Plea Deal Reveals How Paula Broadwell Accessed Petraeus’ Black Books
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CHARLOTTE, NC — General David Petraeus is expected at the Charlotte Federal Courthouse March 16.
Tuesday, his attorneys filed a plea deal, agreeing to two years probation and a $40,000 fine for giving his classified government notes to his Charlotte biographer, Paula Broadwell.
It’s been three and a half years since the love affair between General Petraeus and Broadwell made headlines. Tuesday’s court documents reveal how she got her hands on eight black books that contained his classified war notes.
The court documents only mention Broadwell as “Biographer” when outlining a recorded conversation from Aug. 2011:
Biographer: By the way, where are your black books? We never went through…
Petraeus: They’re in a rucksack up there somewhere.
Biographer: Okay, you avoiding that? You gonna look through ’em first?
Petraeus: Umm, well, they’re really–I mean they are highly classified, some of them. They don’t have it on it, but I mean there’s code word stuff in there.
In the court documents, General Petraeus admits to leaving the black books at a D.C. house where Broadwell was staying on Aug 28., 2011. Four days later, documents say he took the black books back to his Virginia home. In November 2012, he denied having classified material when he resigned from the CIA. However, five months later, the FBI seized the black books from his house.
During the investigation, General Petraeus told agents he, “…had never provided any classified information to his biographer.” He also said he never facilitated the provision of classified information to Broadwell. The court documents show that was false.
WCCB Charlotte stopped by Broadwell’s Dilworth home Tuesday to get her response to the plea deal. No one answered the door.
The plea deal avoids a trial that could reveal even more about their affair and the information inside the black books.
General Petraeus’ Charlotte attorney did not return calls for comment.
