Headline o' the day

From BuzzFeed: CIA Director David Petraeus Is The Only Sane Person In His Own Sex Scandal.

By the way, there is a local angle of sorts to the David Petraeus - Paula Broadwell - Jill Kelley - FBI agent scandal. Broadwell's ghost writer on the Petraeus biography, "All In: The Education of General David Petraeus,” was Vernon Loeb, a former senior editor at the Los Angeles Times who is now at the Washington Post. He saw nothing, heard nothing, knew nothing, he writes in the Post:

My wife says I’m the most clueless person in America.

I never anticipated the extramarital affair between David H. Petraeus and Paula Broadwell, the woman I’d worked with for 16 months on a book about Petraeus’s year commanding the war in Afghanistan. On rare occasions, her good looks and close access would prompt a colleague to raise an eyebrow about their relationship, but I never took it seriously.

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I always thought that Broadwell’s motives were pure, and I always wondered why Petraeus was granting her the access that he did. The two must have seen a lot of themselves in each other — they shared the West Point bond, an addiction to physical fitness and running and an uber-optimistic, never-say-die outlook on life.

Broadwell clearly admired Petraeus as a leader and a military officer. That her dissertation, and ultimately the book, had grown out of a mentoring relationship with Petraeus is something I still take at face value. I never thought they were having an affair — and I still have no idea when the affair actually began. I sent Broadwell an e-mail Monday, letting her know that I was writing this piece and welcoming any comment she chose to make. I have yet to hear back from her.

Loeb ran investigations at the LAT during the John Carroll and Dean Baquet years, left for the Philadelphia Inquirer in 2007, and returned to the Post last year.