She drives a luxury Mercedes and always dresses to kill — but Jill Kelley is actually drowning in debt. 
 
 The woman at the root of the four-star scandal that led to the downfall of David Petraeus and threatens the career of Gen. John Allen lives an extravagant lifestyle that conceals mountains of money owed to banks and credit card companies, court documents show. 
 
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 The palatial home in Tampa, where Kelley, and her husband, Scott, hosted top military brass, including Petraeus and Allen, has been in foreclosure since 2010. 
 
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 Court records reveal that in March of that year, Bank of America claimed the Kelleys hadn’t paid their mortgage since September 2009. 
 
 The bank said the couple owed $328,338 on their home valued at $1,837,571. 
 
 SDFL/Splash News 
 
 The house remains in the foreclosure process, with the most recent motion filed on Oct. 12. 
 
 Kelley, who is an unpaid social liaison to the men and women in uniform coming and going from MacDill Air Force Base mere miles away from her home, never showed signs of stress. 
 
 “ She turns heads,” an anonymous friend of the Kelleys told the Daily Mail. 
 
 “At the parties she would flirt with all the senior military guys. She’s touchy-feely. Her hands would be on their arms. She was attentive. It’s not hard to see why she had some guys under her spell.” 
 
 Yet the party was at risk of coming to an end for at least two years. 
 
 Chris O'Meara/AP 
 
 A second property owned by the Kelleys in downtown Tampa was also in foreclosure proceedings beginning in 2010. 
 
 In that case, Central Bank claimed the couple owed $2.2 million, according to the Tampa Bay Times. The case was resolved, though details were not available. 
 
 And in 2010, Chase Bank sued the Kelleys over failure to pay a $25,088.56 debt on a revolving credit account. The case was voluntarily dismissed by the bank a year later. 
 
 Regions Bank sued the Kelleys for $253,437.31 in unpaid credit card bills, according to court documents. 
 
 In February the couple agreed to pay $850 a month, with $8,500 down, until the balance is paid, records show. 
 
 Chris O'Meara/AP 
 
 All told, Jill or Scott Kelley have been the subject of at least nine lawsuits since they moved to Florida, according to the Tampa Bay Times. 
 
 But their troubles weren’t just restricted to the Sunshine State. 
 
 The Kelleys were sued in 2004 in Montgomery County, Pa., by a couple who said they refused to return a $10,000 deposit on a condo rental that fell through. The court issued a default judgment against the Kelleys, and court records show it was paid the following year. 
 
 Despite their debt, the couple remained firmly established as the de facto welcoming committee to top military brass at U.S. Central Command. 
 
 Photos from bashes at Chez Kelley show a jolly Petraeus wearing beads around his neck alongside the woman who would ultimately lead to his undoing. Holly Petraeus — who is now reportedly fuming over her spy husband’s not-so-secret affair — also is all smiles. 
 
 Courtesy of Tampa Bay Magazine. 
 
 The swank soirees came complete with catered buffets, valet parking, primo cigars, Champagne and even string quartets, the Washington Post reported. 
 
 “Jill was such an awesome client,” one caterer told the Tampa Bay Times. “(She) did so much for the military, fabulous mother and amazing wife; can’t say enough nice things about her. She never spared anything for the military. It was all about them.” 
 
 Scott Kelley is reportedly a highly sought-after surgeon specializing in cancer of the esophagus . 
 
 But a tax filing from 2007 for the Doctor Kelley Cancer Foundation provides a hint at the cost of sparing no expense for the brass he and his wife so admired. 
 
 The nonprofit foundation lists only Jill and Scott, along with Jill’s twin sister Natalie Khawam as its trustees. 
 
 Chris O'Meara/AP 
 
 The foundation — dedicated to “efforts to discover ways to improve the quality of life of terminally ill adult cancer patients” had no employees, according to the documents. 
 
 Yet in a single year, the Kelley clan spent $43,317 in meals and entertainment connected to the foundation, according to tax filings. They spent $8,822 in travel expenses, and $3,740 in office-related expenses, though the nonprofit was based in their home. 
 
 The foundation did not file tax information past 2007. 
 
 But it’s clear the Kelleys’ connections had perks — though they couldn’t save Natalie from her own money troubles. 
 
 Both four-star generals caught in the scandal vouched for Natalie in letters supporting her in a custody battle over her son. 
 
 Amy Scherzer/St. Petersburg Times 
 
 Not only did the judge in the case award Natalie’s ex-husband custody last year of their now 4-year-old son, John, but he also told Natalie to pay his legal bills amounting to $350,000. 
 
 She filed for bankruptcy in April after racking up more than $3 million in debt, according to federal court records. Court filings indicate that the debt included an $800,000 personal loan from Jill and Scott Kelley. 
 
 The status of Natalie’s most recent custody appeal was not known. 
 
 None of the lawyers listed in the reams of court documents returned phone calls. 
 
 Chris O'Meara/AP 
 
 The only information from the Kelley family came in a statement from their superstar crisis manager, Judy Smith, who pleaded for privacy. 
 
 Jill’s brother David Khawam, an attorney based in Mount Laurel, N.J., told the Burlington County Times he spoke with her Sunday. 
 
 “She was doing okay. I don’t know how she’s handling it now,” Khawam, 40, told the paper. 
 
 sbrown@nydailynews.com 
 
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 Sign up for BREAKING NEWS Emails privacy policy Thanks for subscribing! ||||| Jill Kelley, the Tampa socialite connected to ISAF Commander John Allen and former CIA Director David Petraeus, is an "honorary consul" of South Korea, a diplomatic official with direct knowledge of the arrangement told The Cable. 
 
 "She is an ‘honorary consul' of the Republic of Korea," the official said. "She assumed this position last August thanks to her good connections and network." 
 
 The position of honorary consul is symbolic and has no official responsibilities, the official said. 
 
 "She does not work as a real consul. They play a role to improve the relationship between the ROK and the U.S.," the official said. "Jill Kelley helped to get support for [the Korea-U.S. Free Trade Agreement] and she arranged meetings between the ROK Ambassador to Washington and local businessmen when the ROK Ambassador visited the Tampa area." 
 
 There's no implication that the South Korean government has anything to do with the growing scandal that involves Kelly, Allen, Petraeus, and Paula Broadwell, Petraeus's biographer and alleged mistress. But her work on behalf of the South Koreans may explain some of the 20,000 to 30,000 pages of e-mails between her and Allen that the Defense Department's Inspector General's office is investigating now. 
 
 Kelley does drive a Mercedes sedan with license plates that say "Honorary Consul," and she invoked her honorary diplomatic status in a Nov. 11 911 call when she was complaining about trespassers on her private property. 
 
 "I'm an honorary consul general, so I have inviolability, so they should not be able to cross my property," she told the 911 operator. "I don't know if you want to get diplomatic protection involved as well, because that's against the law to cross my property because, you know, it's inviolable." 
 
 "Ok, no problem, I'll let the officer know," the 911 operator responded. 
 
 In fact, "honorary" diplomats have no specific privileges or protections under the 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations and therefore her property is not actually ''inviolable" as a matter of international law. 
 
 A New York Post report today said that Kelley's sister Natalie Kwaham had invoked Allen and Petraeus's names in her custody battle. She also invoked in legal papers the names of Sens. John Kerry (D-MA) and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI). Spokesmen for Kerry and Whitehouse both said the senators had met Kwaham through Kwaham's boyfriend Gerald Harrington, a Democratic Party fundraiser. 
 
 Calls to Kelley for comment were not returned. 
 
 Associated Press ||||| FILE - In this Nov 13, 2012 file photo Jill Kelley leaves her home in Tampa, Fla. The Tampa socialite at the center of a scandal involving Gen. David Petraeus has hired a top Washington attorney and seems... (Associated Press) 
 
 FILE - In this Nov 13, 2012 file photo Jill Kelley leaves her home in Tampa, Fla. The Tampa socialite at the center of a scandal involving Gen. David Petraeus has hired a top Washington attorney and seems... (Associated Press) 
 
 Jill Kelley wants the world to know that she didn't do anything wrong when she befriended top military brass. 
 
 The Tampa socialite at the center of a scandal involving Gen. David Petraeus has hired a top Washington attorney and seems to be trying to change the narrative about her friendship with the general, her past and her role as an "honorary consul" to the country of South Korea. 
 
 On Tuesday, Kelley's attorney Abbe Lowell released emails, telephone recordings and other material that he and Kelley say proves she never tried to exploit her friendship with Petraeus. 
 
 Lowell wrote to the U.S. Attorney's Office in Tampa, demanding to know why the name of his client and her husband were revealed during the FBI's investigation of Petraeus and his mistress, Paula Broadwell. 
 
 Officials said they were led to Kelley because Broadwell sent her threatening messages to stay away from Petraeus. Lowell addressed this in a letter to W. Stephen Muldrow, the assistant U.S. Attorney in Tampa. 
 
 "You no doubt have seen the tremendous attention that the Kelleys have received in the media," Lowell wrote. "All they did to receive this attention was to let law enforcement know that they had been the subjects of inappropriate and potentially threatening behavior by someone else." 
 
 Lowell added that federal privacy laws could be applicable to the couple's information. 
 
 "These leaks most certainly had to come, at least in part, from government sources," Lowell said. "The earliest and best example of the leaks would be the release to the media of the names of my clients. As you know, there are several rules and laws that seek to protect United States citizens against such leaks." 
 
 The U.S. Attorney's Office in Tampa did not return telephone calls for comment Tuesday. 
 
 Kelley, a 37-year-old mother of three, became the focus of national media attention earlier this month. She and her husband, cancer surgeon Scott Kelley, befriended Petraeus and Gen. John Allen when the generals served at U.S. Central Command, which is headquartered at Tampa's MacDill Air Force Base. Kelley became an unofficial social ambassador for the base. She was well known around Tampa's social scene and often hosted parties at her waterfront mansion. 
 
 When the FBI investigated Broadwell's emails to Kelley, they also discovered numerous emails between Kelley and the generals. The Pentagon is investigating the emails between her and Allen. Some have called a few of the emails between the two "flirtatious," but sources close to Kelley say they were not. 
 
 The scandal this week cost Kelley her appointment as an honorary consul for the South Korean government, which she had gotten because of her friendship with Petraeus. The Koreans said she had misused the title in her personal business dealings. 
 
 Lowell sent another letter to a businessman for whom Kelley tried to broker a deal with South Korea. 
 
 The businessman, Adam Victor, said he met Kelley in late August at the Republican National Convention in Tampa, where they discussed having Kelley represent Victor's company on a coal-gasification deal it was negotiating with South Korean companies. 
 
 On Aug. 30, according to the documents provided by her attorney, Victor sent Kelley an email saying they were seeking bids from four major Korean firms _ Samsung, Hyundai, GS and GK _ and that he expected the bidding to potentially reach $3 billion. There were several back-and-forth emails through mid-September as Victor and Kelley tried to negotiate a fee for her work, with her saying she was seeking 2 percent of the deal and Victor trying to clarify what she meant. 
 
 There were no other emails until Victor sent one Nov. 9, when Kelley's name surfaced in the Petraeus scandal. He wrote two more times after that before she responded. 
 
 When she finally did, he sent back another email in which he remarked, "When I heard about Petraeus, I thought of you." In a follow-up email, he asked if she was still in a position to help with Korea. She didn't respond. 
 
 In a Nov. 14 interview with the AP, Victor said it had become clear that Kelley was not a skilled negotiator and that he had wasted his time dealing with her. 
 
 In a letter released Tuesday and dated Nov. 21, Lowell accused Victor of seeking his "15 minutes of fame" by talking to the news media about his client. Lowell said Victor had defamed Kelley with his clients and misstated her desire for 2 percent of the profits by saying she wanted 2 percent of the entire deal. Lowell also accused Victor of unspecified inappropriate behavior toward Kelley. 
 
 "If you want to continue seeking publicity for yourself, that is one thing," Lowell wrote to Victor. "However, if you do that by maligning a person, that is something else." He then accused Victor of casting Kelley in a false light and suggested his attorney contact Lowell to discuss the matter. 
 
 Victor told the AP late Tuesday that he never accused Kelley of wrongdoing, but had just said she was naive and not an experienced negotiator. He also said his female assistant was present every time he met with Kelley. 
 
 "It's not a crime to be a novice," Victor said. "I don't know why they are talking to me." 
 
 The third letter was sent from Kelley's attorney Tuesday to the Attorney Consumer Assistance Program, which handles complaints about lawyers on behalf of the Florida Bar. In that letter, Lowell accused Tampa attorney Barry Cohen of breaking attorney-client privilege by publicly speaking about conversations he had with Kelley in 2009 while representing her in a dispute she had with a tenant. In those conversations, Lowell said, they discussed her friendships with various military personnel. 
 
 Kelley's sister, Natalie Khawam, once worked as an attorney in Cohen's firm and later sued him for sexual harassment and breach of contract. In court responses, Cohen said Khawam "has a judicially documented recent history and continuing propensity for the commission of perjury." 
 
 Cohen said Tuesday evening that he had not seen Lowell's complaint letter and that Kelley had "lost the battle in the court of public opinion." 
 
 "No matter how many high-priced lawyers and publicists she employs, she has been exposed for what she is," he said. 
 
 Prior to Tuesday, Kelley, her attorney and her publicist had only publicly addressed the situation once, in a statement to the news media when the scandal first broke. 
 
 ___ 
 
 Spencer reported from Miami. 
 
 Kelley's lawyer also sent letters to a New York businessman who accused her of incompetence in her work trying to set up a deal he was negotiating with South Korean companies and a Tampa attorney who accused her of name-dropping and of being a social climber; 
 
 Follow Tamara Lush on Twitter at http://twitter.com/tamaralush ||||| Let us turn from the post-Thanksgiving scenes of inflamed mobs clubbing each other to the ground for a discounted television set to the comparatively placid boulevards of the Middle East. In Cairo, no sooner had Hillary Clinton’s plane cleared Egyptian air space than Mohamed Morsi issued one-man constitutional amendments declaring himself and his Muslim Brotherhood buddies free from judicial oversight and announced that his predecessor, Hosni Mubarak, would be retried for all the stuff he was acquitted of in the previous trial. Morsi now wields total control over parliament, the judiciary, and the military to a degree Mubarak in his jail cell can only marvel at. Old CIA wisdom: He may be an SOB but he’s our SOB. New post–Arab Spring CIA wisdom: He may be an SOB but at least he’s not our SOB. 
 
 But don’t worry. As America’s director of national intelligence, James Clapper, assured the House Intelligence Committee at the time of Mubarak’s fall, the Muslim Brotherhood is a “largely secular” organization. The name’s just for show, same as the Episcopal Church. 
 
 Which brings us to Intelligence Director Clapper’s fellow intelligence director, General Petraeus. Don’t ask me why there’s a director of national intelligence and a director of central intelligence. Something to do with 9/11, after which the government decided it could use more intelligence. Instead it wound up with more directors of intelligence, which is the way it usually goes in Washington. Anyway, I blow hot and cold on the Petraeus sex scandal. Initially, it seemed the best shot at getting a largely uninterested public to take notice of the national humiliation and subsequent cover-up over the deaths of American diplomats and the sacking of our consulate in Benghazi. On the other hand, everyone involved in this sorry excuse for a sex scandal seems to have been too busy e-mailing each other to have had any sex. The FBI was initially reported to have printed out 20,000–30,000 pages of e-mails and other communications between General Allen, U.S. commander in Afghanistan, and Jill Kelley of Tampa, one-half of a pair of identical twins dressed like understudies for the CentCom mess-hall production of Keeping Up with the Kardashians. Thirty thousand pages! The complete works of Shakespeare come to about three and a half thousand pages, but American officials can’t even have a sex scandal without getting bogged down in the paperwork. 
 
 For the cost of running those FBI documents off the photocopier, you could fly some broad to the Bahamas and have a real sex scandal. Instead, we’ll “investigate” it for a year or three, as we’re doing with Benghazi itself. At her press conference the other day, soon-to-be Secretary of State Susan Rice explained that she would be misspeaking if she were to explain why she misspoke about Benghazi until something called the “Accountability Review Board” has finished “conducting investigations” into “all aspects” of the investigations being conducted, which should be completed by roughly midway through Joe Biden’s second term. 
 
 Pending that “definitive accounting,” one or two aspects stand out. Paula Broadwell had access to General Petraeus because she was supposedly writing his biography. As it turns out, she can’t write, so her publisher was obliged to hire a ghostwriter from the Washington Post. Some years ago, at a low point in my career, I was asked to ghostwrite a book for a supermodel. That’s usually the type of “writer” who requires a ghost: models, singers, athletes, celebrities. When a first-time biographer requires a ghostwriter, that person is not a biographer but something else. Yet she had classified documents at her home — and yes, as the president suggested, they’re probably not that classified, not the real top-secret stuff. But in a speech at the University of Denver Mrs. Broadwell appeared to reveal accidentally that she is privy to operational knowledge of illegal CIA interrogation chambers in Benghazi. 
 
 Now let us move from General Petraeus’s mistress to General Allen’s non-mistress, Tampa socialite and identical twin Jill Kelley. Mrs. Kelley had clearance for all parts of the MacDill Air Base and was given some kind of commemorative certificate as “honorary ambassador” to CentCom, on the basis of which, in a recent 9-1-1 call, she claimed the right to “diplomatic protection.” Yeah, that’s what Chris Stevens thought in Benghazi. As appears to be well known, the Kelleys have financial problems and their luxury home faces foreclosure. For a while they ran a charity, the Doctor Kelley Cancer Foundation, which makes terminal cancer patients’ final wishes come true. In 2007, they took in $157,284 in donations, and ran up expenses of $81,927 on dining, entertainment, and travel. So, if you’ve got cancer and your dying wish is for Jill Kelley to party, this is the charity for you. 
 
 In other words, neither of these women pass the smell test. Which is a problem insofar as Petraeus, as CIA director, is supposed to be head of the national smell test, and General Allen, as Petraeus’s successor in Kabul, is supposed to be head of the smell test in Afghanistan. In the Gaza “peace agreement” signed last week, they flew in Hillary Clinton to give the impression that she had something to do with it, whereas in reality she was entirely peripheral to the deal. But Jill Kelley is apparently essential to anything that matters in CentCom: When Pastor Terry Jones was threatening to burn a Koran, General Allen asked Mrs. Kelley to mediate. When radio personality Bubba the Love Sponge was threatening to “deep-fat fry” a Koran, General Allen recommended the mayor of Tampa ask Mrs. Kelley to intervene. The U.S. government is responsible for 43 percent of the planet’s military spending, and apparently all that gets you is that, when the feces hits the fan, the four-star brass start e-mailing Jill Kelley of Tampa. If only she’d been hosting a champagne reception at the Sigonella air base in southern Italy, maybe we could have parachuted her into Benghazi to defuse the situation. Jill is the woman Hillary can only dream of being — at the confluence of all the great geostrategic currents of the age. Why didn’t we fly Jill Kelley to broker the Gaza deal? Instead of a patsy peddling risible talking points like Susan Rice, why can’t we have Jill Kelley as secretary of state? 
 
 As far as I can tell, our enemies in Afghanistan don’t go in for Soviet-style honey traps. Which is just as well, considering the ease with which, say, a pretend biographer can wind up sitting next to the U.S. commander on his personal Gulfstream. In different ways, Director Petraeus’s judgment and Director Clapper’s obtuseness testify to the problems of America’s vast, sprawling, over-bureaucratized intelligence community. If Director Petraeus can’t see the obvious under his nose in his interventions in the Kelley twins’ various difficulties, why would you expect Director Clapper to have any greater grasp of what’s happening in Cairo or Damascus? 
 
 Having consolidated his grip in Egypt, Morsi is now looking beyond. His “peace deal” legitimizes the Muslim Brotherhood’s affiliate in Gaza, and increases the likelihood of the Brothers advancing to power in Syria and elsewhere. As on that night in Benghazi when the most lavishly funded military/intelligence operation on the planet watched for eight hours as a mob devoured America’s emissaries, America in a broader sense is a spectator in its own fate. As for Afghanistan, it seems a fitting comment on America’s longest unwon war that the last two U.S. commanders exit in a Benny Hill finale, trousers round their ankles, pursued to speeded-up chase music by bunny-boiling mistresses, stalker socialites, identical twins, and Bubba the Love Sponge. 
 
 — Mark Steyn, a National Review columnist, is the author of After America: Get Ready for Armageddon. © 2012 Mark Steyn
– The Tampa socialite at the heart of the Petraeus "love Pentagon" sex scandal was the co-founder of a cancer charity that does not appear to have been involved in any charity work, the Huffington Post finds. Jill Kelley and her surgeon husband founded the Doctor Kelley Cancer Foundation in 2007, stating that it "shall be operated exclusively to conduct cancer research and to grant wishes to terminally ill adult cancer patients." But records reveal that the charity went bust later that year, having spent every penny of the $157,284 it started with on expenses like parties, entertainment, and travel. The charity also listed $12,807 for office expenses and supplies, and $7,854 on utilities and telephones, which is a little on the steep side for a charity that operated out of the couple's mansion, the HuffPo notes. But the charity isn't all that's surfaced on Kelley: The mansion where Kelley and her husband threw lavish parties for military top brass has been in foreclosure since 2010, reports the New York Daily News. The couple owes vast sums to banks and credit card companies and has been hit by at least nine lawsuits. Kelley isn't just an unpaid social liaison to nearby MacDill Air Force Base, she's an honorary consul of South Korea, an embassy official tells Foreign Policy. "She assumed this position last August thanks to her good connections and network," the Korean official says, adding that the position is symbolic and has no official responsibilities. Kelley tried to invoke "diplomatic protection" in one of several 911 calls made over the last few days, Fox reports. Complaining about trespassers on her property, Kelley told the dispatcher, "I'm an honorary consul general ... I don't know if you want to get diplomatic protection involved as well, because that's against the law to cross my property because, you know, it's inviolable." The Wall Street Journal adds that over the summer, Kelley became worried about personal information getting aired and tried to get the FBI to drop its investigation into threatening emails Paula Broadwell sent her. Broadwell, it notes, also sent anonymous emails to military brass bashing Kelley.