On Friday afternoon, General David Petraeus announced his
resignation as CIA director, citing an extramarital affair. Almost
immediately, Slate named Petraeus’s biographer, Paula Broadwell, as the
mystery woman. And according to NBC, the FBI has been investigating
Broadwell out of concern that she had access to confidential
information.
Broadwell is the author, with Vernon Loeb, of All In: The Education
of General David Petraeus, a glowing 400-page biography of Petraeus,
for which she was granted almost total access. After it was published
in January, some said it read more like a love letter to the general
than a biography. In a review for Rolling Stone, Michael Hastings
called the book “a work of fan fiction so fawning that not even Max
Boot—a Petraeus buddy and Pentagon sock puppet—could bring himself to
rave about it.”
Broadwell, 40, is a research associate at Harvard’s Center for
Public Leadership—as well as a PhD candidate in the department of war
studies at King’s College in London. She is married to Scott Broadwell,
an interventional radiologist, and lives in Dilworth, N.C., with their
two sons, Landon and Lucien. She grew up in North Dakota, and attended
West Point, the general’s alma mater, where she graduated with honors.
She has worked for the U.S. Special Operations Command and an FBI joint
terrorism task force. Beyond that, her list of accomplishments is long:
she earned an MA from the University of Denver’s Korbel School of
International Studies and an MPA from Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School
of Government, and served as the deputy director of the Jebsen Center
for Counter-Terrorism Studies at the Fletcher School at Tufts.
Physically, Broadwell is tall and stunning, with long dark hair and
green eyes. According to her biography, she has been a “sponsored ½
Ironman triathlete” as well as a “female model/ demonstrator” for
KRISS, a manufacturer of .45-caliber machine guns. (On LinkedIn, she
lists her current employer as Equipe Broadwell, LLC, seemingly a part
of the Carolinas Freedom Foundation, a veteran’s organization in
Charlotte.
Broadwell first crossed paths with Petraeus in 2006, when he gave a
lecture at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, where she was
pursuing her master’s degree. According to the preface of All In, she
introduced herself after that lecture and told him about her academic
research. He gave her his business card and offered to help. “I took
full advantage of his open-door policy to seek insight and share
perspectives,” she writes in the book. And so began an alleged
relationship, which, if sources are to be believed, eventually led to
the general’s resignation from the CIA on Friday.
With access to Petraeus, Broadwell decided to structure her dissertation around a case study of his leadership. She called it “a study in transformational leadership and organizational innovation influenced by U.S. Army General David Petraeus.” In July 2010, when the general was put in command of Afghanistan, Broadwell parlayed her project into a book deal with Penguin Press, and brought in The Washington Post’s Vernon Loeb to help report on the ground.
With access to Petraeus, Broadwell decided to structure her dissertation around a case study of his leadership. She called it “a study in transformational leadership and organizational innovation influenced by U.S. Army General David Petraeus.” In July 2010, when the general was put in command of Afghanistan, Broadwell parlayed her project into a book deal with Penguin Press, and brought in The Washington Post’s Vernon Loeb to help report on the ground.
It was then that she “shot [Petraeus] an email and said ‘I’m going
to go for it,’” she told Stewart. “I’m not sure he took me seriously,
but I showed up in Afghanistan.” She embedded there until summer 2011,
where she reported on the front lines, observed him closely, and
interviewed several crucial members of his command.
Biographers sometimes develop obsessions with their subjects. And,
in hindsight, it is peculiar that Broadwell repeatedly referred to
Petraeus as a mentor—saying in an interview that he approached her
project “from a mentoring point of view.” In All In, she writes that he
saw her as an “aspiring soldier-scholar.” In an interview with Jon
Stewart, she sounds adoring of Petraeus. “He can turn water into
bottled water,” she joked. In that interview, she explains that
Petraeus’s high-school nickname—which has apparently stuck with him
since—was “Peaches.” (After her book tour in January, she was
reportedly going back to finish her doctorate—where, she told The
Charlotte Observer, Petraeus was also one of her dissertation advisers.)
Like Petraeus, Broadwell is an avid athlete. At West Point, she ran
cross-country and track—and graduated at the top of her class for
physical fitness. In an online bio, she describes her hobbies as
running, skiing, and surfing. When she appeared on The Daily Show in
January—she challenged Stewart to a push-up contest for charity, which
she easily won.
In an interview with Jon Stewart, she sounds adoring of Petraeus. ‘He can turn water into bottled water,’ she joked.
Broadwell got to know Petraeus through several five-mile runs that doubled as interviews—a tactic he’s been known to use with journalists. “It was an opportunity for me to interview him on a run,” she told Stewart. “I thought I’d test him, but he was going to test me—it ended up being a test for both of us since we both ran pretty quickly. That was the foundation of our relationship.” When he didn’t want to answer questions, she said, “He would pick up the pace so neither of us could talk.”
Just last week, Broadwell documented Petraeus’s “Rules for Living”
in Newsweek—which read like the 12 commandments for military leadership
and personal excellence. The fifth rule, smack in the middle, states
simply, “We all will make mistakes. The key is to recognize them and
admit them, to learn from them, and to take off the rearview
mirrors—drive on and avoid making them again.”Broadwell got to know Petraeus through several five-mile runs that doubled as interviews—a tactic he’s been known to use with journalists. “It was an opportunity for me to interview him on a run,” she told Stewart. “I thought I’d test him, but he was going to test me—it ended up being a test for both of us since we both ran pretty quickly. That was the foundation of our relationship.” When he didn’t want to answer questions, she said, “He would pick up the pace so neither of us could talk.”
Dailybeast
No comments:
Post a Comment