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White House Supports Top U.S. Commander in Afghanistan White House Supports Top U.S. Commander in Afghanistan
(about 3 hours later)
President Obama has faith in Gen. John R. Allen, the top American and NATO commander in Afghanistan, the White House spokesman said on Tuesday, after it was disclosed that the general was under investigation for what the Pentagon called “inappropriate communication” with the woman whose complaint to the F.B.I. set off the scandal involving David H. Petraeus’s extramarital affair. WASHINGTON — Conflicting portrayals of e-mails written by Gen. John R. Allen, the top American and NATO commander in Afghanistan, emerged Tuesday after it was disclosed that the general was under investigation for what the Pentagon called “inappropriate communication” with the woman whose complaint to the F.B.I. set off the scandal involving David H. Petraeus’s extramarital affair.
“The president thinks very highly of General Allen,” the spokesman, Jay Carney, said at a White House news briefing. “He has faith in General Allen,” and believes that he has done “an excellent job” as commander in Afghanistan, Mr. Carney added. General Allen’s recent nomination to become the supreme allied commander in Europe, Mr. Carney said, is delayed at the request of Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta pending the investigation’s outcome. Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta and other officials traveling with him to Australia overnight on Monday disclosed the inquiry into General Allen’s e-mails with Jill Kelley, the woman in Tampa, Fla., who was seen by Paula Broadwell, Mr. Petraeus’s lover, as a rival for his attentions.
Mr. Panetta and other officials disclosed overnight the investigation into General Allen’s e-mails with Jill Kelley, the woman in Tampa, Fla., who was seen by Paula Broadwell, Mr. Petraeus’s lover, as a rival for his attentions. Mr. Panetta, along with Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, referred the Allen matter to the Pentagon’s inspector general, according to Mr. Panetta’s aides, after a team of military and civilian lawyers reviewed what defense officials say are thousands of pages of documents, including hundreds of e-mails between General Allen and Ms. Kelley, that the F.B.I. forwarded to the Pentagon.
Mr. Petraeus’s affair led to his resignation as head of the C.I.A. on Friday, and the F.B.I.’s investigations into e-mails in the matter apparently led in turn to General Allen’s correspondence. Associates of General Allen said Tuesday that the e-mails were innocuous. Some of them used terms of endearment, but not in a flirtatious way, the associates said. “If you know Allen, he’s just the kind of guy to respond dutifully to every e-mail he gets — ‘you’re the best,’ ‘you’re a sweetheart,’ that kind of thing,” according to a senior American official who is familiar with the investigation.
In a statement released to reporters on his plane en route to Australia early Tuesday, Mr. Panetta said the F.B.I. on Sunday had referred “a matter involving” General Allen to the Pentagon. Even so, other Pentagon officials briefed on the content of the e-mails said that some of the language did, on initial reading, seem “overly flirtatious” and warranted further inquiry.
Mr. Panetta turned the matter over to the Pentagon’s inspector general to conduct an investigation into what a defense official said were thousands of pages of documents, many of them e-mails between General Allen and Ms. Kelley. The Pentagon’s top lawyer, Jeh Johnson, recommended sending the matter to the inspector general, senior defense officials said. An inappropriate communication could violate military rules.
A senior law enforcement official in Washington said on Tuesday that F.B.I. investigators, looking into Ms. Kelley’s complaint about anonymous e-mails she had received, examined all of her e-mails as a routine step. Senior officials in the Obama administration and lawmakers from both parties expressed shock at what could be a widening scandal into two of the most prominent generals of their generation: Mr. Petraeus, who was the top commander in Iraq and Afghanistan before he retired from the military to become director of the C.I.A., only to resign on Friday because of his affair, and General Allen, who also served in Iraq and now commands 68,000 American troops in Afghanistan.
“When you get involved in a cybercase like this, you have to look at everything,” the official said, suggesting that Ms. Kelley may not have considered that possibility when she filed the complaint. “The real question is why someone decided to open this can of worms.” President Obama, however, voiced support for General Allen through his spokesman on Tuesday. “The president thinks very highly of General Allen,” the spokesman, Jay Carney, said at a White House news briefing. “He has faith in General Allen.”
The official would not describe the content of the e-mails between General Allen and Ms. Kelley or say specifically why F.B.I. officials had decided to pass them on to the Defense Department. “Generally, the nature of the e-mails warranted providing them to D.O.D.,” he said. But the matter has created enough concern that General Allen’s recent nomination to become NATO’s top military officer was delayed at Mr. Panetta’s request, pending the investigation’s outcome.
Under military law, adultery can be a crime. Aides traveling with Mr. Panetta, reacting to anger from some of General Allen’s associates who said he was being unfairly treated, described Mr. Panetta as having great respect for General Allen. But they said that Mr. Panetta had little choice in referring the matter to the inspector general. General Dempsey informed General Allen of the investigation on Monday from Perth, where he had traveled for a security meeting that Mr. Panetta is also attending.
The defense official on Mr. Panetta’s plane said that General Allen, who is also married, told Pentagon officials that he had done nothing wrong. Neither he nor Ms. Kelley, who is also married with children, could be reached for comment early Tuesday. Mr. Panetta’s statement praised General Allen for his leadership in Afghanistan and said, “He is entitled to due process in this matter.” General Allen, a Marine, succeeded Mr. Petraeus as the top allied commander in Afghanistan in July 2011. He also served as Mr. Petraeus’s deputy when both officers led the military’s Central Command, based in Tampa, from 2008 until 2010.
A senior Defense Department official said General Allen had denied having an extramarital affair with Ms. Kelley. But the official said the content of some of the e-mails “was of a flirtatious nature.” General Allen’s connection to the scandal appears to have originated with an e-mail he received from an account that was registered under a fake name and has now been linked to Ms. Broadwell, according to a senior American official. The e-mail warned General Allen to be wary of Ms. Kelley and was vaguely threatening. Though he did not know who had written the e-mail, he was concerned and passed it on to Ms. Kelley. She then discussed it with an agent she knew at the F.B.I.’s field office in Tampa, Fla., whose cyber crime unit opened an investigation that eventually linked Ms. Broadwell to General Petraeus.
“Some were of an affectionate nature,” the official said, adding that it was unclear whether the flirtatiousness expressed was from General Allen to Ms. Kelley, from Ms. Kelley to General Allen, or mutual. A senior law enforcement official in Washington said Tuesday that F.B.I. investigators, looking into Ms. Kelley’s complaint about anonymous e-mails she had received, examined all of her e-mails as a routine step. Officials familiar with the investigation said it covers 20,000 to 30,000 page of documents, but Pentagon officials cautioned against making too much of that number, since some might be from e-mail chains, or brief messages printed out on a whole page.
“That is what makes the e-mails potentially inappropriate,” he said. On Monday night, F.B.I. agents searched Ms. Broadwell’s home in Charlotte, N.C., and local television news crews filmed them carrying away boxes of material in what officials said was part of that continuing investigation.
The official said that he had not read the e-mails, but had been briefed on the content, and that they did not contain anything inappropriate regarding operations or security. The defense official said that the e-mails between Ms. Kelley and General Allen spanned the years 2010 to 2012.
But there were conflicting assessments of the content of the e-mails. Associates of General Allen said that the e-mails were of an innocuous nature. Some of the e-mails, these associates said, used terms of endearment, but not in a flirtatious way. American officials familiar with the social dynamics at the upper echelons of the Central Command described Ms. Kelley as wealthy socialite who knew “almost every” high- ranking officer serving in Tampa. Her ties were close enough that Mr. Petraeus and General Allen both intervened last September in a messy custody dispute on behalf of Jill Kelley’s twin sister, Natalie Khawam.
Pentagon officials cautioned against making too much of the number of documents, since some might be from e-mail chains, or brief messages printed out on a whole page. A senior official said Ms. Kelley was close to both General Allen and his wife. She would often send e-mails, hundreds over the course of any given year, to the couple about parties or people she had met or trips she was considering. General Allen was never alone with Ms. Kelley,  the official said, and while he may have been “affectionate in a few e-mails with her, there’s nothing he’s embarrassed about or embarrassed to tell his wife about.” 
The Pentagon inspector general’s investigation opens up what could be a widening scandal into two of the most prominent generals of their generation: Mr. Petraeus, who was the top commander in Iraq and Afghanistan before he retired from the military and became director of the C.I.A., only to resign on Friday because of the affair, and General Allen, who also served in Iraq and now commands 68,000 American troops in Afghanistan.

Eric Schmitt reported from Washington, and Elisabeth Bumiller from Perth, Australia. Matt Rosenberg, Thom Shanker and Ron Nixon contributed reporting from Washington.

Although General Allen will remain the commander in Afghanistan, Mr. Panetta said that he had asked President Obama to delay the general’s nomination to be the commander of American forces in Europe and the supreme allied commander of NATO, two positions he was to move into after what was expected to be easy confirmation by the Senate. Mr. Panetta said in his statement that Mr. Obama agreed with his request.
Gen. Joseph A. Dunford, the assistant commandant of the Marine Corps, who was nominated last month by Mr. Obama to succeed General Allen in Afghanistan, will proceed as planned with his confirmation hearing. In his statement, Mr. Panetta urged the Senate to act promptly on his nomination.
The National Security Council spokesman, Tommy Vietor, said in a statement on Tuesday that Mr. Obama also believes that the Senate should swiftly confirm General Dunford.
The defense official said that the e-mails between Ms. Kelley and General Allen spanned the years 2010 to 2012. The official could not explain why there were so many pages of e-mails and did not specify their content. The official said he could not explain how the e-mails between Ms. Kelley and General Allen were related to the e-mails between Mr. Petraeus and Ms. Broadwell and e-mails between Ms. Broadwell and Ms. Kelley.
In what is known so far, Ms. Kelley went to the F.B.I. last summer after she was disturbed by harassing e-mails. The F.B.I. began an investigation and learned that the e-mails were from Ms. Broadwell. In the course of looking into Ms. Broadwell’s e-mails, the F.B.I. discovered e-mails between Ms. Broadwell and Mr. Petraeus that indicated they were having an extramarital affair. Ms. Broadwell, officials say, saw Ms. Kelley as a rival for her affections with Mr. Petraeus.
The defense official said he did not know how General Allen and Ms. Kelley knew each other. General Allen has been in Afghanistan as the top American commander since July 2011, although before that he lived in Tampa as the deputy commander for Central Command, which oversees American military operations in the Middle East.
The defense official said that the Pentagon had received the 20,000 to 30,000 pages of documents from the F.B.I. and was currently reviewing them.
The defense official said that at 5 p.m. Washington time on Sunday Mr. Panetta was informed by the Pentagon’s general counsel that the F.B.I. had the thousands of pages of e-mails between General Allen and Ms. Kelley. Mr. Panetta was at the time on his plane en route from San Francisco to Honolulu, his first stop on a weeklong trip to the Pacific and Asia. Mr. Panetta notified the White House and then the leaders of the Senate and House armed services committees.
General Allen is now in Washington for what was to be his confirmation hearing as commander in Europe. That hearing, the official said, will now be delayed.
After arriving in Perth Mr. Panetta and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton met with Prime Minister Julia Gillard of Australia for a United States-Australian security and diplomatic conference. Asked by a reporter while pausing for photos with Mrs. Clinton and Ms. Gillard if General Allen could remain an effective commander while under investigation, Mr. Panetta said nothing.
Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was also in Perth for the defense meetings and had no comment on the investigation of General Allen. “I do know him well and I can’t say,” General Dempsey said of General Allen late on Tuesday after returning from an official dinner with the Australian officials, Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Panetta.

Scott Shane and Thom Shanker contributed reporting from Washington.