The FBI found a substantial amount of classified information improperly secured on the personal computer of disgraced CIA director Gen. David Petraeus’ mistress, sources said yesterday.
The files were discovered on a machine removed from Paula Broadwell’s Charlotte, NC, home as the feds investigated her sordid affair with the military commander whose biography she co-wrote.
Investigators also found documents Broadwell admitted taking from secure government buildings, a source told ABC News, adding the government demanded that they all be returned.
AP
MATA ‘HOTTIE’: David Petraeus with biographer and mistress Paula Broadwell, whose computer was seized with unsecured secret information on it, sources revealed.
The network said the FBI and military were going through the material this morning and prosecutors were deciding whether to charge her with a crime.
“That’s why they were pulling so much stuff out of [Broadwell’s] place,” a source said, referring to a search carried out Monday night, three days after Petraeus quit as top spy because of their affair.
The discoveries prompted the FBI to step up its probe of Broadwell, who anonymously sent harassing e-mails to Florida mom Jill Kelley — a married “friend” of the four-star general.
Broadwell’s top-secret stash was revealed shortly after President Obama told a press conference, “I’ve seen no evidence at this point from what I’ve seen that classified information was disclosed in any way that would have had a negative impact on our national security.”
Broadwell, a former intelligence officer, yesterday had her high security clearance suspended by the Army, an official said.
Petraeus is expected to testify tomorrow at a closed congressional hearing about the Sept. 11 killing of US Ambassador Chris Stevens in Benghazi, Libya.
Meanwhile, the FBI-agent friend of Kelley who jump-started the probe was identified as Frederick Humphries II — a counter-terrorism investigator who previously worked on the case of the “millennium” plot at Los Angeles International Airport.
Kelley — who met Humphries at an FBI Citizens” Academy, a program that shows the public how the agency works — told him she received e-mails earlier this year warning her to stay away from Petraeus.
The ensuing FBI probe uncovered Petraeus’ affair with Broadwell.
Humphries, who was not assigned to the case, notified a Washington state congressman of the probe last month after becoming concerned it was being quashed for political reasons.
Humphries at one point e-mailed a picture of himself bare-chested to Kelley — and is now under investigation by the FBI’s Office of Professional Responsibility.
The bureau said it is also poring through hundreds of “flirtatious” and “inappropriate” e-mails between Kelley and US Marine Gen. John Allen, who replaced Petraeus as the top US commander in Afghanistan.
He and Petraeus both wrote letters to a judge on behalf of Kelley’s twin sister Natalie Khawam, who was seeking unrestricted visitation with her 4-year-old son and was described by a judge as mentally unstable.
Allen’s appointment as the next commander of NATO forces in Europe is now on hold.
Broadwell has apparently been proud of her access to secret government information, boasting in a July speech at the Aspen Security Conference in Colorado that she was a military reservist “with a top secret” sensitive compartmented information clearance.
She referred to Petraeus as “quite a physical specimen,” during an interview at the conference.
In another development, Petraeus has told his former spokesman, retired Army Col. Steven Boylan, that Broadwell is the only mistress he ever had, according to the National Journal.
Boylan said the affair began in November 2011 — two months after he became director of central intelligence — and ended “four, 4 1/2 months ago.”
Asked yesterday about the FBI waiting months to alert him to the affair, Obama said, “I am withholding judgment with respect to how the entire process surrounding Gen. Petraeus came up. We don’t have all the information yet.”
The president became animated when asked about a threat by top Republican Sens. John McCain and Lindsay Graham to block his possible secretary of state nominee, US Ambassador Susan Rice, over claims she initially misled Congress about what led to the Benghazi terror attack.
“If Sen. McCain and Sen. Graham and others want to go after somebody, they should go after me,” he said.
Additional reporting by S.A. Miller and Gerry Shields
dan.mangan@nypost.com
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