David Petraeus | featured news

Former CIA director David Petraeus is making his first public speech since resigning in November over an extramarital affair. The former four-star general is scheduled to speak Tuesday night at a University of Southern California event honoring the military.

U.S. defense officials say Gen. John Allen, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, has been cleared of allegations of sending potentially inappropriate emails to a civilian woman linked to the sex scandal that ousted David Petraeus as CIA director.

“The Insurgents,” by Fred Kaplan, is a readable, thoroughly reported account of how Gen. David H. Petraeus transformed “counterinsurgency” from a frowned-upon term to American military policy.

Federal prosecutors have notified Paula Broadwell's lawyers that she won't be charged with cyberstalking in connection with the sex scandal that brought down David Petraeus.

Roger Ailes, the longtime Republican media guru, founder of Fox News and its current chairman, had some advice last year for then-Gen. David H. Petraeus. So in spring 2011, Ailes asked a Fox News analyst headed to Afghanistan to pass on his thoughts to Petraeus, who was then the commander of U.S. and coalition forces there. Petraeus, Ailes advised, should turn down an expected offer from President Obama to become CIA director and accept nothing less than the chairmanship of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the top military post. If Obama did not offer the Joint Chiefs post, Petraeus should resign from the military and run for president, Ailes suggested.

Jill Kelley, the Tampa socialite who triggered the scandal that brought down CIA director David Petraeus, viewed the e-mails that she got anonymously from Paula Broadwell, Petraeus' mistress, as "death threats" from someone "clearly unhinged," according to a close friend of Kelley's, the Daily News reported Tuesday.

Washington superlawyer Joseph Califano once passed a message to a client being grilled by a congressional committee that read: “Keep cool in Kabul.” That phrase has a certain piquancy now, but Califano simply wanted to calm the witness, slow the process a bit and get everyone to chill out.

Former CIA director David Petraeus testified on Friday that he believes the Sept. 11 attacks on a U.S. diplomatic outpost in Benghazi, Libya was an act of terrorism that did not arise out of a spontaneous demonstration, a lawmaker who heard the testimony said.

Citing a string of ethical lapses by senior military officers, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has asked the Joint Chiefs of Staff to review ethics training and to brainstorm on ways to steer officers away from trouble.

The first nasty e-mail from an account named "Kelley Patrol" puzzled Tampa socialite Jill Kelley, but the fact the mystery e-mailer seemed to know her comings and goings is what alarmed her, according to a source close to the Kelleys.