Was President Obama truly unaware that the NSA was spying on leaders of friendly foreign countries? The LA Times reports that the intelligence community is pretty peeved at White House denials:
The White House and State Department signed off on surveillance targeting phone conversations of friendly foreign leaders, current and former U.S. intelligence officials said Monday, pushing back against assertions that President Obama and
his aides were unaware of the high-level eavesdropping.
….Precisely how the surveillance is conducted is unclear. But if a foreign leader is targeted for eavesdropping, the relevant U.S. ambassador and the National Security Council staffer at the White House who deals with the country are given regular reports, said two former senior intelligence officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity in discussing classified information.
….Some U.S. intelligence officials said they were being blamed by the White House for conducting surveillance that was authorized under the law and utilized at the White House. “People are furious,” said a senior intelligence official who would not be identified discussing classified information. “This is officially the White House cutting off the intelligence community.”
Does the intelligence community really have good reason to feel like it’s being thrown under the bus? Or is this kind of plausible deniability just the way things go in spook land? I’m not sure. But John McCain wants to find out: “Obviously, we’re going to want to know exactly what the president knew and when he knew it,” he told reporters in Chicago. In related news, however, the New York Times seems to have confirmed my guess about the timeline for this story:
[The spying program] was not suspended until sometime last summer after the theft of the N.S.A. data by Mr. Snowden was discovered. “At that point it was clear that lists of targeted foreign officials may well become public,” said one official, “so many of the interceptions were suspended.”
So the programs were indeed suspended “this summer,” but only after it became clear that they were highly likely to become public. If it weren’t for Edward Snowden, they’d be continuing to this day with no one the wiser.
