Lawmaker: Reopen probe into Gen. Allen, Jill Kelley emails

Rep. Jackie Speier (D-Calif.) is urging the Pentagon to reopen
the investigation into whether Gen. John Allen violated military rules in his email
interactions with Tampa socialite Jill Kelley.

The California Democrat says the Pentagon inspector general’s
report was not thorough and failed to look into private email exchanges between
the two, in an interview with USA Today published on Monday.

“The fact that they didn’t even pursue accessing the
private emails is very disturbing to me,” Speier said. “Because it
would suggest that it was an incomplete investigation at the very least. At the
worst: [they were] intentionally not pursuing an investigation into whether or
not there was an inappropriate relationship, secrecy, national-security
breaches. Classified information.”

Speier said Allen refused to turn over personal email
exchanges with Kelley, limiting the probe.

{mosads}Kelley and Allen’s relationship came under scrutiny
after Kelley complained to a friend who worked for the FBI about harassing
emails she had received. Those emails were revealed to have come from Paula
Broadwell, the biographer and mistress of then-CIA director David Petraeus.
Broadwell was concerned that Kelley had been flirtatious toward Petraeus.

During the investigation into Petraeus, FBI investigators
discovered emails between Kelley and Allen, who replaced Petraeus as top
commander in Afghanistan. That led to a delay of Allen’s nomination as Supreme
Allied Commander for Europe as investigators examined their relationship.

The Pentagon inspector general’s report later exonerated
Allen, but the four star general retired earlier this year.

Speier, though, said the volume of emails exchanged
between Kelley and Allen — some 3,000 between July 2010 and July 2012 — meant
their private exchanges were deserving of more scrutiny.

“So that’s two years, 1,500 emails a year,” Speier
told the newspaper. “I don’t think I communicate with my husband by email
more than 150 times a year. That’s a lot of emails. This is a four-star general
in the middle of a war zone. The most disturbing part of my discussion with
them was that they requested access to his private email and were denied
access and took it no further.”

Kelley and Allen have maintained there was nothing improper
with their relationship, and the Pentagon said in a statement to USA Today that
there was nothing to suggest that the initial findings of the inspector general
should be revisited.