Petraeus-scandal casualty Jill Kelley wants some privacy, as she explains in national newspaper

Here's one way to return to normalcy after taking part in a national sex scandal: Air out your dirty laundry in the New York Times.

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Jill Kelley, the woman implicated by former CIA Director Gen. David Petraeus's extramarital affair in 2012, is suing the U.S. government for defamation and allegedly invading her privacy.

"People don’t understand what I went through,” Kelley said in a recent interview with the Times. “I am still suffering the consequences from the bad acts and false and untrue headlines. They created a sideshow at my expense.”

In a lawsuit that is half legal document and half news release, Ms. 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 C.I.A., was having an affair. The suit, filed in United States District Court for the District of Columbia, is also an attempt by Ms. Kelley to tell her side of a story that she says was distorted and dismissed, leaving her family as collateral damage.

And without a hint of irony: “I was seeking protection,” she said, “not publicity.”