The investigation surrounding former CIA Director David Petraeus and his alleged mistress, Paula Broadwell, has now widened to include the commander of allied forces in Afghanistan, General John Allen, and the woman who triggered the investigation, socialite Jill Kelley, who serves as an “unpaid social liaison” to MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa.
Eli MacKinnon of “Life’s Little Mysteries” notes that the phrase unpaid social liaison has been used repeatedly by the media to describe Jill Kelley, the 37-year-old Tampa socialite “…whose complaint about receiving harassing emails led to the investigation of Petraeus. [Kelley] serves as an unpaid social liaison to MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, where the military’s Central Command and Special Operations Command are located.”
News reports don’t detail what Kelley’s position as an unpaid social liaison entails, but her ties to Petraeus and Allen run deep. Kelley and her husband, Scott, a surgeon, became friends with Petraeus when he was stationed at MacDill from 2008 to 2010. Kelley also hosted functions for U.S. Central Command in Tampa, where both Petraeus and Allen worked. For her efforts as an unpaid social liaison, the Associated Press reports that Kelley “earned” an official commendation from the Central Command, including receiving an “appreciation certificate on which she was referred to as an ‘honorary ambassador’ to the coalition.”
“Life’s Little Mysteries” decided to delve deeper into just what the role of an “unpaid social liaison” entails. The transcript of their conversation with an unnamed military spokesperson follows:
LLM: “What does being an unpaid social liaison entail?”
Spokesperson: “I don’t think it entails anything. Someone does some nice things for people, and then they give them a piece of paper and a gift and say thank you.”
LLM: “Are there other unpaid social liaisons in Central Command or is Kelley the only one?”
Spokesperson: “I don’t know. I don’t think it’s a position. It’s like saying CentCom has a green thermos. A green thermos isn’t some official position; there’s no official green thermos. Someone might have considered themselves a green thermos.”
LLM: “How and why would the decision to bestow an ‘honorary ambassador’ status on Kelley have been made?”
Spokesperson: “They probably said, ‘Hey, this nice lady hosted several parties we were at. We had a lot of fun and she seems really nice and does things to help us out, so let’s give her a certificate and make her an honorary ambassador to the coalition.’”
Besides offering ambiguous terminology and some creative double-talk, the military spokesperson effectively dodged answering LLM’s questions about unpaid social liaisons.
As for Jill Kelley, she’s finding out that her “honorary ambassadorship” has limitations. Kelley made calls to police recently in attempts to use her purported “diplomatic protection” to keep the media and public away from her home. In a call to 911, Kelley was quoted as saying “I’m an honorary consul general, so I have inviolability, so they (reporters) should not be able to cross my property. I don’t know if you want to get diplomatic protection involved as well, because that’s against the law to cross my property because, you know, it’s inviolable.”
According to the 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, however, “honorary diplomats receive no specific privileges or protections;” thus, Kelley’s property is not inviolable. And while Kelley supposedly may not be receiving special privileges, her Mercedes Benz S500 does sport special license plates that read “Honorary Consul.” It turns out that Jill Kelley is “honorary consul” to South Korea.
It remains to be seen what the outcome of this expanding investigation will be. For now, Allen’s nomination to become the next commander of U.S. European Command has been put on hold. And the continuing investigation into the 30,000-plus pages of emails between Kelley and Allen have thus far determined them to not be “sexually explicit or seductive,” according to senior U.S. officials, but they do include such pet names as “sweetheart” and “dear.” Perhaps these are just honorary pet names used for honorary consuls like Kelley, but if found to be otherwise, adultery is a crime under the Uniform Code of Military Justice. Let’s hope justice and truth will come out in the end, and that these investigations aren’t just honorary.
Link to article as it appears in print:
http://www.gcnlive.com/wp/2012/11/16/barb-adams-petraeus-affair-now-involves-unpaid-social-liaison/
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