Former CIA boss David Petraeus’ mistress faces no charges in the cyberstalking probe that ended his military and intelligence career, federal prosecutors said yesterday.
The US Attorney’s Office in Tampa, Fla., said it could find no crime in the e-mails, in which Gen. Petraeus’ biographer and lover, Paula Broadwell, anonymously warned Tampa socialite Jill Kelley to “back off” and “stay away from my guy.”
Prosecutors said that after “applying relevant case law to the particular facts of this case,” they decided “not to pursue a federal case regarding the alleged acts of ‘cyberstalking’ involving Paula Broadwell.”
She issued a statement saying she and her family are “pleased with this decision and pleased that this is resolved.”
Broadwell’s lawyer has not been notified that she’s the subject or target of any other federal investigation.
But Broadwell is reportedly still being investigated by the Pentagon for allegedly mishandling classified information she got from Petraeus. Broadwell, an Army reserve officer, had a “substantial amount” of material marked classified at her home, FBI probers found.
Broadwell and Petraeus say their relationship began after he left the military and started work at the CIA in September 2011.
But they became close years before, as Broadwell was researching her book, “All In: The Education of General David Petraeus,” which was published in January.
Broadwell, 40, and Petraeus, 60, who are both married, say the affair ended over the summer.
But while their romance may have been over, the fallout was yet to come.
Kelley, a socialite who hosted elaborate parties for Petraeus and other officers of the Tampa-based Central Command and got herself named an “honorary consul” for South Korea, was seen by Broadwell as a rival for the general’s affections.
That led Broadwell to send the catty e-mails.
Earlier this year, Kelley, 39, took the e-mails to a pal, Tampa-based FBI Agent Frederick Humphries II, a counterterrorism investigator who helped crack the case of the “Millennium Bomber” at Los Angeles International Airport.
The probe wound on for months before it became public last month.
Asked yesterday whether he thought Petraeus should have resigned, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said:
“You’ve got to be kidding me. Well, in this town, with that kind of e-mail, do you think he could have survived as director of the CIA? I don’t think so.”
Kelley was banned from the Central Command base in Tampa. She also lost her honorary consul license plates after the South Koreans revoked her diplomatic title.
FBI agents also found hundreds of “flirtatious” e-mails between Kelley and Marine Gen. John Allen, the top commander of US forces in Afghanistan. Allen denies any affair with Kelley.Humphries was reportedly being investigated by the FBI Office of Professional Responsibility for sending Kelly a shirtless picture of himself, interfering with the Petraeus probe, and complaining to a congressman that the probers were “dragging their feet.”