The Slatest

FBI Recommends Charges Against Former CIA Chief Petraeus

Former CIA chief Gen. Davis Petraeus shakes hands with biographer Paula Broadwell.

Photo by ISAF via Getty Images

The FBI and Justice Department prosecutors say felony charges should be filed against former CIA chief David Petraeus for improperly providing classified information to a woman with whom he was having an affair. Attorney General Eric Holder must now decide whether to indict Petraeus for his actions, the New York Times was first to report. Petraeus resigned from the CIA in 2012 when his affair with Paula Broadwell, an Army Reserve officer who was writing his biography, became public.

FBI agents searched Broadwell’s computer and found classified documents. “Some of the material was years old, but remained secret government information,” reports the Wall Street Journal. Broadwell and Petreaus both deny that the former CIA chief was the source of the classified documents.

Leaking news that the prosecutors have recommended that charges be filed in the case comes amid frustration in the Justice Department and FBI ranks over Holder’s delay in deciding whether to proceed with the case. Petraeus’ friends and allies, most notably Sen. John McCain, have also said that Holder must decide whether to move forward. “At this critical moment in our nation’s security,” McCain wrote to Holder last month, “Congress and the American people cannot afford to have his voice silenced or curtailed by the shadow of a long-running, unresolved investigation marked by leaks from anonymous sources.”