Krauthammer is on the Petraeus/Benghazi trail….. and he’s right on target – Dead Center Mass.

Again, the most important aspect to any discussion of events and research comes back to the timeline.   Petraeus gave his testimony briefing on Sept. 14th.  More after the video:

Transcript: I think the really shocking news today was that General Petraeus thought and hoped he could keep his job. He thought that it might and it would be kept secret, and that he could stay in his position. I think what that tells us is really important.

It meant that he understood that the FBI obviously knew what was going on. He was hoping that those administration officials would not disclose what had happened, and therefore hoping that he would keep his job. And that meant that he understood that his job, his reputation, his legacy, his whole celebrated life was in the hands of the administration, and he expected they would protect him by keeping it quiet.

And that brings us to the ultimate issue, and that is his testimony on September 14. That’s the thing that connects the two scandals, and that’s the only thing that makes the sex scandal relevant.

Otherwise it would be an exercise in sensationalism and voyeurism and nothing else.

The reason it’s important is here’s a man who knows the administration holds his fate in its hands, and he gives testimony completely at variance with what the Secretary of Defense had said the day before, at variance with what he’d heard from his station chief in Tripoli, and with everything that we had heard. Was he influenced by the fact that he knew his fate was held by people within the administration at that time?

Of course it was being held over Petraeus’s head, and the sword was lowered on Election Day. You don’t have to be a cynic to see that as the ultimate in cynicism.

As long as they needed him to give the administration line to quote Bill, everybody was silent. And as soon as the election’s over, as soon as he can be dispensed with, the sword drops and he’s destroyed. I mean, can you imagine what it’s like to be on that pressure and to think it didn’t distort or at least in some way unconsciously influence his testimony?   That’s hard to believe.

Here’s why what Krauthammer outlines makes so much sense.

The FBI investigation initially began around the end of May.   According to Petraeus,  the affair with Broadwell ended around July/August.

We also know with specific certainty, because of the FBI reporting, that Jill Kelley was back-channeling information to Petraeus about Broadwell being the source of the threatening/alarming e-mails.  Kelley most certainly would have told Petraeus the FBI was the source of the finding as substantive collaboration for her information about Broadwell.
So shortly after Kelley knew the source was Broadwell, so too did David Petraeus.
We also know that in August (around the same date Petraeus broke off the affair) that Eric Holder was informed of the investigation of Broadwell that had now shown Petraeus and Broadwell were having an affair.
So why was Petraeus in complete contradiction to the other intelligence sources on September 14th?   Why was Petraeus the only person aligning the White House narrative about the impetus of the attack in Benghazi?   It is prudent to go back and review what was reported at the time.   Again, this is September 14th.

[...] Islamic militants who may have links to Al Qaeda used the opportunity to launch an attack, CIA Director David Petreaus told the House Intelligence Committee today according to one lawmaker who attended a closed-door briefing.

Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger, the top Democrat on the House Intel committee, said Petraeus laid out “a chronological order exactly what we felt happened, how it happened, and where we’re going in the future.”

“In the Benghazi area, in the beginning we feel that it was spontaneous – the protest- because it went on for two or three hours, which is very relevant because if it was something that was planned, then they could have come and attacked right away,” Ruppersberger, D-Md., said following the hour-long briefing by Petraeus. “At this point it looks as if there was a spontaneous situation that occurred and that as a result of that, the extreme groups that were probably connected to al Qaeda took advantage of that situation and then the attack started.”

Petraeus did not speak to reporters on his way in or out of the briefing. When he left the meeting, the former four-star general was trailed by about a dozen intelligence officials and a couple of Capitol police officers.

Members of the Senate Armed Services Committee were also briefed today [Sept 14th] by Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Vice Chair of the Joint Chiefs Admiral James Winnefeld. But senators emerging from that private briefing reported that they believed the attack in Libya was premeditated.

“It was a terrorist attack organized and carried out by terrorists,” Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., the top Republican on the committee said, adding that about 15 “al Qaeda or radical Islamists” were armed with rocket-propelled grenades and other lethal weapons.

“This was a calculated act of terror on the part of a small group of jihadists, not a mob that somehow attacked and sacked our embassy,” McCain said. “People don’t go to demonstrate and carry RPGs and automatic weapons.” 

The House Intelligence Committee and the Senate Armed Service Committee were briefed within 24 hours of each other.   September 13th and  September 14th.

At the closed House briefing Petraeus was selling the Mohammed movie story.   In the close Senate briefing Panetta was selling a contradictory Terrorist story.

Surely Director Petraeus and Defense Sec. Panetta had the same information by Tuesday 9/13.     It is incredulous to think otherwise.   In the Obama CBS interview on 9/12 he even said the entire security apparatus were working on “the same set of details” trying to locate the people who carried out the attacks.
What Krauthammer outlines makes sense.   Petraeus was being set up ‘the Chicago Way’ as cover for the White House Mohammed movie, ignore al-Qaeda, which continued to be sold publicly by the White House well over a week longer.  Including the numerous Sunday talk shows by Susan Rice on Sunday 18th.
Petraeus kept quiet…. well,….. until…… his intelligence department came under attack……..  then he defended his department to ABC’s Jake Tapper:

Look at the date of this TWEET October 26th – Within this Tapper report.
Now consider this recent part of the storyline in a highly parsed AP report.

Broadwell and Petraeus have each been questioned by FBI agents twice in recent weeks, with both acknowledging the affair in separate interviews.  The FBI’s most recent interviews with Broadwell and with Petraeus both occurred during the week  of Oct. 29, days before the election, one of the law enforcement officials said.  

It is obvious now that Petraeus knew of the investigation into Broadwell when it was happening (via Kelley) – and the affair being linked to it.  This might have been the issue that ended the affair.
It is obvious and widely reported that Eric Holder was informed of the affair in August.  It stretches the limits of plausibility to think Holder did NOT tell President Obama in an election year, 3 months before the election, that the Director of the CIA  was found as a separate party to have an extramarital affair with the subject of an FBI investigation.
It is obvious that Petraeus was telling the House Committee something in complete contradiction to his own known accurate intelligence on 9/14.
It is also obvious that the same timeframe when Petraeus says “whooah, wait a minute”…. “No one at any level in the CIA told anyone not to assist“, was the same timeframe when he was questioned for the last time by the FBI….
Initially I did not think there was a trail of Pertraeus being influenced that lead to the White House.   However, I think I have changed my mind (evolved)……  Perhaps Broadwell’s dad is right when he says “there is much, much more yet to come out of this story“….