Story highlights
- Howard Kurtz: David Petraeus long had a good relationship with the media
- He says the general's courtship of journalists brought him favorable headlines
- Kurtz: In coverage of scandal that led to resignation, media have given him benefit of doubt
- He says the press has given Petraeus a pass on question about security in Benghazi
David Petraeus had another love affair long before the one that cost him his job running the CIA.
It was with the press.
The retired general's skillful courtship of journalists brought him a career's worth of favorable headlines and has, to a remarkable degree, softened the coverage of his fall from grace. Petraeus accomplished this in part by granting reporters access -- though none quite as extraordinary as that accorded his biographer, Paula Broadwell, who several news organizations have identified as the other woman in the extramarital affair he has acknowledged.
Consider, for instance, the way NBC's Andrea Mitchell, who broke the story of Petraeus' resignation on Friday, described her scoop.
Howard Kurtz
"I don't take any pleasure in this in the sense that this is really a personal tragedy," Mitchell said on MSNBC. "Having covered Gen. Petraeus myself here and overseas, I am absolutely convinced from all the communications I have had from people directly involved that this was a matter of honor."
Media verdict on Obama victory 06:44
Matthews regrets Sandy comment 03:15
Broadwell explains access to Petraeus 01:00
Photos: Photos: Public figures, private missteps
Photos: Photos: Public figures, private missteps
Public figures, private missteps – CIA Director David Petraeus stepped down Friday, November 9, 2012, citing an extramarital affair with his biographer, Paula Broadwell. Many questions surround the affair, including why it was necessary for Petraeus to resign and the future of his marriage to his wife, Holly. Here's a look at other U.S. sexual scandals that led to political stumbles and downfalls.
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Photos: Photos: Public figures, private missteps
Public figures, private missteps – Former actor and California Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger made headlines in 2011 when his longtime wife, journalist Maria Shriver of the Kennedy clan, filed for divorce after learning Schwarzenegger had fathered a son with the couple's housekeeper. Schwarzenegger recently began talking publicly about the affair, released an autobiography and made a return to acting. He has said he hopes to win Shriver back.
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Photos: Photos: Public figures, private missteps
Public figures, private missteps – Former president Bill Clinton's denial of his affair with then-intern Monica Lewinsky jeopardized his seat in the Oval Office. News of the affair surfaced in 1998, and Clinton became the second president to be impeached by the U.S. House when he was brought up on charges of lying to a grand jury and trying to influence the testimony of others but wasn't removed from office. He is still married to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
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Public figures, private missteps – Sen. David Vitter, R-Louisiana, issued an apology "for a very serious sin in my past" after his phone number showed up in the records of Pamela Martin and Associates, and escort service run by Deborah Jeane Palfrew, aka the "D.C. Madam" Vitter is still serving in the Senate and is still married.
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Public figures, private missteps – Former U.S. Rep. Anthony Weiner, D-New York, caused a stir in Washington in 2011 when he was caught using social media to communicate with at least six women other than his wife, Huma Abedin. Weiner left office in his seventh term in Congress. Shortly after his resignation, news broke the Abedin was pregnant with their first child. Today, the couple is still married, and Weiner is a stay-at-home dad to their son. Weiner rejoined Twitter earlier this month.
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Photos: Photos: Public figures, private missteps
Public figures, private missteps – Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick apologized to his wife and the city after romantic messages, reported by the Detroit Free Press, indicated the Democrat was having an affair with his chief of staff. The chief of staff, Christine Beatty, resigned, but Kilpatrick, said he would not. In testimony last August, both Beatty and Kilpatrick had denied having a romantic relationship. Kilpatrick later resigned. He is serving a prison sentence of up to five years for violating probation in a 2008 case against him. That case involved two state felony counts of obstruction of justice stemming from his efforts to cover up the extramarital affair.
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Public figures, private missteps – John Edwards, the former North Carolina senator and Democratic presidential hopeful, saw his political career spin off track when he finally admitted in 2008 that he was unfaithful to his cancer-stricken wife, Elizabeth Edwards. Edwards at first denied the affair but ultimately came clean about fathering a child with his campaign videographer, Rielle Hunter. Prosecutors accused Edwards of illegally using hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions to keep his pregnant mistress under wraps, but he was granted a mistrial on May 31, 2012. Elizabeth Edwards died in 2010.
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Photos: Photos: Public figures, private missteps
Public figures, private missteps – Former Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, agreed to step down temporarily as the leading Republican on Senate committees after details came out about his 2007 arrest in an airport in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Picked up during a police sting targeting lewd behavior in the airport's restrooms Craig pleased guilty to a misdemeanor disorderly conduct charge in August 2007. No sexual contact is alleged to have taken place but the officer who arrested the senator said Craig moved his foot to touch the officer's foot in another stall. Craig, who is married, said he did not make any "inappropriate contact." He called his guilty plea a "poor decision" and denied being gay.
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Public figures, private missteps – Former Rep. Mark Foley, R-Florida, resigned in September 2006 after he was accused of sending sexually explicit instant messages and e-mails to congressional pages. Florida authorities opened an investigation, as did the FBI. Foley later checked into a treatment facility for alcoholism.
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Public figures, private missteps – Weeks after separating from his wife, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa acknowledged he had been having an affair with a local television reporter. "It is true that I have a relationship with Ms. Mirthala Salinas," the Democrat said in a statement published in the Los Angeles Daily News. "As I've said I take full responsibility for my actions, and I once again ask that people respect my family's privacy. For my part, I intent to stay focused on my job and to work as hard as I can every day to be the best mayor I can be." Villaraigosa and his wife divorced in 2010. He is still mayor.
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Public figures, private missteps – Days before the House voted to impeach President Clinton, Rep. Bob Livingston, R-Louisiana, admitted to cheating on his wife. On the day of the impeachment vote, Livingston, a Republican who was to succeed Newt Gingrich as Speaker of the House, announced he would resign from Congress in six months. He urged Clinton to do the same. "I must set the example that I hope President Clinton will follow," he said.
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Public figures, private missteps – When then-South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford went MIA for nearly a week in June of 2009, his staff told the public he was out hiking the Appalachian Trail. But when the Republican was spotted at Atlanta's Hartsfield-Jackson Airport, he decided to come clean about the mysterious hiking trip and quite a bit more. Sanford admitted he was not hiking, but visiting his Argentinian mistress in Buenos Aires. Though his wife, Jenny, said she was open to reconciliation, Sanford was head-over-heels for paramour Maria Belen Chapur. The Sanfords divorced. He became engaged to Belen Chapur in August.
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Public figures, private missteps – Eliot Spitzer earned a squeaky clean image as the attorney general of New York who took on Wall Street corruption from 1999 to 2006. From there, he moved to the governor's mansion in Albany in 2007. But the Democrat was stopped in his political tracks when his liaisons with high-paid prostitute Ashley Dupre surfaced, and he stepped down as governor in March 2008. He briefly went on to anchor and now hosts "Viewpoint'" on Current TV. He is still married to Silda Wall Spitzer.
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Public figures, private missteps – In 2009, then Sen. John Ensign, R-Nevada, admitted having an affair with Cindy Hampton, a campaign aide and the wife of his former chief of staff, Doug Hampton. Investigators examined the former senator's efforts to assist the Hampton family by providing a payment of nearly $100,000, arranging lobbying work for Doug Hampton and possibly meeting with him on a lobbying matter in violation of Senate rules. Hampton was sentenced to a year of probation for violating lobbying laws. Ensign never faced charges.
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As NBC's longtime defense correspondent Fred Francis told me on CNN's "Reliable Sources," Petraeus would call him and other reporters regularly to chat off the record or on background.
Little surprise, then, that the tone of the coverage could be summed up as "huh?" Did Petraeus really have to quit over a garden-variety affair? Was this some sort of ploy to avoid testifying this week on the fatal attack at the U.S. consulate in Benghazi? Turns out FBI investigators stumbled upon the affair while looking into Petraeus' e-mail account.
His earlier relationships with journalists yielded benefits for both sides. During the Iraq invasion in 2003, Petraeus, then commanding the 101st Airborne, allowed Washington Post reporter Rick Atkinson to shadow him, including on a Black Hawk helicopter. Here is just one passage from what Atkinson, a stellar military reporter, later turned into a book:
"We stood 15 feet beyond the tent flap. I blinked at the swirling dust, and felt grit between my molars. When Petraeus turned to face me, I was alarmed to see how troubled his blue eyes were. "This thing is turning [bad]," he said.
"The 3 ID" -- the 3rd Infantry Division, fighting just ahead of the 101st around Najaf -- "is in danger of running out of food and water. They lost two Abrams and a Bradley last night, although they got the crews out. The corps commander sounds tired."
Petraeus famously turned to Atkinson and said: "Tell me how this ends."
Now that kind of access isn't just smoke and mirrors; Petraeus ran the risk that the mission might have been a disaster. But he trusted journalists, took them into his confidence, and in return was portrayed as a swashbuckling general, military intellectual and, eventually, potential presidential candidate. Newsweek even ran a feature on Petraeus' "Rules for Living." (The author? Paula Broadwell.)
This is not to say the plaudits weren't deserved. Petraeus literally wrote the manual on counterinsurgency, made important gains while leading George W. Bush's surge in Iraq, and adjusted strategy when President Barack Obama asked him to oversee the war in Afghanistan.
But since Obama sent Petraeus to Langley last year, he has kept an unusually low profile. As questions swirled about the CIA's role in the Benghazi tragedy, he said nothing publicly. A CIA director without the deep media relationships that Petraeus enjoyed would have faced a torrent of stories about why he was missing in action and whether he had bungled the job of diplomatic security. Instead, the press gave Petraeus a pass.
Maybe that's true on his career-ending episode as well. But that has hardly been the case with Broadwell, whose e-mails triggered an FBI investigation. (In hindsight, it might not have been the height of discretion to do a television tour about your book "All In," talking about how awesome your subject is.)
Author Tom Ricks, who portrayed Petraeus favorably in his Iraq war book "Fiasco," writes on Foreign Policy's website:
"Petraeus took the samurai route and insisted that he had done a dishonorable thing and now had to try to balance it by doing the honorable thing and stepping down as CIA director. But why? Petraeus is retired from the military. If the affair happened back when he was on active duty, it is part of the past. And there is nothing illegal about civilians having affairs."
Maybe that's the right tone. But contrast it with the way that politicians and business executives routinely get pummeled for fooling around -- though it's different, and should be, if subordinates are involved (or an intern, in Bill Clinton's case, or a housekeeper, as in Arnold Schwarzenegger's).
News flash: Even top officials are human. They succumb to temptation. And they get a lot more sympathy in times of trouble from journalists they have befriended.
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