CIA scandal has ‘no impact’ on US national security

US president Barack Obama has said he has no evidence the scandal that ended David Petraeus’s career has had a negative impact on US national security.

In his first public comments on the matter, Obama told a White House news conference that, from what he has seen, no classified information had been disclosed that would harm national security.

He was speaking five days after Petraeus resigned as head of the CIA after disclosing that he had an affair with his biographer Paula Broadwell.

Current Afghanistan commander General John Allen has since become embroiled in the growing scandal.

Petraeus had been set to give evidence to Congress this week on the Sep 11 attack on the US Consulate in Benghazi, in which the US ambassador was killed.

Petraeus, 60, has indicated his willingness to testify, the head of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Dianne Feinstein, said yesterday. No date for the testimony has been set, and Feinstein said it would be limited to the Benghazi attacks.

US officials say Broadwell, 40, sent harassing, anonymous emails to a woman she apparently saw as a rival for Petraeus’s affections. That woman, Jill Kelley, in turn traded sometimes flirtatious email messages with Allen, possible evidence of another inappropriate relationship.

Obama said he did not want to comment on the specifics of the inquiry.

The CIA’s acting director, Michael Morell, has started meeting top Senate intelligence officials to explain the agency’s take on the events which led to Petraeus’s resignation. Politicians are especially concerned over reports that Broadwell had classified information on her laptop, though FBI investigators concluded there was no security breach.

Obama had hoped to use yesterday’s news conference, his first since his re-election, to build support for his economic proposals heading into negotiations with politicians on the so-called fiscal cliff — the year-end, economy-jarring expiry of tax cuts Americans have enjoyed for a decade, combined with automatic across-the-board reductions in spending for the military and domestic programmes.

But the scandal threatened to overshadow his economic agenda this week and complicate war planning during a critical time in the Afghanistan war effort.

Allen has been allowed to stay in his job and provide a leading voice in White House discussions on how many troops will remain in Afghanistan, and for what purposes, after US-led combat operations end in 2014.

The White House said the investigation would not delay Allen’s recommendation to Obama on the next phase of the US troop drawdown from Afghanistan, nor would it delay the president’s decision on the matter. Allen’s recommendation is expected before the end of the year.

But Obama put on hold Allen’s nomination to become the next commander of US European Command, as well as the Nato supreme allied commander in Europe, at the request of defence secretary Leon Panetta, until Pentagon investigators sift through the 20,000-plus pages of documents and emails that involve him and Kelley.