Discussion on:

James Bond had tons of women, and yet Petraeus has one little affair

"There's a double standard here. The head of the CIA gets caught having sex and has to resign. Meanwhile, a British special agent, James Bond, has sex with tons of women and makes $90 million at the box office. Where's the justice?"
-Craig Ferguson

"David Petraeus was reportedly not well liked at the CIA where he worked. A tip to you fellows out there - don't cheat on your wife if you work with professional spies who don't like you." -Conan O'Brien

So it worked out ok.

And he didn't have affairs while married.

In the real world we need people with both loyalty and self-respect in intelligence agencies. Someone without self-respect is liable to do anything, and someone who will not be true to his wife, a real live person, is unlikely to be true to the Republic, a legal abstraction.

...someone who will not be true to his wife, a real live person, is unlikely to be true to the Republic, a legal abstraction.

It all depends on your moral code. I've known dozens of [formerly] married men who considered betrayal of the country to be beyond the pale, while betraying their wives was a male prerogative. In short, they were "true to the Republic", but not to their wives.

More than a few former politicians, religious leaders, military leaders.....

Philanderers in security positions leave themselves vulnerable to blackmail, the payment of which is likely to be in terms of secrets compromised. That's why marital affairs invariably lead to a prompt revocation of security clearances, regardless of the level in the chain. Even if the 'cheater' doesn't care who knows about his marital infidelity, he may still pay off in order to keep his job.

In the cases I personally knew about where higher-level access was involved, the blackmail was by commanders who became aware of the affair(s), then gave the men involved the choice of telling their wives to file for divorce on grounds of infidelity or losing the clearance.

Every one of them chose to tell the wife...

The biggest risk to him was always that the female spy typically worked for the enemy.

Overall not good judgement, trying to keep something secret in a spy organization.

The quotations in the original post are jokes made by late-night comedians. No one is likely to seriously confuse Bond with real intelligence professionals of any country.

nt