The majority of Americans believe CIA Director David Petraeus was right to resign after news broke of his extramarital affair he had with his biographer, according to a
Rasmussen reports survey.
More than half of respondents in the poll said he made the right decision.
Roughly half of them, however, said that members of the military and agents in the CIA should not be held to a higher standard of personal and professional conduct, according to Thursday's poll.
52 percent said Petraeus was right to resign, with 29 percent saying he should have stayed on the job, and 19 percent unsure of the best way for him to react to the personal revelation hitting the global media’s front pages.
The four-star general and 37-year Army-veteran resigned after the FBI discovered the affair and possible endangerment of classified information during an investigation into allegations that his biographer, Paula Broadwell, had stalked another woman.
The Uniform Code of Military Conduct requires any member of the military caught in an extramarital affair to leave the armed forces, but the CIA does not have such a rule.
Members of Congress, as well as the FBI, have been especially concerned about the potential that important and classified information may have been compromised as a result of the affair, but the Rasmussen poll found that 57 percent of people thought it was unlikely that his actions endangered the release of secret government information. Thirty-five percent thought it was at least somewhat likely that classified information was shared improperly.
The scandal has enraptured the country, as 73 percent of those polled have been following at least somewhat closely as new pieces of information about Petraeus, Broadwell, and others connected to the affair are discussed by the media.
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