Gen. John Allen cleared in misconduct inquiry The Pentagon's inspector general has cleared the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan of wrongdoing following an investigation into whether he exchanged inappropriate e-mails with the same Tampa socialite involved in the scandal that prompted David H. Petraeus to resign as CIA director, senior U.S. officials said. The FBI uncovered messages from Marine Gen. John R. Allen during its investigation of Petraeus last year. The tenor of some of the e-mails, which senior defense officials described as racy and flirtatious, prompted Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta to order a formal inquiry. In a letter sent to Allen on Friday, the inspector general wrote that Allen had not violated military prohibitions against conduct unbecoming an officer, according to the senior U.S. officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter on the record. "He was completely exonerated," one of the officials said. Allen exchanged the messages with Jill Kelley, 37, who ingratiated herself with several senior officers at the Tampa headquarters of the U.S. Central Command. Kelley's complaint to the FBI about another set of messages - ones that were harassing - eventually led to the discovery of an affair between Petraeus and his biographer, Paula Broadwell. The FBI determined that Broadwell, for reasons still not clear, had sent Kelley the harassing e-mails. A spokesman for Allen declined to comment. The inspector general's investigation prompted the White House to place on hold Allen's nomination to become the supreme allied commander in Europe. Allen is scheduled to relinquish command in Afghanistan early next month, and the Pentagon has not yet requested that the Senate Armed Services Committee reschedule his nomination. Defense officials have said Panetta's decision to refer the e-mails to the inspector was driven by the content of some of the messages and by a desire to show that the Pentagon was not trying to ignore any potential miscount in the wake of the Petraeus scandal. Although the messages have not been released, and the inspector did not characterize them in the letter, some military officials sympathetic to Allen questioned on Tuesday whether Panetta overreacted, placing a cloud over the general's head at a critical juncture in the Afghan war. A senior defense official said Panetta referred the matter to the inspector general upon the recommendation of civilian and military attorneys. Allen has spent the past few weeks refining his recommendations for the number of U.S. troops that should be withdrawn from Afghanistan this year and the number of forces that should be stationed in the country once the U.S. and NATO combat mission ends in 2014. Senior military and administration officials expect Allen's preferred options, which have not yet been formally submitted to the Pentagon, to entail more troops than those favored by top civilian aides to President Obama. Allen wants to keep about 9,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan after 2014, while White House officials are leaning toward a force of 2,500 to 6,000, those officials said.