The Pentagon has cleared the top US commander in Afghanistan of wrongdoing over e-mails with a woman tied to the sex scandal that forced former CIA director David Petraeus to resign, a US official said on Tuesday.
The US Defense Department’s inspector general (IG) completely exonerated International Security Assistance Force Commander General John Allen, the outgoing head of US-led forces in Afghanistan, over the e-mails, paving the way for his pending nomination to take up command of NATO forces in Europe, the official said.
“Allen has been cleared by the IG,” the official said on condition of anonymity.
The FBI came upon the e-mails from Allen in its probe of Petraeus, and defense officials had said the tone of the messages had been potentially “inappropriate” and possibly violated rules applying to military officers.
Allen had exchanged messages with Jill Kelley, a Florida socialite who had thrown parties for senior officers at US Central Command, which has its headquarters in Tampa.
Kelley had alerted the FBI to anonymous e-mails she received and claimed were threatening. The e-mails were traced to David Petraeus’ biographer, Paula Broadwell, and authorities then uncovered evidence that Broadwell was having an affair with the CIA director.
The scandal prompted Petraeus to resign abruptly in November last year, ending a storied career marked by his tenure as military commander in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
However, the FBI also found numerous e-mails between Allen and Kelley, and US Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta ordered an independent inquiry by the Pentagon inspector general.
Initially, officials had said there were between 25,000 and 30,000 pages of correspondence between Allen and Kelley, raising questions that his e-mails could reflect a distracted commander, but officials later said the inquiry was only focused on a few hundred messages.
The scandal broke after Allen was nominated to take over as NATO’s supreme allied commander and his confirmation hearings before the US Senate were put on hold as a result.
Throughout the inspector general’s inquiry, Panetta and other top officials have expressed full confidence in Allen’s handling of the war effort in Afghanistan.
Kelley, in her first interview since the case came to light, said on Tuesday the media frenzy over the scandal had been a nightmare for her family, that she never had a romantic link to Allen and that she decided not to press charges against Petraeus’ mistress over her allegedly menacing messages.
Allen succeeded Petraeus as the top commander in Afghanistan, taking over in July 2011. The four-star general is due to hand over his post to General Joseph Dunford next month.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
China would train thousands of foreign law enforcement officers to see the world order “develop in a more fair, reasonable and efficient direction,” its minister for public security has said. “We will [also] send police consultants to countries in need to conduct training to help them quickly and effectively improve their law enforcement capabilities,” Chinese Minister of Public Security Wang Xiaohong (王小洪) told an annual global security forum. Wang made the announcement in the eastern city of Lianyungang on Monday in front of law enforcement representatives from 122 countries, regions and international organizations such as Interpol. The forum is part of ongoing