David Petraeus Is Sentenced to Probation in Leak Investigation
By MICHAEL S. SCHMIDT and MATT APUZZO

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — A federal judge on Thursday sentenced David H. Petraeus, a former C.I.A. director and the highest-profile general from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, to two years’ probation for providing classified information to a woman with whom he was having an affair.

Mr. Petraeus was also fined $100,000, more than double the amount the Justice Department had requested.

The sentencing was a disappointing one for F.B.I. officials, who believed that Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. had given Mr. Petraeus preferential treatment by allowing him to plead guilty to a misdemeanor and recommending that he receive probation instead of prison time. Federal judges are not bound by such recommendations, but they almost always follow them.

Although the judge overseeing the case, David C. Keesler of United States District Court for the Western District of North Carolina, agreed to the probation sentence, he added $60,000 to the government’s suggested fine of $40,000. Judge Keesler did not give an extensive explanation for why he raised the fine, saying it was necessary because of “the seriousness of the offense.”

But he appeared unsatisfied earlier in the hearing when lawyers for Mr. Petraeus and federal prosecutors said that the amount they had come up with “wasn’t scientific,” and that they could not explain how they had settled on it.

For much of the hearing, Mr. Petraeus, 62, sat at a long table in front of the judge, flanked by David Kendall, one of the most respected and highly paid defense lawyers in Washington, and two junior lawyers. He stood briefly several times to answer questions from Judge Keesler, including when he made a short statement near the end of the hearing.

“I want to take this opportunity to apologize to those closest to me and others, including this court, for the pain my actions have caused,” Mr. Petraeus said.

As part of the plea agreement, Mr. Petraeus admitted that he gave his lover, Paula Broadwell, who was writing a biography about him, black notebooks that contained sensitive information about official meetings, war strategy and intelligence capabilities, as well as the names of covert officers.

According to court documents, he discussed the black books during an interview that Ms. Broadwell taped with Mr. Petraeus while she was working on the biography, telling her, “They are highly classified, some of them.”

Three weeks later, he gave her the notebooks.

In 2012, the F.B.I. opened a cyberstalking investigation after a friend of Mr. Petraeus’s reported to the authorities that she was receiving threatening messages from someone who appeared to know a lot about Mr. Petraeus’s whereabouts. It was later revealed that the person sending the messages was Ms. Broadwell.

During that investigation, Mr. Petraeus was questioned by F.B.I. agents at the C.I.A. headquarters, where he was serving as director. As part of his plea, Mr. Petraeus admitted that he misled the agents by telling them that he had not given Ms. Broadwell classified information.

Three days after President Obama was re-elected in November 2012, Mr. Petraeus resigned, admitting to the affair but saying he had done nothing illegal.

Mr. Petraeus had been a vocal advocate for the close protection of classified information by government officials. “Oaths do matter,” he said in October 2012 after a C.I.A. officer accepted a plea agreement for disclosing sensitive information, “and there are indeed consequences for those who believe they are above the laws that protect our fellow officers and enable American intelligence agencies to operate with the requisite degree of secrecy.”

The officer later received a 30-month sentence.

Mr. Petraeus’s lawyers have argued that the disclosure of the notebooks to Ms. Broadwell was not as severe as the misdeeds of others whom the Obama administration has prosecuted in a crackdown on leaks, because the information was never made public. But some in the F.B.I. and the Justice Department contended that Mr. Holder’s treatment of Mr. Petraeus represented a double standard, arguing that if he had been a lower-level official, he almost certainly would have gone to prison.

F.B.I. officials were particularly angry over what they viewed as Mr. Holder’s not backing up their agents and allowing Mr. Petraeus to get away with lying to them. For all the high-profile national security, cybercrime and organized crime cases that the bureau leads, its officials believe that its most important function is the ability to gather accurate information from the public.

To protect that function, the Justice Department routinely prosecutes terrorists, politicians, drug dealers and even celebrities. In 2007, the track star Marion Jones was sentenced to six months in prison for making false statements to the federal authorities.

At the beginning of the hearing, the judge asked Mr. Petraeus a series of questions about whether he understood the plea agreement. As part of those questions, the judge asked whether he thought he had received adequate legal representation.

“It has been superb,” Mr. Petraeus said.

洩密給情婦 美CIA前局長獲輕判

美國中央情報局（CIA）前局長裴卓斯廿三日對「不當處理機密資料」的輕罪指控認罪，承認自己不當地取走並保存機密資料，把資料交給為他寫自傳的情婦寶拉．布洛德威爾，北卡羅來納州西區地方法院法官判他緩刑兩年，並須支付十萬美元罰款，是司法部建議的四萬美元罰款的二點五倍。

判決結果讓調查此案的美國聯邦調查局（FBI）幹員憤怒，他們相信司法部長霍德偏袒裴卓斯，允許他對輕罪指控認罪並建議法官判他緩刑。雖然霍德的建議對法官沒有拘束力，但法官最後仍大部分採納。法官說，加重罰款是為了顯示「犯法的嚴重性」。

FBI幹員認為法官應該判得更重，因為裴卓斯不僅洩密，還對執法人員說謊。2012年十月，FBI幹員到裴卓斯的CIA局長辦公室盤問他時，裴卓斯說他從未洩密給布洛德威爾。依美國法律，對正在查案的聯邦執法人員說謊是重罪，最高可處五年徒刑。廿三日法官對裴卓斯說，他曾「不誠實」，他的行為「構成一次嚴重的判斷失誤」。

裴卓斯坦承和布洛德威爾有婚外情後，2012年十一月辭去CIA局長一職。

原文參照：
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/24/us/david-petraeus-to-be-sentenced-in-leak-investigation.html

紐約時報中文版翻譯：
http://cn.nytimes.com/usa/20150424/c24petraeus/zh-hant/

2015-04-25．聯合報．A17．國際．編譯李京倫