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Tag: David Petraeus

  • David Petraeus Fast Facts | CNN

    David Petraeus Fast Facts | CNN

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    Here is a look at the life of David Petraeus, former director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

    Birth date: November 7, 1952

    Birth place: Cornwall, New York

    Birth name: David Howell Petraeus

    Father: Sixtus Petraeus, Danish-born sea captain

    Mother: Miriam (Howell) Petraeus

    Marriage: Hollister “Holly” Knowlton (July 6, 1974-present)

    Children: Anne and Stephen

    Education: US Military Academy – West Point, B.S., 1974; Princeton University, M.P.A., International Relations, 1985; Princeton University, Ph.D., International Relations, 1987

    Military: US Army, 1974-2011, four-star general

    Growing up in Cornwall-on-Hudson, New York, friends nicknamed Petraeus “Peaches.”

    1974 – Is commissioned as an infantry officer in the US Army upon graduation from West Point.

    1975-1979 – Platoon leader, adjutant, 1st Battalion, 509th Airborne Battalion Combat Team in Vicenza, Italy.

    1979-1982 – Commander, then aide de camp, 24th Infantry Division (Mechanized) at Fort Stewart, Georgia.

    1985-1987 – Instructor, then Assistant Professor of Social Sciences, US Military Academy at West Point.

    1987-1988 – Military Assistant to the Supreme Allied Commander Europe, NATO, Brussels, Belgium.

    1989 – Serves as aide to the Army’s chief of staff.

    1991 – Is shot in the chest during a training exercise at Fort Campbell, Kentucky.

    1991-1993 – Commander, 3rd Battalion of the 187th Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division.

    1995-1997 – Commander, 1st Brigade, 82nd Airborne Division.

    2000 – Breaks his pelvis during a parachute jump.

    2000-2001 – Chief of staff, XVIII Airborne Corps., US Army, Fort Bragg, North Carolina.

    2000 – Is promoted to brigadier (one star) general.

    2001-2002 – Serves in Bosnia as the assistant chief of staff for military operations of the NATO Stabilization Force.

    2002-2004 – Commanding general of the 101st Airborne Division US Army, Fort Campbell, Kentucky.

    March 2003 – Leads troops into battle as commander of the 101st Airborne Division during the US-led invasion of Iraq.

    June 2004-September 2005 – Commander of the Multinational Security Transition Command in Iraq.

    October 2005-2007 – Commanding general of the Combined Arms Center, US Army, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.

    February 2007-September 2008 – Commander of all coalition forces in Iraq.

    October 31, 2008-July 4, 2010 – Commander in Chief of Central Command.

    October 6, 2009 – Announces that he was diagnosed with early-stage prostate cancer and underwent two months of radiation treatment.

    June 15, 2010 – Becomes “a little lightheaded” and faints while testifying at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing.

    July 4, 2010-July 18, 2011 – Commander of US and NATO forces in Afghanistan.

    April 28, 2011 – Nominated by President Barack Obama to replace Leon Panetta as CIA director.

    June 30, 2011 – Unanimously confirmed by the US Senate as the next director of the CIA.

    July 18, 2011 – Petraeus turns over command of US and NATO forces in Afghanistan to Gen. John R. Allen.

    August 31, 2011 – Retires from the Army.

    September 6, 2011 – Petraeus is sworn in as the new director of the CIA.

    November 9, 2012 – Petraeus submits his resignation to President Obama, citing personal reasons and admits he had an extramarital affair.

    March 27, 2013 – Publicly apologizes for his extramarital affair during a speech at the University of Southern California.

    May 30, 2013 – It is announced that Petraeus has joined private equity firm KKR as the chairman of a new global institute.

    July 1, 2013 – Joins the University of Southern California faculty as a Judge Widney Professor, “a title reserved for eminent individuals from the arts, sciences, professions, business, and community and national leadership.”

    January 9, 2015 – A federal law enforcement official tells CNN that Justice Department prosecutors are recommending charges be filed against Petraeus for disclosure of classified information to his former lover Paula Broadwell who was working on a book with Petraeus at the time.

    March 3, 2015 – Pleads guilty to one federal charge of removing and retaining classified information as part of a plea deal. According to court documents, Petraeus admitted removing several so-called black books – notebooks in which he kept classified and non-classified information from his tenure as the commander of the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan – and giving them to Broadwell.

    March 16, 2015 – White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest confirms that the National Security Council and the Obama administration have consulted with Petraeus on matters related to Iraq and ISIS.

    April 23, 2015 – Petraeus is sentenced to serve two years probation and fined $100,000 for sharing classified information with his biographer and lover, Broadwell. Prosecutors agree to not send him to jail because the classified information was never released to the public or published in the biography.

    September 22, 2015 – Petraeus speaks before the Senate Armed Services Committee regarding the US’s Middle East policy. He begins this, his first public hearing since his resignation, with a formal apology for the indiscretions that led to his resignation.

    June 10, 2016 – Along with retired NASA astronaut Mark Kelly, announces that they are launching Veterans Coalition for Common Sense to encourage elected leaders to “do more to prevent gun tragedies.”

    June 12, 2019 – The University of Birmingham announces that Petraeus has accepted an honorary professorship in the Institute for Conflict, Cooperation and Security. The three-year position begins immediately.

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  • Ex-CIA chief’s greatest concern in the Russia-Ukraine conflict is escalation ‘spiraling out of control’

    Ex-CIA chief’s greatest concern in the Russia-Ukraine conflict is escalation ‘spiraling out of control’

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    The greatest worry for former CIA chief General David Petraeus (US Army, Ret.) concerning the war in Ukraine is the potential for unbridled escalation that would result in catastrophic consequences, he told CNBC Tuesday.

    Asked what his top concern was with regard to the Russia-Ukraine conflict, in which the U.S. is heavily supporting Ukraine to the tune of billions of dollars in military aid, Petraeus replied, “just as a general category, it’s just [the risk of it] spiraling out of control.”

    “I think it is legitimate for U.S. leadership and for leadership of other countries to avoid starting World War III, as the phrase has been termed,” the retired general told CNBC’s Hadley Gamble at the Warsaw Security Forum in Poland.  

    Leaders in Ukraine and the West are grappling with Russian President Vladimir Putin’s threat of using nuclear weapons. Uncertainty over the likelihood of such action hangs over decision-making, even as Ukrainian forces stage bold counter-offensives in territory that Russia has illegally annexed. 

    Western policymakers must adequately signal their moves and refrain from going too far in terms of offensive military action against Russia, Petraeus said.  

    “Remember, in the beginning, there were these calls for no-fly zones over Ukraine, which I thought was just not fully thought through,” he said, recounting the urging by Ukrainian officials during the war’s early months to establish the defense mechanism that would enable U.S. planes to shoot down Russian jets in Ukrainian airspace. 

    “Because when you put U.S. aircraft into that airspace, and Russian aircraft … you can’t fly our aircraft without taking down the air defenses that could shoot them down. And now you’re into a U.S.-Russia war. And again, I think it’s understandable that U.S. leadership and that of other countries should have concerns about a spiraling beyond — as horrific as this is — a spiraling beyond where we are right now in the war in Ukraine.”

    General David Petraeus.

    Bill Clark | CQ Roll Call | Getty Images

    Over the weekend, Ukrainian forces successfully recaptured the strategic town of Lyman in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk oblast, one of the four territories Putin announced as belonging to the Russian Federation in a speech Friday. Counter-offensives in the country’s south are also underway, amid reports of low Russian troop morale and Ukrainian forces capturing Russian units. 

    Still, battlefield success does not mean that Russia can’t retaliate in other ways, Petraeus stressed.  

    “Keep in mind, the one element Russia still will retain, even as it is losing on the battlefield in Ukraine, is the ability to punish Ukraine,” he said, describing the countless bombings and missile strikes against major civilian centers. 

    Russia “can continue to carry out missile and rocket and bomb attacks, as it has, almost petulantly. You saw when the counter offensive was succeeding outside Kharkiv, they pounded certain areas, and they’re not going after military targets,” Petraeus said. “They’re going after the electrical generation stations, the electrical transmission, other civilian infrastructure — almost again as if to punish the people for what their military forces are doing, all major violations, by the way, of the Geneva Convention.”

    In response to Putin’s threat of using all weapons at his disposal, the Biden administration replied that any use of nuclear weapons would be met with a “decisive” U.S. response. What exactly that response would entail was not disclosed.   

    Ukraine recaptures Lyman, a key logistics hub for Russian forces.

    Institute for the Study of War

    “So again,” the former CIA director said, “it’s really about the situation just spiraling out of control in some way. Which is why it’s so important that as our national security advisor in the U.S., Jake Sullivan, has publicly stated, it’s very important that we have communicated in advance to the Russians, ‘if you do this, you can expect something along the lines of this’ — noting that obviously, there will always be a range of options presented to the president. And it depends specifically on you know, what happened, all this, that would determine what a response would be.”  

    “But we don’t want to start getting into some kind of climbing the nuclear ladder with Russia,” he stressed, “which could spiral out of control.”

    A Ukrainian BM-21 ‘Grad’ multiple rocket launcher fires towards Russian positions in Donetsk region on October 3, 2022, amid the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

    Anatolii Stepanov | AFP | Getty Images

    Ultimately, Petraeus believes, Putin isn’t suicidal. 

    “I don’t think for all of the grievance-filled rhetoric that we heard the other day in his speech, I don’t think that he is suicidal,” he said. “I don’t think he wants to bring about the end of the Russian Federation as he knows it — I mean, the irony is that this is someone who despised Gorbachev,” he said, referencing Mikhail Gorbachev, the last leader of the Soviet Union, whom Putin and many Russians blame for its collapse. 

    Putin has long decried the collapse of the Soviet Union as the most catastrophic historical event of the 20th century. 

    But Putin, Petraeus argued, “is doing colossal damage to the Russian Federation on a scale that Gorbachev did to the USSR, because of this incredibly catastrophically bad decision to invade his neighbor.”

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