Tag: Natalie Khawam

The Real Housewives of Tampa evolve into Desperate Housewives: If you thought Natalie Khawam and Gloria Allred were going to answer questions about Gen. Petraeus, Gen. Allen or her sister Jill Kelley's relationship with them, you'd be mistaken.

Today's news conference was a publicity fest about Khawam's custody battle which Allred wants to turn into a women's rights issue. Does anyone care that Natalie and Jill played softball and tennis and like cooking and playing chess and piano? [More...]

The FBI agent/friend of Jill Kelley who brought the anonymous e-mails she received to the FBI is Frederick W. Humphries. Humprhies works on terrorism cases. His friends describe him as obsessive, with "experience in counterterrorism, conservative political views and a reputation for aggressiveness."

Humphries and his wife were "social friends" with Jill Kelley. Humphries contacted Rep. Dave Reichert because he was convinced the FBI was stalling the case for political reasons. Reichert connected him with Eric Cantor, who passed his info on to FBI Director Mueller.

A friend of Humphries says the shirtless photo was sent years earlier and was "a joke." The Kelley and Humphries families often exchanged photos of each other.

First penalties: Paula Broadwell lost her security clearance today and Jill Kelley lost her special clearance to access the MacDill military base. [More...]

There are lots of articles about the background of Tampa socialite and party planner Jill Kelley and her twin sister, lawyer Natalie Khawam, and their access to top military officials, here and in the Middle East, including Gen. David Petraeus and John Allen.

The first question that comes to mind: Why were Gen. Allen and Jill Kelley, who has no particular expertise in foreign affairs, the military or Government, exchanging 20 to 30,000 pages of documents (including several hundred e-mails) over a two year period? What documents would be of mutual interest to a party planner socialite and a top General? It doesn't sound like there was any romantic relationship between them, so what was their mutual interest? Was she feeding him information? About what? Where did she get the documents she sent him? What documents was he sending her?

[T]he bureau turned over a mountain of documents to Pentagon officials, including an estimated 20,000 to 30,000 pages, based largely on communication between Allen and Kelley, prompting Defense Secretary Leon Panetta to order an inspector general inquiry.

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Jill Kelley has retained lawyer Abbe Lowell and crisis manager Judy Smith, who once represented Monica Lewinsky. Like Paula Broadwell, she is married to a physician, cancer surgeon Scott Kelley. Jill Kelley has a twin sister Natalie Khawam, who recently lost an ugly custody battle. Both Petraeus and Gen. Allen wrote support letters in support of her attempt to overturn the ruling. (You can read them here.)

Kelley, who grew up in Philadelphia, is of Lebanese descent. Her family, Maronite Catholics, immigrated from Jounieh, Lebanon, in the mid-1970s, according to a 1988 article about her family's restaurant, Sahara, in The Philadelphia Inquirer. She has a twin sister, Natalie, the article said.

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