“My wife says I’m the most clueless person in America.” This was how Vernon Loeb, who shares the author credit for Paula Broadwell’s biography of David Petraeus, opened his editorial published on Monday in the Washington Post. Loeb, a Post correspondent since 2011, was granted overwhelming access to the correspondence between Petraeus and Broadwell as he helped write All In, the biography of Petraeus published in January. Loeb notes that he pored through the piles of emails and other notes spread across Broadwell’s Charlotte, N.C., home while working on the book. He had little clue as to anything sordid going on between the two, he says, though he noticed that Broadwell did enjoy remarkable access to the Petraeus, flying with him around the world and attending posh events. But the CIA director’s high profile, he believed, would have made a relationship very hard to conceal. “I always thought that Broadwell’s motives were pure,” Loeb wrote.
