From Petraeus Scandal, an Apostle for Privacy

Desperate to restore her reputation, resume her old life and, she said, protect others from similar ordeals, Jill Kelley is, with the help of some of the nation’s most renowned and expensive privacy lawyers, suing three federal agencies and a spate of current and former Pentagon and FBI officials. She asserts that they violated her privacy, defamed her and improperly gained access to her email without her consent, all in a way that hurt her reputation and livelihood.

In a lawsuit that is half legal document and half news release, Kelley seeks damages and a formal apology from the government for revealing her identity after she reported what she assumed was a crime: threatening emails sent by a woman with whom Gen. David H. Petraeus, then director of the CIA, was having an affair. The suit, filed in United States District Court for the District of Columbia, is also an attempt by Kelley to tell her side of a story that she says was distorted and dismissed, leaving her family as collateral damage.