The director of the Central Intelligence Agency David Petraeus has dramatically resigned from his post, after admitting that he had an extramarital affair with his biographer.

Paula Broadwell, Petraeus' biographer has been named as the woman he had an affair with.

Paula Broadwel was the valedictorian of her high school class and homecoming queen, a fitness champion at West Point with a graduate degree from Harvard, and a model for a machine gun manufacturer, writes Micheal D Shear in The New York Times.

It may have been those qualities -- and a string of achievements that began in her native North Carolina, where she was state student council president, an all-state basketball player and orchestra concertmistress in North Carolina -- that drew the attention of Petraeus, as the two spent hours together for a biography of Petraeus that Broadwell co-wrote.

Broadwell's name burst into public view on Friday evening after Petraeus resigned abruptly amid an FBI investigation that uncovered evidence of their relationship.

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