There has been a concerted effort to portray the thousands of emails between General John Allen and socialite Jill Kelley as "innocent."

But other sources are telling Fox News that isn't the case:

American commander in Afghanistan Gen. John Allen, facing an internal investigation for "inappropriate communications" with a woman at the heart of the David Petraeus controversy, engaged in much more than "flirtatious" behavior, sources tell Fox News -- with one official even likening the email exchanges to "phone sex."

The investigation focuses on emails between Allen and Jill Kelley, a close friend of the Petraeus family. Kelley was the woman who originally notified the FBI when she received threatening emails from Petraeus' mistress Paula Broadwell -- and that investigation later uncovered the affair. 

One senior defense official initially described the nature of the communications between Allen and Kelley as "flirtatious." However, two U.S. officials later told Fox News that Allen's contact with Kelley was more than just general flirting. One official described some of the emails as sexually explicit and the "equivalent of phone sex over email."

Another official said Panetta would not have referred this matter to an internal investigator without knowing the devastating impact this would have on war efforts and on Allen and his family.

"This was a serious enough matter that those who examined the emails thought it should be referred to the secretary of defense, and the secretary made the decision to turn it over to the inspector general," the official said. "He would not have thrust this into the limelight without good cause."

Pentagon spokesman George Little declined to comment on the nature of the communications, citing the pending investigation.

The sheer volume of mail is staggering. There are 20-30,000 pages of documents, most of them reportedly emails. Even allowing for some duplicates, it makes one wonder when General Allen found the time to fight the war in Afghanistan.

The push back by Petreaus and Allen partisans in the Pentagon, trying to portray their principle as mostly innocent or not as bad as the evidence looks, isn't working very well. The more we learn, the worse the two high ranking officers are coming off.