David Petraeus
David Howell Petraeus is a retired United States Army general who served as the fourth director of the Central Intelligence Agency from September 2011 until his resignation in November 2012. Prior to his assuming the directorship of the CIA, Petraeus served 37 years in the United States Army. His last assignments in the Army were as commander of the International Security Assistance Force and commander, U.S. Forces – Afghanistan from July 2010 to July 2011. His other four-star assignments include serving as the 10th commander, U.S. Central Command from October 2008 to June 2010, and as commanding general, Multi-National Force – Iraq from February 2007 to September 2008. As commander of MNF-I, Petraeus oversaw all coalition forces in Iraq.
Petraeus was the General George C. Marshall Award winner as the top graduate of the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College class of 1983. He later served as assistant professor of international relations at the United States Military Academy and also completed a fellowship at Georgetown University. Since 2022, he has taught courses in international relations at Yale University as a Kissinger Senior Fellow of the university's Jackson Institute for Global Affairs.
Petraeus has repeatedly stated that he has no plans to run for elected political office. On 23 June 2010, president Barack Obama nominated Petraeus to succeed General Stanley McChrystal as commanding general of the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan, technically a step down from his position as Commander of United States Central Command, which oversees the military efforts in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Central Asia, the Arabian Peninsula, and Egypt.
On 30 June 2011, Petraeus was unanimously confirmed as the director of the CIA by the U.S. Senate 94–0. Petraeus relinquished command of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan on 18 July 2011, and retired from the U.S. Army on 31 August 2011. On 9 November 2012, he resigned from his position as director of the CIA, citing his extramarital affair with his biographer Paula Broadwell, which was discovered in the course of an Federal Bureau of Investigation investigation. In January 2015, officials reported that the FBI and the Department of Justice prosecutors had recommended bringing felony charges against Petraeus for providing classified information to Broadwell while serving as director of the CIA. Eventually, Petraeus pleaded guilty to one misdemeanor charge of mishandling classified information. He was later sentenced to two years of probation and fined US$100,000 for the unauthorized removal and retention of classified material he gave to Broadwell.
Early life and family
Petraeus was born in Cornwall-on-Hudson, New York, the son of Miriam Sweet, a librarian, and Sixtus Petraeus, a sea captain. His father was a Dutch merchant mariner who immigrated to the United States at the start of World War II, from Franeker, the Netherlands, and his mother was American, a resident of Brooklyn, New York. They met at the Seamen's Church Institute of New York and New Jersey and married. Sixtus Petraeus commanded a Liberty ship for the U.S. for the duration of World War II. The family moved after the war, settling in Cornwall-on-Hudson, where Petraeus grew up and graduated from Cornwall Central High School in 1970.Petraeus went on to the United States Military Academy at West Point. Petraeus was on the intercollegiate soccer and ski teams, was a cadet captain on the brigade staff, and was a "distinguished cadet" academically, graduating in the top 5% of the Class of 1974. In the class yearbook, Petraeus was remembered as "always going for it in sports, academics, leadership, and even his social life".
While a cadet, Petraeus started dating the daughter of Army General William A. Knowlton, Holly. Two months after Petraeus graduated, they married. Holly, who is multi-lingual, was a National Merit Scholar in high school, and graduated summa cum laude from Dickinson College. They have a daughter and son, Anne and Stephen. Petraeus administered the oath of office at his son's 2009 commissioning into the Army after his son's graduation from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His son went on to serve as an officer in Afghanistan as a member of 3rd Platoon, Alpha Company, 1st Battalion, 503rd Infantry Regiment, 173rd Airborne Brigade Combat Team.
Petraeus's residence is a small property in the Springfield, New Hampshire, which his wife inherited from her family. Petraeus once told a friend that he was a Rockefeller Republican.
Education and academia
Petraeus graduated from West Point in 1974, receiving a B.S. degree in Military Science. He earned the General George C. Marshall Award as the top graduate of the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College Class of 1983 at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. He subsequently earned an M.P.A. degree in 1985 and a Ph.D. in international relations and economics in 1987 from Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, where he was mentored by Richard H. Ullman, an international relations scholar and progressive commentator.At that time, he also served as an assistant professor of international relations at the U.S. Military Academy from 1985 to 1987. His doctoral dissertation was titled "The American Military and the Lessons of Vietnam: A Study of Military Influence and the Use of Force in the Post-Vietnam Era". He completed a military fellowship at Georgetown University's Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service in 1994–1995, although he was called away early to serve in Haiti as the Chief of Operations for NATO there in early 1995.
From late 2005 through February 2007, Petraeus served as commanding general of Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, and the U.S. Army Combined Arms Center located there. As commander of CAC, Petraeus was responsible for oversight of the Command and General Staff College and seventeen other schools, centers, and training programs as well as for developing the Army's doctrinal manuals, training the Army's officers, and supervising the Army's center for the collection and dissemination of lessons learned. During his time at CAC, Petraeus and Marine Lt. Gen. James F. Amos jointly oversaw the publication of Field Manual 3–24, Counterinsurgency, the body of which was written by an unusually diverse group of military officers, academics, human rights advocates, and journalists who had been assembled by Petraeus and Amos.
At both Fort Leavenworth and throughout the military's schools and training programs, Petraeus integrated the study of counterinsurgency into lesson plans and training exercises. In recognition of the fact that soldiers in Iraq often performed duties far different from those for which they trained, Petraeus stressed the importance of teaching soldiers how to think and how to fight, and the need to foster flexibility and adaptability in leaders.
Petraeus called this change the most significant part of The Surge, saying in 2016, "the surge that mattered most was the surge of ideas. It was the change of strategy, and in many respects, this represented quite a significant change to what it was we were doing before the surge." Petraeus has been called "the world's leading expert in counter-insurgency warfare". Later, having refined his ideas on counterinsurgency based on the implementation of the new counterinsurgency doctrine in Iraq, he published both in Iraq as well as in the Sep/Oct 2008 edition of Military Review his "Commander's Counterinsurgency Guidance" to help guide leaders and units in the Multi-National Force-Iraq.
Military operations
1970s
Upon his graduation from West Point in 1974, Petraeus was commissioned an infantry officer. After completing Ranger School, Petraeus was assigned to the 509th Airborne Battalion Combat Team, a light infantry unit stationed in Vicenza, Italy. Ever since, light infantry has been at the core of his career, punctuated by assignments to mechanized units, unit commands, staff assignments, and educational institutions. After leaving the 509th as a first lieutenant, Petraeus began a brief association with mechanized units when he became assistant operations officer on the staff of the 2nd Brigade, 24th Infantry Division, at Fort Stewart, Georgia. In 1979, he assumed command of a company in the same division: A Company, 2nd Battalion, 19th Infantry Regiment, and then served as that battalion's operations officer, a major's position that he held as a junior captain.1980s
In 1981, Petraeus became aide-de-camp to General John Galvin, then commanding general of the 24th Infantry Division. He spent the next few years furthering his military and civilian education, including spending 1982–83 at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, attending the Command and General Staff College. At graduation in 1983, he was the General George C. Marshall Award winner as the top graduate of the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College. From 1983 to 1985, he was at Princeton; and 1985–87 at West Point.After earning his Ph.D. and teaching at West Point, Petraeus continued up the command ladder, serving as military assistant to Gen. John Galvin, the Supreme Allied Commander in Europe. From there, he moved to the 3rd Infantry Division. During 1988–1989, he served as operations officer to the 3rd Infantry Division 's 30th Infantry Regiment. He was then posted as an aide and assistant executive officer to the U.S. Army Chief of Staff, General Carl Vuono, in Washington, D.C.
1990s
Upon promotion to lieutenant colonel, Petraeus moved from the office of the chief of staff to Fort Campbell, Kentucky, where he commanded the 101st Airborne Division 's 3rd Battalion 187th Infantry Regiment, known as the "Iron Rakkasans", from 1991 to 1993. In 1991 he was accidentally shot in the chest with an M-16 rifle during a live-fire exercise when a soldier tripped and his rifle discharged. He was taken to Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Nashville, Tennessee, where he was operated on by future U.S. Senator Bill Frist. The hospital released him early after he did fifty push-ups without resting, just a few days after the accident.During 1993–94, Petraeus continued his long association with the 101st Airborne Division as the division's assistant chief of staff, G-3 and installation director of plans, training, and mobilization. In 1995, he was assigned to the United Nations Mission in Haiti Military Staff as its chief operations officer during Operation Uphold Democracy. His next command, from 1995 to 1997, was the 1st Brigade, 82nd Airborne Division, centered on the 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment. At that post, his brigade's training cycle at Fort Polk's Joint Readiness Training Center for low-intensity warfare was chronicled by novelist and military enthusiast Tom Clancy in his book Airborne.
From 1997 to 1999, Petraeus served in the Pentagon as executive assistant to the director of the Joint Staff and then to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Gen. Henry Shelton, who described Petraeus as "a high-energy individual who likes to lead from the front, in any field, he is going into". In 1999, as a brigadier general, Petraeus returned to the 82nd, serving as the assistant division commander for operations and then, briefly, as acting commanding general. During his time with the 82nd, he deployed to Kuwait as part of Operation Desert Spring, the continuous rotation of combat forces through Kuwait during the decade after the Gulf War.