General Petraeus’ mistress suggested during a speech in October that the deadly attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi was carried out to free Libyan militia members held captive by the CIA:
Now I don’t know if a lot of you heard this, but the CIA annex had actually — had taken a couple of Libyan militia members prisoner and they think that the attack on the consulate was an effort to try to get these prisoners back. So that’s still being vetted.
The apparent knowledge of classified CIA information was revealed as she responded to a question from the audience at a University of Denver alumni symposium (see above; the comment in question comes at 1:10). Now, in light of the affair, her comments have received intense scrutiny.
The CIA denies the suggestion of prisoners, telling the Daily Beast:
The CIA has not had detention authority since January 2009, when Executive Order 13491 was issued. Any suggestion that the Agency is still in the detention business is uninformed and baseless.
Petraeus was scheduled to testify on the September 11, 2012, Benghazi attack this week — but his testimony was canceled (postponed?) in the whirlwind of his resignation as CIA director, which cited his extramarital affair with Broadwell. The timing was curious, to say the least.