benghazi, Libya. The CIA has been criticised for providing a flawed early report about the attack.
Petraeus resigned on Friday after news of his affair with Paula Broadwell, a former Army Reserve officer who had written his biography, was made public.
Reuters quoted a former spokesman for Petraeus during his time as an Army general as saying the affair with Broadwell began by mutual consent after Petraeus retired from the army in August 2011 to lead the CIA.
On television programmes, lawmakers broadly praised Petraeus personally, lauding him in warm and even emotional terms as a leader of rare talent, his resignation a loss to the nation, his personal flaws a secondary concern to some.
“David Petraeus is a great leader, a great patriot, and he is a guy who has probably contributed more to the safety of the United States of America over the last decade than any one single individual,” Senator Saxby Chambliss of Georgia, a Republican and vice-chairman of the intelligence committee, said on the ABC programme This Week.