said by NetFixer:... I actually find it rather incredulous that the CIA and/or the NSA was not monitoring all communications to/from Petraeus (especially personal communications that did not go through official CIA channels); I would have thought that would be a standard practice.
I strongly suspect it is more of a standard practice than many realize. But in certain cases, sometimes it's better to just watch and see where things lead... you can turn a lot more information that way, and if spying or extortion were suspected, you have a shot at running the opposing 'network' up to a much higher level. In the black world, much is not as it seems... and that
could include the story about how this all came to light. The developing public version of how the Broadwell affair was revealed may, or may not, be the entire story.