On October, 26, just two weeks prior to her affair with General David Petraeus becoming public knowledge, his biographer Paula Broadwell spoke before the University of Denver's Alumni Symposium in Denver, Colorado.
At that time, she discussed how she joined the military but primarily talked about the "adventure of writing this book about General David Petraeus." Broadwell's book is entitled All In: The Education of General David Petraeus.
In response to a question from the audience about Petraeus' new role at CIA regarding the situation in Benghazi, Broadwell responded:
"Just to create some context, as you know the ambassador in Benghazi was killed along with a couple of security agents who happened to be CIA security, paramilitary forces -- that just came out today in Fox News."
Broadwell continued:
"The facts that just came out today were that the ground forces at the CIA annex, which is different from the Consulate, were requesting reinforcements...they were requesting the... it's called the Extremist Force, the group of Delta Force operators are very, the most talented guys we have in the military, they could have come and reinforced the Consulate and the CIA annex that were under attack... I don't know if a lot of you heard this but the CIA annex had taken a couple of Libyan militia members prisoner and they think the attack on the consulate was an effort to get these prisoners back...that is still being vetted."
"The challenging thing for General Petraeus is that in his new position, he is not allowed to communicate with the press... so he's known all of this... they had correspondence with the CIA station chief in Libya -- within 24 hours, they kind of knew what was happening.."
Regarding demonstrations that were going on in Cairo, Broadwell explained that "our government was very concerned that this was going to become a nightmare for us... so you can understand if you put yourself in his shoes or Secretary Clinton's shoes or the president's shoes that we thought it was tied somehow to the demonstrations in Cairo."
"It's true that we have signal intelligence that shows that the militia members in Libya were watching the demonstrations in Cairo and it did sort of galvanize their effort. As a former Intell office, it is sort of frustrating to me because it reveals our sources and methods I don't think the public necessarily needs to know all of that. There was a failure in the system because there was additional security requested."
All of this raises critical questions to be asked. Broadwell confirms that 'they' knew within 24 hours that the attack was thought to be an attempt to free Libyan militia prisoners. Where did Ms. Broadwell get her information specifically regarding the CIA annex holding Libyan militia members as prisoners? How did she know that 'signal intelligence existed' showing that members of the Libyan militia were watching the demonstrations in Cairo? How did Ms. Broadwell know that our government was "very concerned that this was going to become a nightmare?"
And lastly, will the Obama administration treat the potential of the disclosure of 'classified' information with the same diligence as it pursued Bradley Manning?