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Petraeus scandal

series of events centered on David Petraeus

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionJul 5, 2026
Entity authorityQ1710873
Source-derived summary

The Petraeus scandal is a series of events that garnered strong media attention when an extramarital affair between retired four-star general and then-Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) David Petraeus and Paula Broadwell became public information. Petraeus had chosen Broadwell to be his official biographer. She co-authored his biography, All In: The Education of General David Petraeus, when Petraeus was the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) commander. On 9 November 2012, she was reported to have been involved in the extramarital affair with Petraeus that triggered his resignation as Director of the CIA when it was discovered by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).

Summary and chronology

The case was initiated by Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agent Frederick W. Humphries II after he received a complaint about cyberstalking from Jill Kelley. Humphries reported it to his superiors and then to Republican congressional leaders Dave Reichert and Eric Cantor. He then reported it to FBI Director Robert Mueller after receiving complaints from Kelley that she was being stalked, on the grounds that the stalker "seem[ed] to know the comings and goings of a couple of generals". The FBI investigation uncovered an extramarital affair between Petraeus and Paula Broadwell, the latter being Kelley's cyberstalker. FBI agents also searched through emails that General John R. Allen exchanged with Jill Kelley.

An in-depth report in Time magazine provided a chronology of some of the major events and personalities as they unfolded:

Broadwell, then a United States Army Reserve lieutenant colonel, first met Petraeus at Harvard University in 2006.

Editorial summary

“Petraeus scandal” enters the record as series of events centered on David Petraeus. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Petraeus, scandal and series can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewA dependable orientation record for establishing vocabulary, names and a first evidence trail. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—2012, 2006—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Petraeus, scandal and series.
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“Petraeus scandal” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Petraeus, scandal and series provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 5, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1710873. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2012 and 2006.

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Petraeus scandal” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.