A federal agent who sent topless pictures of himself to the woman at the center of the Petraeus and General Allen scandals was told to 'stay the hell away' from the investigation but took it upon himself to 'nose around', it was revealed today.
After receiving a half dozen harassing emails from an anonymous account - but later linked to Petraeus' mistress Paula Broadwell, Jill Kelley, the Florida woman who served as a volunteer social liaison officer at the Tampa military base, contacted a male FBI agent that she knew and had previously worked with.
During a prior exchange, when the agent was trying to establish a friendly relationship with the married mother-of-three, he sent her shirtless photos of himself adding to questions over his true intention behind going above-and-beyond his work duties to help her with the threats.
Because he was not a part of the cybercrime unit at the FBI nor did he have any training regarding electronic threats, he was never assigned to the case once he brought it to the agency's attention yet he still felt it necessary to involve himself.
The New York Times reports that an unidentified senior official said that the agent's superiors 'told him to stay the hell away from it, and he was not invited to briefings'.
The FBI declined to identify the agent, who is now under an internal investigation by the agency's Office of Professional Responsibility.
Shortly thereafter, the agent was barred from the case over concerns that he 'might have grown obsessed with the matter,' the Wall Street Journal reports.
Even after he was prohibited from involvement in the case, the agent, described as Right wing, decided to contact Republican congressman David Reichert about the matter because he assumed that the investigation had stalled. Reichert then told fellow Republican Rep. Eric Cantor.
The Times says that the agent's 'worldview' made him believe that the issue was being kept quiet to help President Obama, as the entire investigation took place in the months leading up to his re-election.
He complained that senior FBI officials were going to 'sweep the matter under the rug,' the FBI learned.
What the agent didn't know was that investigators had traced the harassing emails back to accounts used by Broadwell, David Petraeus' 40-year-old married biographer.
In one of the emails, Broadwell accused Kelley of touching 'him' underneath a table and another email asked if Kelley's husband was aware of her actions, according to the newspaper.
Kelley, 37, is a volunteer who organizes social events for military families in the Tampa area. She often hosts the events at her million-dollar Bayshore Boulevard home, which is located only a couple miles from MacDill Air Force base, where Petraeus was leader of the U.S. Central Command.
'The Kelley mansion became the place to be seen for coalition officers,' according to the Tampa Bay Times.
Kelley's husband, Dr. Scott Kelley, is a highly sought-after surgeon who specializes in a rare type of minimally invasive surgery to cure cancer of the esophagus.
Since the Kelleys have been in Tampa, one or both have been subjects of lawsuits nine times — including an $11,000 judgment against them that originated in Pennsylvania, according to the Tampa Bay Times.
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