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Retired Gen. Petraeus Should Face Charges, Prosecutors Say

Federal prosecutors recommend filing charges against retired Gen. David Petraeus over classified documents that he's accused of leaking when he headed the CIA. When Petraeus resigned his post in 2012, he cited an extramarital affair with a woman whom investigators suspected of receiving secret data.

Attorney General Eric Holder must now decide whether to pursue charges against Petraeus, The New York Times first reported. NPR has confirmed the development with government officials.

The nature of Petraeus' relationship with Army reservist Paula Broadwell emerged during an FBI investigation that was sparked by allegations from another woman, Jill Kelley, that she was receiving harassing emails. Those messages were reportedly traced to Broadwell.

As we reported in 2012, Broadwell "is a West Point graduate who wrote a biography of Petraeus, published this year and titled All In: The Education of General David Petraeus."

"We know that law enforcement sources did find classified information on Broadwell's computer," NPR's Dina Temple-Raston reported in 2012. "And the question is whether that ... was material she was allowed to have."

In the wake of the scandal, Broadwell was stripped of her military security clearance.

Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Bill Chappell is a writer and editor on the News Desk in the heart of NPR's newsroom in Washington, D.C.