David Petraeus fought to keep his job at the CIA after being told the FBI knew of his affair with Paula Broadwell. But James Clapper firmly showed him the door the day after Obama was re-elected. “Petraeus planned to stay in the job even after he acknowledged the affair to the FBI, hoping the episode would never become public. He resigned last week after being told to do so by Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper Jr. on the day President Obama was reelected.”
The new information shows that Petraeus told Broadwell this summer to stop sending the harassing e-mails after Kelley told him about them. Law enforcement officials said the e-mails indicated that Broadwell was jealous of Kelley’s friendship with Petraeus. His warning came about the same time Petraeus ended the affair with Broadwell.
Meanwhile, ABC News reports that Petraeus might face charges in connection with the Broadwell affair. “Petraeus could possibly face military prosecution for adultery if officials turn up any evidence to counter his apparent claims that the affair began after he left the military.”
Everyone is shocked, shocked! George Stephanopoulos even referred to the Petraeus scandal as “shocking news”.
Despite the lengthy investigation into Broadwell by the FBI, the White House says it was not made aware of it until Wednesday, the day after the election, a revelation that surprised many.
“It just doesn’t add up. That the FBI would be carrying on this type of investigation without, again, bringing it to the president or the highest levels of the White House,” Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., said. …
Yes the ‘shocking news’ dawned upon 1600 Pennslvania avenue like the sun coming up in the morning. And before it set, Petraeus was gone. Paula Broadwell’s father asserted “this is about something else entirely, and the truth will come out. There is a lot more that is going to come out. You wait and see. There’s a lot more here than meets the eye.”
That something else has to be bigger than Petraeus; common to all the mysteries of this most impenetrable of presidencies. News under the Obama administration has become coded to a degree unknown outside the annals of Soviet Russia and Mao’s China. In those regimes people talked about numbers, flowers and calendars to indirectly reference what could only be spoken of openly in whispers.
Nothing was what it seemed.
The “The Three-Anti (1951) and Five-Anti campaigns (1952)” were “ostensibly aimed to root out corruption, embezzlement, waste, though they also served to purge opposition to the new Communist government.”
The “Hundred Flowers” (1957) campaign encouraged critics to speak up — so that they could be identified by the State Security apparatus.
The “Destruction of the Four Olds” (1966) is not, as one might think, a scrappage program involving cars made by a division of General Motors but “call to burn and destroy cultural artifacts, Chinese literature, paintings, and religious symbols and temples. People in possession of these goods were punished. Intellectuals were targeted as personifications of the Four Olds, resulting in their persecution.”
The 6521 project is the most recent, occurring only in 2009. It was a “nationwide operation … to ensure ‘social stability’ by suppressing potential dissidents during anniversaries of political significance. The campaign’s name refers to the 60th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China, the 50th anniversary of the 1959 Tibetan uprising, the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square protests, and the 10th anniversary of the persecution of Falun Gong. ” And there you have it: 6521.
There were wheels within wheels; layers beneath layers; matryoshka dolls within matryoshka dolls.
These innocuous sounding Chinese names were in fact shadow plays aimed at sending a fascist message couched the most innocuous sounding terms. The sheer vagueness of the campaigns lent an edge of terror to them. Nobody knew what they were about and that imbued them with a sinister and crepuscular menace.
Democracies are creatures of the open day. The procedural mechanism of constitutional republic exists to ensure that all the cards are dealt above the table. That the lights always shine. The sign democracy is working is that everybody basically understands what is going now; when things are really about what they say they are about.
By contrast autocracies are thronged with secrets, secret passages, star-chambers and cabals. The characteristic of a conspiratorial political system is that nobody knows who’s next.
The Three Conjectures at Amazon Kindle for $1.99
Storming the Castle at Amazon Kindle for $3.99
No Way In at Amazon Kindle $8.95, print $9.99
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