Pelosi: Petraeus scandal no threat to national security
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said she has no reason to believe that the Congress was improperly kept in the dark about the abrupt resignation of CIA Director David Petraeus last week.
It was a “personal indiscretion” that led to the FBI investigation of emails, which uncovered an affair between Petraeus and his biographer, Paula Broadwell, but not a matter of national security, Pelosi said at a news conference Tuesday.
“Why somebody would be personally indiscreet is their own problem,” the San Francisco Democrat said. “Why they would do it in email is beyond my imagination. But in any event, the honorable thing was done. The general has resigned.”
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News of Petraeus’ resignation, which he announced on Friday afternoon, came as a surprise to almost everyone in Washington. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the Senate Intelligence Committee chairwoman, has criticized the FBI for failing to notify the intelligence committees in Congress.
“A decision was made somewhere not to brief us, which is atypical,” the California Democrat told NBC’s Andrea Mitchell. “This is certainly an operationally sensitive matter. But we weren’t briefed. I don’t know who made that decision.”
Pelosi said she saw no evidence that a threat to national security had been uncovered. Therefore, “the notification requirement doesn’t trigger.”
But, she said, “if it involves poor behavior, that would be nice to know before we saw it on TV.”
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