* NSA is spying on Congressmen. My guess is, this explains the extremely deferential and minimal oversight Congress gives them–everyone knows that they’ve got the dirt on everyone, and so nobody wants to ask too many hard questions that might lead to some reporter mysteriously getting a copy of the credit card receipts from that little getaway with that 19 year old campaign worker.
The biggest story of Obama’s first term (which was reported day-to-day, but not with much depth) was the massive way he caved in on everything he said he was going to do to rein in the intelligence agencies and pentagon. I’ve always assumed this was mainly because he never meant any of that stuff anyway, since politicians lie whenever their mouths are moving. But it’s also possible he simply realized that the intelligence agencies were just too powerful to take on.
* Clever spin on the news.
Main issue should be ‘US politicians acting as whores to Israel that spies on an ally’.
But instead, we get ‘US violates trust and spies on ally Israel’.
A story can be spun in so many ways.
Those who spin are sure to win.
Stepped-up NSA eavesdropping revealed to the White House how Mr. Netanyahu and his advisers had leaked details of the U.S.-Iran negotiations—learned through Israeli spying operations—to undermine the talks; coordinated talking points with Jewish-American groups against the deal; and asked undecided lawmakers what it would take to win their votes, according to current and former officials familiar with the intercepts…
Michael Hayden, who led the NSA and the Central Intelligence Agency during the George W. Bush administration, described the intelligence relationship between the U.S. and Israel as “the most combustible mixture of intimacy and caution that we have.”
The NSA helped Israel expand its electronic spy apparatus—known as signals intelligence—in the late 1970s. The arrangement gave Israel access to the communications of its regional enemies, information shared with the U.S. Israel’s spy chiefs later suspected the NSA was tapping into their systems.
When Mr. Obama took office, the NSA and its Israeli counterpart, Unit 8200, worked together against shared threats, including a campaign to sabotage centrifuges for Iran’s nuclear program. At the same time, the U.S. and Israeli intelligence agencies targeted one another, stoking tensions.
