Dear future journalists of America: If you're sleeping with the next ambassador to Iraq, it's not a good idea to use your company email to discuss "blue balls," masturbation, and sexual favors.

That's a lesson comes from the developing scandal about the relationship between Wall Street Journal reporter Gina Chon and National Security Council member ambassadorial nominee Brett McGurk, who allegedly started seeing each other while both were stationed in Iraq in 2008. At the time, McGurk was married to another woman, reports The Washington Free Beacon's Adam Kredo. The reason we know about Chon, McGurk and the blue balls is because of a batch of e-mails they exchanged popped on Flickr a few days ago and eventually made their way to Cryptome:

Embarrassing right?  Like who writes e-mails with that much nostalgia of a hook-up? And here's the "blue ball" email:

And here where it gets murky, as McGurk tells Chon who she should talk to for her upcoming story:

The weird thing is that Chon was using her WSJ e-mail and signature:

And there's more (including "poor baby" and "pouting" testicles) on Flickr.

The Free Beacon's Kredo notes McGurk and Chon are married to each other now, but neither one have spoken about this affair yet. Chon, from her WSJ bylines, appears to be covering the tech and business industry now (no conflict of interest) and seems to have taken a leave of absence from The Journal. And it looks these e-mails might hurt McGurk's nomination (which has already been opposed by lawmakers prior to this revelation). "The emails raise questions about the administration official’s fitness for the ambassadorship and whether he may have traded access to sensitive information for sexual favors," writes Kredo. 

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Alexander Abad-Santos