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One day CIA Director David Petraeus was sending out signals he'd like to stay on for President Barack Obama's second term. The next he was hurrying to the White House to offer his resignation and remorse over an extramarital affair. In rapid succession, other characters have emerged in North Carolina, Florida and Afghanistan with story lines that resemble the latest installment of "Real Housewives." And the scandal's become so complicated you need a scorecard to keep track. So here you go:
Photo caption:
Gen. David Petraeus, second from left, and his wife, Holly, right, watch a parade in 2010 from the lawn of Scott and Jill Kelley, between the Petraeuses. Woman at left is Natalie Khawam. -
DAVID PETRAEUS
A highly decorated four-star Army general lauded for his leadership of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, Petraeus, 60, moved into the civilian world to become CIA director in September 2011. He shocked official Washington on Friday by admitting an extramarital affair with his biographer and resigning his spymaster post. -
JILL KELLEY
All threads in the story trace back to this Tampa, Fla., socialite. A surgeon's wife and mother of three children, Kelley is a sort of self-appointed social ambassador for the nearby U.S. Central Command and other officers at MacDill Air Force Base. The Kelleys opened their bayside home to lavish parties where military brass mingled with Tampa's elite. In this role, she befriended Petraeus and his wife, Holly, when he took over Central Command in October 2008. Kelley, 37, stayed in close contact with Petraeus after he left to take command of the Afghanistan war. They exchanged nearly daily emails in an account routinely monitored by his aides, according to two former staffers, who said those messages weren't romantic in tone. In May, Kelley started getting anonymous, harassing emails warning her away from Petraeus. She reported the email to the FBI. The FBI traced the messages to Broadwell, uncovering her affair with Petraeus. The FBI notified Petraeus' boss, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, who urged him to resign. And the FBI found something more. It unearthed "inappropriate communications" between Kelley and another top military officer, John Allen, according to Pentagon officials. -
NATALIE KHAWAM
Kelley's twin sister also socialized with the two generals. Both Petraeus and Allen wrote letters lauding Khawam as a devoted mother to help her in a bitter child custody battle with her ex-husband. Earlier in that divorce case, Superior Court Judge Neal Kravitz had criticized Khawam for a lack of honesty and "misrepresentations about virtually everything." -
THE SHIRTLESS FBI AGENT
And then there's this unnamed character: The FBI agent to whom Kelley first took her complaint was a longtime friend. And he had once sent her shirtless photos of himself, according to a federal law enforcement official. He passed the information along to others for investigation, and was subsequently told to steer clear of the case because his superiors worried that he had become obsessed with it, the official said. But the agent passed along a tip about Petraeus' affair to Republican Rep. Dave Reichert of Washington state, who got word to House Majority Leader Eric Cantor on Oct. 27, nearly two weeks before the scandal became public.
- Associated Press writers Robert Burns, Pete Yost, Kimberly Dozier, Pauline Jelinek, Lolita Baldor, Adam Goldman and Jack Gillum contributed to this report
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