spent a year over in afghanistan. so, you know, in washington, unfortunately, any sort of competent woman has that sort of access and is successful there, is bound to be snipping and gossiping. i don't think anybody took it seriously. he seemed beyond reproach. he worked incredible hard, incredibly confident. dianne feinstein called his resignation tragic. i think that's right. it's a real loss to the country. this aside, right. so you asked suzanne when would the white house have known? whenever the fbi opens an investigation of a narrow fishl, they have to make notifications of that, especially if there is some counterintelligence concern. we've heard that would have wen to jim clap either who would have notified the national security adviser or chief of staff. they would have been aware of this, because of the very concern of a breach of some sort of national security information that they were investigating. >> bob, i know you say this is an extraordinary event. the fact that they were investigating, does that add

she later travelled to afghanistan, interviewed petraeus, sometimes going running with him. interviews that led to the book "all in the education of general david petraeus." the revelation about the affair is bringing new interest in all the interviews broadwell did to promote the book and what she said about petraeus at that time. take a look. >> he at the end of the day is a human, and is challenged by the burdens of command and has mastered wearing the mask of command, if you will. so he has this mask of command, you think he's really confident, but i got to see a more personal side. i'm not in love with david petraeus. >> he is quite a physical specimen. he really loves to work out. i think at the agency they call him a genetic mutant. this project started as my dissertation. i was working with general petraeus virtually, doing interviews via e-mail. occasionally running with him and interviewing. i'm not a spokesperson for him. if showing a role model to other people in the world or other readers is a repugnant thing, i'm sorry, but i think the values he upholds and tri

commander in afghanistan. general john allen and the manner has been referred to the defense department inspector general. that official said the department is reviewing tens of thousands of e-mails and that inappropriate behavior with general seth the air force base for she did volunteer work for the story gets stranger and there is no denying david petraeus had all. a seat at the top of u.s. intelligence and a long marriage to the father two children, now adults. why did he put all that on the line by having an extramarital affair? only he can answer that question. history will forever note he was forced from power by his behavior and in that respect he is not a long. here is marcus' average. >> reporter: politics and sex scandals are nothing new. they date back to our country's beginning. >> if we wanted to see what our founding fathers behavior was like in philadelphia in 1776, we may not like all the answers. loss >> reporter: more recently, president john f. kennedy's affairs were notorious. lyndon johns

petraeus is a highly respected, four-star general who commanded forces in both iraq and afghanistan. he was sworn in to run the cia a little over a year ago with vice president biden with his wife holly at his side. that was the swearing in. they've been married 35 years, have two grown kids. so how will this revelation impact the committee? member of the cia's external advisory committee, and also cnn's officer, and intelligence correspondent. susan, let's start with you. what can you tell us about this probe with paula broadwell. what would the fbi have been looking for, and do we know how long this was going on for? >> we don't know how long it was going on, but just the -- so they're the ones that would look into classification, they look into hold clearances. are they doing what they need to be doing to make sure that information stays safe. is there any opportunity that that information could be exploited by either a spy or anyone else who shouldn't have access to that information. so the fact they were the ones looking into this tells us they were concerned about some e-mail t

sorts of documents going back from his time, you know, when he was commanding in iraq, commanding in afghanistan, you know, and now at the cia, so it would not be surprising that he would have kept documents, at some point when he left government he could go back and write a book of his own. so i suspect some of it is supporting historical documents from the time she wrote the first book, planning as suzanne suggested background for the second book, and frankly, just historical documents that he wanted maintained and kept for the time when he left government. >> jonathan, at this point i keep trying to take a step back from this and try to think is this just some salacious story or is there real significance here, and i'm not sure i know the answer to this. at this point, what do you feel like you still want to know? >> well, right now, this is sort of a greek tragedy without a redeeming character. there's nobody that's looking particularly good but that doesn't mean that they look like felons. the way it looks to me as a criminal defense attorney is there's no clear evidence of a crime. i'm sur