Two stories of military justice broke yesterday. The first involves our former head of the CIA and a hero of the right, David Petraeus. Yesterday, the former NATO head agreed to plead guilty:
David Petraeus, a retired four-star general and former director of the CIA, pleaded guilty Tuesday to giving highly classified information to his ex-mistress. The information came in the form of eight black books that contained everything from identities of covert officers to discussions with President Obama.
The Justice Department and Federal Bureau of Investigation alleged back in 2012 that Petraeus gave secret information to Paula Broadwell, but the seriousness of the information wasn’t clear until now.
While he was commander of coalition forces in Afghanistan, Petraeus “maintained bound, five-by-eight inch notebooks that contained his daily schedule and classified and unclassified notes he took during official meetings, conferences and briefings,” the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of North Carolina writes in a statement of fact regarding the case.
The notebooks had black covers with Petraeus’s business card taped on the front of each of them.
All eight books “collectively contained classified information regarding the identifies of covert officers, war strategy, intelligence capabilities and mechanisms, diplomatic discussions, quotes and deliberative discussions from high-level National Security Council meetings… and discussions with the president of the United States.”
That sounds like a treasonous claim the former general is going to admit to. So what kind of punishment should he get for that? You maybe surprised:
The plea deal reached with prosecutors includes a recommendation of two years of probation and a $40,000 fine, according to court documents.
Wow, glad we take such a horrendous crime against the security of our nation so serious! And if that’s how we treat crimes like this, how about something much more minor? How about something like downloading pornography? Certainly that would just be a slap on the wrist – right?
“A Navy captain will spend a month in prison after pleading guilty Tuesday to charges of downloading pornography on his work computer at Norfolk Naval Station.
A military judge sentenced Capt. Richard Frey to 30 days in confinement and forfeiture of $18,000 in pay over the next year. He was taken to the Naval Consolidated Brig in Chesapeake.”
So downloading porn on a military computer gets you 30 days in jail, while giving highly classified information, which could easily put the lives of our intelligence agents in peril, gets you probation? Sure ole’ General Dave has a bigger fine, but he is most likely also worth a hell of a lot more than a Navy captain, so in reality the fine is much less. Glad our nation worries about the most serious crimes, like pornography, instead of petty shit like treason……