Paula Broadwell Biography

Paula Broadwell is the West Point graduate and author whose affair with Gen. David Petraeus led to his resignation as director of the CIA in 2012.

Paula Broadwell began her career as an overachiever early: in 1991 she was both homecoming queen and valedictorian for her high school class in Bismarck, North Dakota. She graduated from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point in 1995 and served in the active military for 10 years, rising to the rank of lieutenant colonel.

Then Broadwell began an active academic career, earning a masters degree from the Josef Korbel School of International Studies at the University of Denver (2006), a masters in Public Administration from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University (2008), and beginning a PhD program at King’s College London.

She met Gen. Petraeus when he spoke at the Kennedy School in 2006. He became a mentor, and eventually she became his biographer: in January of 2012 she published All In: The Education of David Petraeus. Months later she became suddenly notorious when Petraeus resigned his post as CIA director, admitting that the he had been involved in an extramarital affair.

Paula Broadwell was quickly reported to be the woman involved; the Charlotte Observer reported that their “intimate relationship” began in November 2011 and ended in July of 2012. Broadwell admitted to the FBI that she had accessed Petraeus’s email and then sent threatening anonymous letters to Jill Kelley, aa Florida socialite and friend of Petraeus’s who Broadwell regarded as a romantic rival. Broadwell was suspended from her job in the Army Reserve, but was not charged with a crime; in 2016, the Pentagon told the Charlotte Observer that there was “no active investigation against Broadwell.”