1. Powerful men,
no matter how brilliant and accomplished, can suffer from a form of
temporary insanity caused by the interaction of arrogance and libido.
Sadly, this is a lesson we see repeated
time and time again, across national borders, destroying promising
careers and even changing the course of history. Nothing, it seems, not
even the highest IQs, the most exclusive security clearances, or the
tangible risk of losing it all for the sake of a tryst will stop certain
men from pursuing an illicit relationship. Yes, powerful women do it
too, but the cases are rare.On the other hand, the parade of men who have destroyed or very nearly killed their careers and their personal lives is endless.
2. Anything you write in an e-mail can be used against you.
Nothing is private,
especially not when it goes through Google (Gmail's) hands. If
America's top spy, the head of the CIA, can get caught writing secret
love letters to his girlfriend on Gmail, nobody's e-mails are safe.
Petraeus and his clandestine girlfriend, Paula Broadwell, took some troubles to keep their illicit correspondence safe. They
reportedly relied on a trick
used by some al Qaeda operatives. They left messages to each other in
the drafts folder of an account, the password to which they both knew,
thinking they would remain for their eyes only. But it didn't work.When the FBI came calling, Google opened up its shockingly large files,
as it does with shocking regularity. Google knows everything about you,
and it frequently shares with those who ask. Google's own reports
say it passed information to authorities in response to 93 percent of
government requests in the second half of 2011. Nothing in Google's
hands is guaranteed to remain private.
3. The FBI can investigate practically anyone in the U.S., even the director of Central Intelligence.
That's a stunning notion
to contemplate, and it says both good and bad things about America.
First the good: No one is above reproach, not even a man whose power is
vast and often elaborately concealed. In fact, if you ask the world's
great conspiracy theorists, they will tell you the CIA can do anything,
anywhere, at any time. But its boss got found out by his own country's
law enforcement gumshoes. That's amazing.
Score a point for the
rule of law in America, but subtract one for privacy and another for the
randomness of FBI work. It seems rather strange that the FBI decided to
pursue a case of harassing e-mails. I was once personally told by an
FBI agent, in no uncertain terms, that the FBI had no time to spend on
threats sent over the Internet, even if the messages included a threat
to kill.
4. Americans are deeply torn about the question of private morality and the public sphere.
There is a nagging sense
that the Petraeus case may have cost the United States the service of
an uncommonly talented man for no good reason. We don't know all there
is to know, and there is a possibility that this is a matter of
compromised national security, in which case the invasion of privacy,
the destruction of personal lives, and the painful intrusion into the
deepest emotional recesses of several families' worlds, could ultimately
prove justified.
Until more is known, the rest of the world is shaking its head at what could be another baffling case of American puritanism.
5. A salacious
sex scandal will push everything off the top of the rundown or the front
page, especially when the most immediate next challenge is the "fiscal
cliff," a dry and arcane topic that will cause most people to change the
channel or turn the page.
That's one reason we
know this strange and twisting case, already involving such a
complicated and unlikely cast of characters, will continue to garner
enormous attention for a long, long time.
Frida Ghitis
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