Skip to footer

Petraeus scandal: Did anything illegal happen? Five questions so far.

An investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation has now called into question the private lives and careers of two of the nation’s top national-security officials. Here is an accounting of what is known so far.

5. Who will replace Petraeus as CIA director?

Dennis C. Enser/Buffalo News/AP/File
In this October 2006 file photo, Michael Morell, Associate Deputy Director of the CIA, meets with the Buffalo News Editorial Board on regional security issues. As soon as news of Petraeus's resignation broke, at the top of the list to replace him as Director of CIA is Morell, whom President Obama quickly named as acting director.

  • By Anna Mulrine Staff writer

As soon as news of Petraeus’s resignation broke, guessing who will replace him quickly became Washington’s favorite parlor game. At the top of the list is Michael Morell, whom Mr. Obama quickly named as acting director. He has served as deputy director at the agency since 2010 and regularly briefed the president in the run-up to the Osama bin Laden raid. His confirmation would probably garner bipartisan support.

Also in the running is John Brennan, the chief counterterrorism adviser for the White House and a career CIA staffer. Michael Vickers is also said to be under consideration. Profiled in the bestseller “Charlie Wilson’s War,” Mr. Vickers has worked in intelligence – and special operations – for both the CIA and the Defense Department. Rounding out the list is former lawmaker Jane Harman, who was the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee before stepping down to head the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.

5 of 5
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.