Mainstream Media Reveals Identity Of White House Staffer Behind Jill Kelley Visits First Identified By This Blog Six Weeks Ago

Michael Gottlieb

This blog exclusively revealed to you the identity of the White House staffer who invited Tampa Bay socialite Jill Kelley to the White House in the days and weeks prior to this year's election when the White House claimed it still knew nothing about the ongoing investigation of CIA Director David Petraeus' affair with his biographer Paula Broadwell six weeks ago. It wasn't difficult to discover that there was only one White House attorney, Michael Gottlieb, who had mysteriously taken leave of his job at the White House to work in Afghanistan as a civilian attorney during the same period Gen. Petraeus was still in command of our troops there. All of the mainstream news reporters covering the Petraeus scandal ignored this blog's report identifying Gottlieb as the person who invited Kelley to the White House. Politico now reveals Michael Gottlieb's identity based on newly-released White House records without asking further questions about the timing of Kelley's visits to meet with him:

The mystery staffer who invited Tampa socialite Jill Kelley to visit the White House is a special assistant to President Barack Obama and an associate counsel focusing on national security issues.

Mike Gottlieb, who has been with the administration since Obama took office, twice had breakfast with Kelley and her sister in the White House dining hall.

White House officials confirmed last month that Kelley had visited a "mid-level staffer" but declined to name the staffer. Visitor log records released Friday identify Gottlieb.

It's unclear how Gottlieb met Kelley, one of the women at the center of the scandal that led to the resignation of Gen. David Petraeus.

But Kelley frequently socialized with top military brass stationed at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Fla., home to the military’s Central Command and Special Operations Command.

And the Central Command website says Gottlieb was detailed from the White House for a time to a joint interagency task force focusing on detainee operations in Afghanistan. He was in Kabul from January 2010 through March 2011, according to a biography.

Gottlieb, as a White House employee, is allowed to bring guests to dine in the White House mess — basically an employee cafeteria.

The White House was spying on Petraeus at least as far back as the date Gottlieb arrived in Afghanistan under the cover of working as a civilian attorney there.  When will the media call the Obama administration out for covering up its knowledge of his affair with Broadwell long before the date it claimed Obama first learned of it--the day after the election? When will it ask questions about why it concealed such damning information about the nation's top spy until after the election? And when will someone finally figure out who Jill Kelley has really been working for? If this were 1972, Watergate would have been a one-week story that Richard Nixon would have survived.

Wow! Obama Really Did Want To Do In General Petraeus

There's a lot of buzz about a scoop the Washington Post's Bob Woodward got on an interview Fox News analyst and former Pentagon aide under three Republican presidents, Kathleen McFarland, had with Gen. David Petraeus in Kabul back in 2011 as his command there was winding down. The focus of Woodward's and other mainstream media reports has been on a message Fox News President Roger Ailes had supposedly asked to be delivered to Petraeus encouraging him to jump in the Republican presidential race and even offering to leave his post at Fox News to run his campaign. McFarland even suggested to Petraeus that Rupert Murdoch would help bankroll his campaign. None of it made much sense and Ailes is laughing it off as a joke. "It was more of a joke, a wiseass way I have,” Ailes said. “I thought the Republican field [in the primaries] needed to be shaken up and Petraeus might be a good candidate.” What's unclear is why McFarland turned over a digital recording of their interview, which Petraeus cleared with her on several occasions was off-the-record, to Bob Woodward.

The major point missed in the mainstream media was a discussion McFarland had with Petraeus about the Obama administration's feelings toward him. McFarland shared with Petraeus the gossip she was hearing that Obama was concerned that Petraeus might be interested in jumping into the 2012 Republican presidential race or four years later in 2016. McFarland shared with Petraeus that Obama's folks wanted to make sure that didn't happen and were making calculations about what they could do to keep Petraeus out of either the 2012 or 2016 presidential races. Interestingly, according to the gossip McFarland had picked up on, the Obama folks were equally concerned about 2016 when it would be critical to win a third term. Of course, constitutionally Obama is barred from seeking a third term. Presumably she meant getting someone of like mind to succeed him in order to continue his agenda for another four years to lock up an entire generation of Obama rule, but with Obama's dictatorial and anti-democratic views, anything is possible I suppose. He did, after all, manage to get elected despite not being a natural born citizen as required by the Constitution and campaigning on a patently false biographical narrative--a first in American presidential politics.

Petraeus made it clear to McFarland he wasn't interested in running for president, although he clearly was flattered by the talk from the tone in his voice. "My wife would divorce me," he said. "And I love my wife." McFarland at one point during the interview sought to ingratiate him further with an offering of how “everybody at Fox loves you.” Petraeus said he would gladly settle for the role of Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff or as CIA Director. As he explained, he expected the military to be "retrenching" considerably in the near future, and the real area of expansion would be in intelligence gathering--a "growth industry" as he put it. He said he had a great deal of respect for the people who worked at the CIA, describing them as "unsung heroes." Petraeus candidly told McFarland he was surprised by Obama's interventionist approach in Libya and did not anticipate further interventions elsewhere, perhaps offering a hint of his views on not only the Obama administration's meddling in Libya, but also its current role in efforts to overthrow the Syrian government and escalating threats of a military strike against Iran. To hear McFarland convey the gossip of what was going on in the heads at the White House, the administration was more than happy to pigeon-hole Petraeus at the CIA in an out-of-sight, out-of-mind role that would minimize his political threat to Obama.

McFarland's eye-opening interview with Petraeus makes me more curious about the real role of a White House attorney temporarily assigned to work in Afghanistan as a civilian attorney. When Tampa Bay socialite Jill Kelley was exposed for her role in triggering the investigation of Petraeus' extramarital relationship with his biographer, Paula Broadwell, it was revealed that Kelley had made three trips to the White House in the days and weeks prior to the November election and Petreaus' ouster as CIA Director following public disclosure of the affair two days after the election. A White House attorney who had worked as a civilian attorney in Afghanistan and had been introduced to Kelley by high-ranking military officials at MacDill Air Force Bases had reportedly arranged for her visits to the White House. My research uncovered only one attorney on the White House counsel's staff who had worked in Afghanistan during the period of time Petraeus was still commanding our troops there--Michael Gottlieb. According to a speech Gottlieb delivered to graduates of Northwestern University's School of Communications earlier this year, he had been asked by a brigadier general in the Army, who was in charge of detainees in Afghanistan, to come to work for him there. It turns out that a Harvard classmate of Obama, Mark Martins, happened to be the brigadier Army general who served in that role in Afghanistan during Gottlieb's assignment there.

If McFarland's gossip about the Obama administration's concern on the perceived threat posed to Obama by Petraeus, it makes one wonder if there wasn't an ulterior motive to dispatch a White House attorney to Kabul to keep a closer eye on Petreaus. Appointing Petraeus as CIA Director in 2011 took care of Obama's perceived threat in 2012. Exposing his relationship with Paula Broadwell took care of his political ambitions for 2016 and beyond. It still boggles my mind to think that McFarland breached her confidence with Petraeus by not only discussing the content of her off-the-record conversation with Petraeus, but giving a digital copy of her recorded interview to Bob Woodward. Woodward doesn't state in his story that he got the digital recording from her, but I can't imagine he obtained the recording from the only other person in the room--Gen. Petraeus. Other news reports suggest Petraeus had no idea McFarland was recording the interview.

UPDATE: McFarland now claims she did not record the interview and does not know how a recording of her interview with Petraeus made it into the hands of Woodward. She says there were two other people in the room in addition to her and Petraeus:

I realize conspiracy theorists have used this off-the-record interview to claim it was some plot to put Petraeus in the Oval Office. But it was little more than one defense analyst (me) trading some political gossip and laughs with one of the country’s most important military leaders(Petraeus). 

Perhaps those same conspiracy theorists should ask themselves some different questions. Why was an audiotape created of what was supposed to be an off-the-record interview with just four people in the room, which General Petraeus himself said several times was off the record? I certainly saw no recording device, nor did I give my permission for the interview to be taped. So who taped the interview? Why did they keep it hidden away for the last 18 months? Why was it released at this time to a Washington Post reporter? That is surely more interesting than two people, neither of them politicians, joking around about the presidential campaign. Indeed, this is why they call it the silly season.

Was Paula Broadwell in the room? Did she make a recording and release it to Woodward? Or did the FBI seize the recording during its search of Broadwell's home and computer where reports indicate she was found to be in possession of classified documents and now someone at the agency or within the Obama administration is releasing it to further discredit Petraeus and Fox News?

The White House Attorney Who Knew Jill Kelley: Michael J. Gottlieb?

EXCLUSIVE
As soon as I learned that Jill Kelley knew an attorney working in the Obama White House who arranged her three recent visits to the White House, including a tour of the White House just two days before the election and only days before the White House disclosed that Gen. David Petraeus had resigned as CIA Director because of an extramarital affair he had with his biographer, Paula Broadwell, I became determined to learn who that attorney was. The White House refused to disclose the attorney's name, telling reporters that his name would be disclosed in a few months when White House logs of Jill Kelley's visits to the White House became public. "The man worked as a civilian lawyer in Afghanistan and got to know military personnel, who invited him to MacDill, where he met Kelley. He now works as a lawyer in the White House," the Tampa Bay Times reported.

I thought to myself: How many attorneys on the White House staff formerly worked as a civilian lawyer in Afghanistan? I'm guessing just one. The only one I've been able to find is Michael J. Gottlieb, a special assistant and associate counsel to the President earning $130,500 a year, and I'm pretty sure he's the one who knew Jill Kelley. Gottlieb is a 2003 graduate of Harvard Law School and a 1999 graduate of Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. I found the audio of a speech on Northwestern University's website that Gottlieb delivered to Northwestern School of Communication graduates in June of this year. The website story provided this biographical summary for Gottlieb describing his work in Afghanistan as a civilian attorney:

As the Associate White House Counsel and Special Assistant to the President, Gottlieb has advised the President and senior White House staff on a wide range of legal and legal policy issues. From January 2010 to March 2011, he was detailed to Kabul, Afghanistan as the Deputy Director of Combined Joint Interagency Task Force 435, which focused on rule of law development and detention operations for the U.S. Government in Afghanistan. Prior to his time with the Obama Administration, he served as an Assistant United States Attorney in the U.S. Attorney's Office in the Central District of California and practiced at the law firm of WilmerHale in Washington, DC, where he focused on government public policy and appellate litigation.

Immediately after law school, Gottlieb clerked for Judge Stephen Reinhardt on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals and for Justice John Paul Stevens on the United States Supreme Court. He is a 2003 graduate of Harvard Law School and a 1999 graduate of the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences at Northwestern. While at Northwestern, he twice won the intercollegiate National Debate Tournament.

Gottlieb attributes how he wound up on the White House counsel's staff as pure luck. He said he went to law school and had become friends with the woman who arranged interviews for the White House counsel's office and who had worked on Obama's Senate campaign in 2004. During Gottlieb's speech to the Northwestern School of Communication's graduates, Gottlieb describes how he wound up working with detainees in Afghanistan. Gottlieb says he was contacted by a brigadier general in the Army who was in charge of detainees and who asked him to come to work with him in Afghanistan as his civilian deputy. Gottlieb described his work at the White House as providing advice on national security legal issues, including detentions and interrogations. Gottlieb explained how the brigadier general in the Army was being sent to Afghanistan to run a new task force to promote rule of law development and head up U.S. detentions. Gottlieb reflected very positively on his experience in Afghanistan. He describes his time spent there as the best 14 months of his life. He said he was inspired by the sacrifice of our soldiers and brave Afghans who held out hope of a better future for their children. Gottlieb said his service in Afghanistan made him a better decision-maker, better colleague, better public servant and a better person.

After doing a little more digging into who that brigadier general could have been, I discovered that another Harvard Law School graduate, Mark Martins, is a brigadier general in the Army who was in charge of detention operations in Afghanistan during the same period of time Gottlieb worked in Afghanistan. Martins graduated from Harvard in 1990, one year ahead of President Obama, and both Martins and Obama served on the Harvard Law Review together. Martins served with Army Gen. David Petraeus when he commanded our forces in Iraq. Both Gottlieb's and Martin's work in Afghanistan overlapped Gen. Petraeus' command of our forces in Afghanistan from July 4, 2010, to July 18, 2011. It makes sense that the military commanders in Afghanistan, such as Gen. Petraeus and Gen. John Allen, both of whom knew Jill Kelley, in addition to Martins, could have been responsible for introducing Gottlieb to Kelley when they invited him to CentComm at MacDill Air Force base in Tampa, Florida.

Why is Gottlieb's identify so important? It proves that someone at the White House may well have been communicating with Kelley during the investigation of Gen. Petraeus specifically about the investigation that had been launched after Kelley had complained to her friend, Frederick Humphries, who worked for the FBI, about the harassing e-mails that Broadwell had been sending to her in the spring of this year. Gottlieb is probably the only attorney at the White House who would have been in the unique position because of his work in Afghanistan and who had the opportunity to get to know Gen. Petraeus, Gen. Allen and even Broadwell during the time she spent in Afghanistan performing research for her biography of Petraeus, "All In." If Gottlieb knew about the investigation of Petraeus weeks, if not months, before the White House first acknowledged the investigation of Petraeus the day after the election, is it even remotely conceivable that President Obama knew nothing about the investigation before the election? I think not.

UPDATE: As if this scandal isn't already filled with enough comedy, gadfly attorney Gloria Allred has entered the picture to represent Jill Kelley's twin sister, Natalie Khawam. "My personal feeling on this matter is that women are being depicted in a negative and stereotypical manner which appears to be very unfair to all of them," Allred told the Daily Caller. Yeah, right. Only a fool would hire Allred. I'm convinced that Allred violates the rules of professional conduct by contacting women involved in high-profile public cases and soliciting their representation just so she can conduct press conferences to engage in self-promotion. She typically does more harm to her clients than good because of the bad publicity she brings to them at her press conferences, which are covered by the tabloid media simply for comical relief. Ask any attorney in this country what they think of her and the response you will get will either be a roll of the eyes or a big chuckle. I'll be interested to see if anyone in the media who covers Allred's circus tomorrow will ask her client if she knows Michael Gottlieb since she reportedly accompanied her sister Jill on her recent trips to the White House to meet with the previously undisclosed White House lawyer. Recall also Allred's October surprise in this past presidential campaign when she tried to make an issue of Mitt Romney's testimony many years ago during the divorce trial of Staples' co-founder Tom Stemberg by unsealing his ex-wife's divorce records in an effort to prove that Romney understated the company's value in order to help Stemberg defraud Stemberg's ex-wife, even if it meant practicing law in Massachusetts where she is not licensed to practice law.

UPDATE II: Gloria Allred's press conference with her client, Natalie Khawam, was all show and no substance to nobody's surprise. Essentially, Allred just wanted to step in front of the cameras to accuse the family court judge who awarded her client's ex-husband custody of their son of committing a miscarriage of justice, which she assured us would be overturned on appeal. Allred isn't handling the appeal, and she isn't licensed to practice law in the state of Florida. She also blamed the family court proceedings for bankrupting her client, although one reporter questioned her account, noting that friends and associates had paid most of her legal bills. Allred had nothing but praise for Gen. Petraeus and Gen. Allen for providing supporting affidavits to Khawam during her custody battle; otherwise, she wouldn't answer any questions about her or her client's sister's relationship with the generals. The press members in attendance seemed skeptical about the purpose of today's press conference and some wondered if Allred wasn't doing more harm to her client by further publicizing her child custody battle. One reporter asked Allred about her client's visits to the White House with her sister Jill Kelley. Allred said her client visited the White House once for a tour, but she refused to answer the reporter's question about who arranged that White House tour. One reporter could be overheard saying as Allred walked slowly into the room with her client as if if she was a father walking his daughter down the aisle at her wedding, "This is a joke." Yes, it is.

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Jill Kelley Made Three Visits To White House This Year

My belief that the housewife of Tampa Bay, Jill Kelley, worked covertly to obtain classified information and dirty laundry from America's top military brass is bolstered by an AP report today detailing three visits she made to the White House this year, along with her twin sister.

Florida socialite Jill Kelley, who initiated the investigation that ultimately unveiled Petraeus’ extramarital affair, and her sister had two “courtesy” meals at the White House mess as guests of a midlevel White House aide in September and October, the official said. Kelley and her family also received a White House tour on the weekend before the election.

Kelley did not meet with Obama or any senior White House officials during any of her visits, said the official, who insisted on anonymity because the visitor records have not yet been made public.

The official said the White House aide who hosted Kelley met the Kelley family at MacDill Air Force Base near Tampa. The official would not identify the aide.
 

Note that the three visits occurred after Kelley enlisted the assistance of FBI agent Frederick Humphries to determine who had sent her e-mails she deemed threatening, which turned out to be Paula Broadwell, Gen. David Petraeus' biographer with whom he was having an extramarital affair, and during the time there was an ongoing investigation of Petraeus' relationship with Broadwell. This suggests the possibility that Kelley was coordinating her efforts to destroy Petraeus and even Gen John Allen with the White House while pretending to be their friends. Keep in mind also that Petraeus had been mentioned as a potential running mate for Mitt Romney prior to Romney selecting Paul Ryan in August. We also learn that Broadwell had reportedly expressed interest in running for the U.S. Senate from her home state of North Carolina as a Republican candidate while attending a conference in Aspen this summer. Petraeus reportedly discouraged Broadwell's Republican political ambitions based on his knowledge of her political views.

My friend and fellow blogger Debbie Schlussel has also discussed the fact that Kelley's twin sister, Natalie Khawam, was married to a top Bush administration official, Grayson Wolfe, Director of Broader Middle East Initiatives and Iraqi Reconstruction at the Export-Import Bank of the United States. Prior to that Wolfe ran the Private Sector Development Office of the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdag, Iraq. According to Schlussel, Natalie often accompanied her former husband on his trips to the Middle East. I'm wondering if Wolfe provided any aid to Obama's old pal Tony Rezko with his $50 million Iraq deal for a start-up security company before the feds caught up with Rezko. One can only imagine how much damage to national security these identical twin sisters of Lebanese origin have caused to American interests.