Hardball   |  November 13, 2012

What we know: The tangled web of David Petraeus

Chris Matthews gives a quick rundown of what’s going on in the Petraeus scandal and how all of the key players are connected.

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This content comes from Closed Captioning that was broadcast along with this program.

>>> the messy and complex web begins with david petraeus . in 2006 petraeus meets paula broadwell , a west point graduate and doctoral student after giving a speech at harvard. fast forward to may of this year. another woman, jill kelley , a friend of petraeus and his wife, begins receiving harassing e-mails. she asks a friend at the fbi to help launch an investigation. the e-mails it is eventually discovered are being sent by broadwell . the fbi also discovers that broadwell and petraeus have been having an affair. meanwhile, the fbi agent who kelley approached gross frustrated after he's kept off the case. his supervisors reportedly are concerned that he has, quote, grown obsessed with the matter. it's also uncovered that he has sent shirtless photos of himself to kelley . that agent contacts republican congressman david reichert to air his frustrations. reichert then passes the information on to house majority leader eric cantor who speaks with the fbi whistle-blower in late october. it turns out that another major military figure, general john allen , the commander of u.s. and nato troops in afghanistan and petraeus ' successor in that position, has been having an e-mail relationship with jill kelley . the fbi uncovers somewhere between 20,000 and 30,000 pages of documents that contain, quote, potentially inappropriate communication between allen and kelley . one senior u.s. defense official ta tells " washington post ." there was an unidentified account that was traced to none other than paula broadwell . well,