Thread by @DavidCranmerUn1

Stephen Petraeus ’21: Continuing a legacy of service - Harvard Law Today

Petraeus and Bras are resident tutors at Cabot House at Harvard College, and Petraeus has joined the Harvard National Security Journal and the Harvard Business Law Review today.law.harvard.edu/stephen-petrae…

Army 1st Lt. Stephen Petraeus, son of Army Gen. David Petraeus, listens to his father's remarks during the Armed Forces Farewell and retirement ceremony to honor the general on Joint Base Myer-Henderson Hall, Va., Aug. 31, 2011.

Jill Kelley (born June 3, 1975) is a philanthropist, socialite, activist and diplomatic advisor. She was also a former South Korean Honorary Consul, and honorary ambassador to U.S. Central Command in 2012 under Marine General James N. Mattis, then commander of U.S. military

forces in the Middle East. His mother immigrated to the United States from Canada as an infant and had worked in Army Intelligence in South Africa during the Second World War. Mattis's father moved to Richland, Washington, to work at a plant supplying fissile material to the

Manhattan Project. Mattis was raised in a bookish household that did not own a television. TAMPA— The scandal swept through Tampa society like a late-season hurricane, taking down no less than the retired four-star general running the CIA.
But the news two years ago this month of

David Petraeus' career-ending extramarital affair had nothing on the local sideshow: doe-eyed, raven-haired, twin sister socialites who partied with top military officers — Jill Kelley and Natalie Khawam.

The Real Housewives of Tampa, the sisters were dubbed — this town's Kardashians, Kartampians or Kartrashians, if someone was being especially unkind. "All we need now," drolled the New York Post, juxtaposing Khawam's photo with that of an actual Kardashian, "is a sex tape."

"Bonkers," pronounced Khawam, 39, in a recent interview with the Tampa Bay Times at her downtown law office, breaking her silence in the company of her boyfriend and her publicist.

"Surreal," she said.
Real Housewives? "I'm not a housewife, I'm an attorney," Khawam said, with a degree from Georgetown law school. Socialite? She prefers "member of the community." She said stories did not take into account the strong friendship between her family and the

Petraeuses.
"I think a lot of what was said was inaccurate and improper," Khawam said. "If anything, silly."In pearls and a lawyerly gray suit — decidedly un-party girl clothes — Khawam wanted to talk up her Whistleblower Law Firm that represents, among others, clients who allege

wrongdoing occurring in an organization. Kelley's role as a civilian liaison to MacDill Air Force Base — "Jill's always been very gracious with her home," Khawam said — had them rubbing elbows with the likes of Marine Lt. Gen. Michael "Mr Slick Rifle" DeLong, Marine

Gen. John Allen and Army Gen. John Abizaid. Before long, Petraeus, who was commander of U.S. Central Command at MacDill, and his wife, Holly, were regularly at the Kelleys' for dinner. "That really was family," Khawam said. "That's the not-so-sexy part the media missed."
Petraeus

experienced his first Gasparilla, the massive pirate party that is Tampa's biggest bash, from a breezy white tent on the Kelleys' sprawling lawn. Together the Petraeuses, the Kelleys and Khawam posed for pictures draped in traditional pirate beads. "Awesome," Petraeus pronounced

it. Kelley was getting anonymous emails telling her to back off Petraeus. "If you received one of those emails," Khawam said, "you would have been like, 'Holy mackerel.' " She urged her sister to go to the FBI. The emails led investigators to Petraeus' biographer Paula Broadwell

and the disclosure of their affair.
With that, a CIA director and retired four-star general once thought to have presidential potential resigned.

There was more fodder for headlines: Khawam was and still is embroiled in a legal battle with her former employer, prominent local lawyer Barry Cohen. She accused the firm's business consultant of sexual harassment and says she is owed money from a whistleblower case she brought

in. Cohen says she is not entitled to a dime.Meanwhile, her sister is suing the federal government, accusing the FBI and Defense Department of violating her privacy by leaking information to reporters — including a false intimation that she and Gen. Allen had the email equivalent

of phone sex.
When she got here before the scandal, Khawam found Tampa friendly. She thought it was great turf for a lawyer. She took her son to the pumpkin patch in Hyde Park. Neighbors came over to watch the Sopranos.
After the headlines, did she think of leaving?

It was "unflattering, to say it nicely," she says. "But no. I dug my heels even deeper in the ground."
"This is my town," she says. "I'm not leaving. I love this place."

The Tampa Bay area has about 40 strip clubs, with half found in the city of Tampa. Their glowing marquees advertising NUDE GIRLS line some of the city’s busiest roads — Adamo Drive, West Shore Boulevard, Dale Mabry Highway — in between the restaurants, shops and stadiums where

families take their kids.
Tampa has a reputation as the strip club capital of the country, part of its identity along with Cuban sandwiches and Gasparilla. In 1999, city officials feared Tampa’s sex industry was getting out of hand.

It wasn’t just the strip clubs. There were

lingerie modeling studios and massage parlors acting as fronts for prostitution and residential sex businesses, like Voyeur Dorm, where college-age women streamed themselves on the web. In October 1999, Jane Castor, then a Tampa police lieutenant, led the city’s biggest strip

club bust. Managers were caught serving alcohol as women danced fully naked. In one club, dancers performed sex acts on each other in front of undercover officers. Weeks later, the City Council unveiled its weapon to clean up Tampa:
the 6-foot rule.
The proposed ordinance would

require that distance between patrons and adult entertainers. It wasn’t technically a ban on lap dances, but how can you gyrate on someone from that far away? Other governments in Florida had already passed ordinances designed to stop the spread of prostitution and disease.

Pinellas County had a 3-foot rule, as did Brevard, Citrus, Collier, Manatee, Volusia, Polk and Seminole. A handful of places outside of Florida imposed 10-foot rules. Tampa tried to land somewhere in the middle with 6 feet, a distance that would prevent “hand-to-genital contact”

and be easy to enforce. Luke Lirot, a Clearwater-based First Amendment lawyer who represented club owners and strippers, said they referred to it as the ring of death. “You could have maybe four dancers in the entire club.”

Some of the dancers who were dragged out of Mons Venus in handcuffs 20 years ago now run the show as managers.
As for the current dancers, many are younger than the 6-foot rule itself.
Most of them don’t even know it exists.