CORRECTION: An earlier version misidentified the woman involved in the FBI investigation. She was Paula Broadwell.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., the chairwoman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, said on Sunday that she agrees with resignation of CIA Director David Petraeus over an extramarital affair and President Obama’s decision to accept it, reversing her initial decision.
“This is very, very hard stuff, and I do think he did the right thing,” Feinstein said of Petraeus on Fox News Sunday, citing “additional complications.”
She added: “I think the president really had no choice.”
Feinstein said the committee will look into the issue staring with a hearing on Thursday and will investigate whether the Federal Bureau of Investigation should have acted sooner to notify the committee and the Congress of its investigation, which exposed the affair Petraeus had with Paula Broadwell, his biographer, that lead to his resignation.
“We received no advance notice,” Feinstein said. “It was like a lightning bolt.”
She said she learned of the issue through press calls to the committee. Feinstein said she has since spoken twice to Petraeus, conversations she suggested influenced her determination that his resignation was appropriate.
“I actually wish we had been briefed a little earlier,” she said.
The senator said the resignation had nothing to do with at attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, which killed the U.S. ambassador and three other Americans in September.
The affair emerged because Broadwell allegedly sought access to Petraeus’s email to obtain information on another woman who was friendly with the director. The woman’s concerns sparked the probe. Feinstein said she had no information Petraeus was having an affair with the other woman.
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