Whether we are talking about China, Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, or any other nations of the Confucian world, a man’s sexual behavior is — within large limits — not a national security issue. It is simply taken for granted that ‘boys will be boys.’” In addition, governments in most of those nations — unlike the U.S. government — spy on their officials and usually know all there is about them. Other nations also often know about the personal vulnerabilities of U.S. officials long before our own government does.
Petraeus vs. Clinton - John Fund - National Review Online
11-12-12
By which standard should we judge top officials?
The sudden departure of a compromised CIA director hasn’t been an episode of Showtime’s espionage drama Homeland, but it could be.
The story of David Petraeus’s resignation is evolving, and we may know more soon enough. But for now, he is said to have resigned because he committed marital infidelity in a way that could have exposed the U.S. to harm. Greta van Susteren of Fox News says his jobs as a general and CIA director made him “very vulnerable to blackmail from those with very bad intentions against the United States.”
Fair enough, but many commentators took an entirely different line 15 years ago when President Bill Clinton, who had access to all of our nation’s secrets, was caught having an affair with an intern named Monica Lewinsky. The Starr Report, released in September 1998, revealed that Clinton told Lewinsky that “he suspected that a foreign embassy was tapping his telephones, and he proposed cover stories” if they were ever questioned about their relationship.
When she left the White House, Lewinsky got a cushy Pentagon job, complete with a security clearance. Later, after Lewinsky threatened to expose the relationship, Clinton accepted her demand for a well-paying job in Manhattan and then asked a friend, Vernon Jordan, to make the contacts. Lewinsky told her then-confidante Linda Tripp that the president owed her something special: “I don’t want to have to work for this position. I just want it to be given to me.” But none of this brought down Clinton, who was acquitted by the Senate in a impeachment trial for having committed perjury before a federal judge.
-more at link-
No comments:
Post a Comment