Frederick W. Humphries, Shirtless-Photo Agent In Petraeus Affair, Once Saved LAX
Gosh.
Seattle Times
The editorial staff at LA Weekly world headquarters has been waiting for this for days now.
A local angle to the David Patraeus affair! (Why should Tampa have all the fun?). It turns out the guy who helped spark the whole mess, the FBI agent who emailed a topless photo of himself to Tampa socialite Jill Kelley is ...
... the man who saved Los Angeles!
Seriously. The guy saved LAX. Sort of.
When millennium bomber Ahmed Ressam hit the Canadian border in 1999 with tools of destruction in his vehicle, it was Humphries who cracked the case and quickly discovered the man was worthy of suspicion, detention, and investigation. Ressam had intended to set off a bomb at LAX.
Humphries is also the guy who set off the investigation of CIA Director Petraeus, who resigned last week after the extramarital affair with his biographer, Paula Broadwell, was revealed to President Obama.
You see, Humphries, now based in Tampa, was friends with Broadwell's email target, Kelley. So close, in fact, that there has been chatter about their relationship, particularly in light of the fact that he had sent her a shirtless photo of himself.
However: The Seattle Times says said photo, of Humphries posing between shirtless "target dummies" that do look like him, was meant to be tongue-in-cheek, not sexual, and was sent to many of his friends.
Anywho, Kelly says she received threatening emails from Broadwell, who might have believed the socialite was after her lover, Petraeus.
Kelly asked Humphries to look into it, and the FBI investigated, taking him off the case because he was too close to her.
Turns out Petraeus and Broadwell shared a Gmail account under his name. The idea was that they could write messages in draft mode to each other without leaving a digital trail.
In investigating the allegedly threatening emails to Kelly, however, the FBI figured out that Petraeus was having an affair. Investigaters were concerned that national security could be compromised and continued to probe.
Yada-yada-yada, Patraeus out.
[@dennisjromero / djromero@laweekly.com / @LAWeeklyNews]
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