David Petraeus, the former chief of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, was fined $100,000 Thursday and placed on two years' probation for giving his mistress classified information while she was working on a biography of him.
The 62-year-old Petraeus was once the highest profile U.S. Army general during the United States' wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and was later appointed by President Barack Obama as the CIA director. He ran the country's intelligence agency for a year, until resigning in late 2012.
His career unraveled two-and-a-half years ago with the disclosure of the affair with his biographer, Paula Broadwell, who wrote an admiring book about him, All In: The Education of David Petraeus. It was published three years ago, before the affair was exposed.
Two months ago, Petraeus pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of unauthorized removal and retention of classified material.
Prosecutors said when Broadwell was working on her book, Petraeus gave her eight binders of classified material that he had improperly kept from his days as the top U.S. military commander in Afghanistan. The binders included names of covert operatives, allied war strategy and notes of Petraeus' conversations with President Barack Obama and the National Security Council.
The prosecutors said Petraeus, who had a nearly four-decade career in the U.S. Army, at first lied to investigators, claiming he did not give the classified material to Broadwell.
With his guilty plea, Petraeus faced as much as a year in prison. The prosecutors had recommended a $40,000 fine and the two years' probation. But U.S. Judge David Kessler in Charlotte, North Carolina was not bound by that agreement and said he was increasing the fine to "reflect seriousness of the offense."
Petraeus apologized “for the pain my actions have caused.”