WASHINGTON, D.C.: President Barack Obama gave his backing to the commander of US forces in Afghanistan on Tuesday (Wednesday in Manila) after the top general was dragged into the sex scandal that brought down CIA director David Petraeus.

General John Allen was placed under investigation after Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agents probing email threats sent by Petraeus’ mistress stumbled upon a vast trove of “flirtatious” messages Allen sent to another woman at the heart of the scandal.

According to a senior Pentagon official, Allen denies any sexual liaison with the woman, 37-year-old Tampa socialite Jill Kelley, but the “sheer volume” of correspondence could be found to amount to “conduct unbecoming an officer.”

Due to face lawmakers this week for a hearing to confirm his promotion to the post of North Atlantic
Treaty Organization’s supreme commander in Europe, Allen will now return to Kabul and remain in charge in Afghanistan until the investigation is over.

“I can tell you that the president thinks very highly of General Allen and of his service to his country, as well as the job he has done in Afghanistan,” White House spokesman Jay Carney told the reporters.

“He has faith in General Allen,” he added, referring reporters’ questions on the inquiries into both Allen and Petraeus to the Pentagon, the FBI and the Justice Department.

Washington was already reeling from Petraeus’ shock resignation when it learned that Allen—who served with him in Iraq and at US Central Command in Tampa, Florida—had also been caught up in the scandal.

Petraeus resigned last week when it became clear that his affair with married 40-year-old military reservist Paula Broadwell, a military academic who wrote a fawning biography of the general, would become public.

FBI agents stumbled on the liaison after a complaint from Kelley—a married Tampa woman and close friend of both Petraeus and Allen—who told a federal agent that she had received threatening emails.

Investigators traced the mails to Broadwell’s account and discovered that she had been in a relationship with Petraeus, despite both being married.

The threatening emails she had sent to Kelley—who told investigators she did not know Broadwell—suggest that the biographer was jealous of the socialite’s rapport with the generals at US Central Command in Florida.

It emerged on Tuesday that the agents had also discovered that Allen had sent a huge number of mails to Kelley, triggering an investigation into whether he had broken the law or any military regulations during the friendship.

In all, the FBI is investigating between 20,000 to 30,000 pages of Allen’s correspondence, a Pentagon official told reporters traveling with US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta to Australia.

The Washington Post, citing a senior military official close to Allen, reported that the correspondence included 200 to 300 emails between Kelley and the general. AFP