actually.

this government. Not unlike other Presidents, the war machine and secret ops are mostly in the hands of Rambo types who enjoy what they do not for the sake of the of the country but for their own enjoyment and the power play of the wealthy unelected and unelectable icons who salivate at hurting whatever President they don't like. Kennedy was one they didn't like and Reagan was one they just laughed at and used for cover.

Well bellow Cabinet level (until now)

Targeting foreign heads of state does indeed require presidential imprimatur. It could very well seen as an act of war, indeed it was in olden days. At the very least it will create serious diplomatic headaches, even the break up of NATO worst case here. (It's not just Germany)

So either the President knew and they are trying some lovely deniability, or the President did not and the Agency has gone rogue.

.....or WH is obfuscating.

Either way, this is really stupid.

May well be true. Yet I think getting to a conclusion on what someone didn't say is a stretch.

from a similarly unsupported story from Der Spiegel is there any evidence that Chancellor Merkell's phone was tapped? Please note that Spiegel would publish evidence if it had it.

This seems to be yet another attempt to denigrate the US President.

As to your own sentence

Der Spiegel learned of it via Merkel's number in Snowden docs, informed three German security services, they investigated and found it legit enough to convince Merkel to be uncharacteristically sharp and call Obama.

Check my older OPs, you'll see. You can say there is no proof, that's fine. But to say there is no evidence?

and a spokesperson not outright denying a question is not evidence, it is a refusal to speculate and often a refusal to give a rumour even the courtesy of a negation.

I was kind enough to summarize it to you.

Start from the thread in LBN maybe http://www.democraticunderground.com/1014630106

They must all be going on about a rumor

bye now

and that assertion was given no credence by either The Guardian or the NYT and both of those have had access to similar material to Der Spiegel

The story you cite is about German reaction to that unevidenced charge and stop trying to pretend otherwise.

Unsupported assertion.

Also 35 world leaders is not many; amongst the 35 I guess there will be about 5 in China, a similar number in the Russian Federation and others in the former USSR, there will be several in Latin America, others in Iran and Syria. If there are only 35 world leaders monitored then I would actually think that very restrained of the NSA.

My objection was to the initially unsupported nature of the claim in this OP

I said that Der Spiegel's original claim, subject of an OP on Thursday, was unsupported.

Please do not try to put word into my mouth.

And I am not putting words in your mouth. It is derived from what you wrote in the above exchange you had with the OP. It is a logical conclusion. You accepted the story as possible until the English language top tier papers went there.

I am sorry if you did not intend that conclusion, but it was derived from your own writing. On the web we lack visual cues, which are, iirc, 90% of human communication. Why I try to be very precise. But to each their own. Now the story is getting even worst. So there is where we are.

Suffice it to say that this, to be extremely precise with the language, so we avoid misunderstandings, this is a major diplomatic incident. In olden days it could even be treated as an act of war. We are a Nuclear armed power, so skinning this kitty becomes difficult for a second tier power.

So we are clear.

That is where we are. The OP gave you links, plenty of them. I will save the link to the getting worst part. Suffice it to say it is in GD.

had supported Spiegel's assertion.

Indeed the impression I had from the BBC article was that there may be another NSA leaker.

Sieves are starting to come to mind

That's what makes collection of all data so insidious. I bet Obama has no idea what the NSA has on him.

cannot be aware of all of those functions that are going on. He is still responsible for them, but knowing all of them? Even knowing 1% of them is impossible.

what he's been told...and that was what were were doing was not what we were doing and he didn't question it even when Snowden's information started to come out.

about it?

Although maybe not so bad as if he had given her a back rub.

Security services called the surveillance "zeitweilig" - temporary.

And the mobile she used wasn't her encrypted one, but her "Parteihandy" - the one she used as CDU party leader. She's been that since 2000.

Last edited Sat Oct 26, 2013, 06:57 PM - Edit history (1)

as per De Morgen (Belgian MSM), source = NYT but can't find it online.
http://www.demorgen.be/dm/nl/990/Buitenland/article/detail/1729984/2013/10/26/Obama-wist-niet-dat-Merkel-werd-afgeluisterd.dhtml

On edit: here's the Guardian

Not seeing how that helps.

Clapper lies to Congress, Alexander thinks he's Captain Kirk... we're not dealing with a completely stable bunch, here.

The leader of the free world goes to a critical, crucial, historical ally and says, with a straight face,
"Oh, that started under Bush, and kept on, and I had no idea it was happening. Bush is a doo-doo
head. I'm not. I had no idea."

What weak, silly, stupid, and pathetic sauce.

They always deny knowledge of everything, it's standard procedure. That's why I can't stand to watch the press secretaries of any administration, they're all full of shit and rarely actually answer anything.

Worst to be fair

Are you saying I'm going to portray it worse or that the BBC will?

I no longer post analysis here. I have taken that off site. But I will wait for some of this to shake up.

From here on out the Europeans will doubt any assurance we give. Use Roswell as an example. Those who believe that the UFO crashed will never believe anything else. You can give them a ton of paperwork and investigative reports, and those are all lies to the true believers. As for me, I don't know. I know the Government lies regularly, Delta Force as an example. It was years after the Chuck Norris movies that the US Army finally admitted that they had a group called Delta. Their excuse was that it wasn't called Delta Force, but Special Operations Detachment Delta, which is completely different you see.

It will be years, perhaps a decade, before the Europeans begin to trust our assurances again. We may never regain the level of trust we once had.

But as I said, I no longer do analysis here.

All I will say, next high command meeting in Brussels (NATO), I wish I were a fly on the wall.

but the main of my OP, that it happened in the first place, is not under dispute. And that it still took place under Obama looks certain as well.

I've also seen several recent reports about Obama knowing, but they all go back to Bild Am Sontag. I'm not sure how credible a source they are, Bild is something of a tabloid. That they would get info from a high-up in the NSA seems weird.

But who knows. It sure looks like some PR war is going on. To me, what Obama personally knew or not isn't that much of an issue. The overreach was put in overdrive under Bush, and continued under Obama, that's all I need to know. But I understand it matters to people on DU. Thanks for adding to the thread!

The easy explanation of a rock rolling down the hill. The earlier you shift it's course away from the cottage, the less you have to do to change the direction. The longer the rock rolls, the faster it goes, the harder it is to change that course because the momentum it now carrying it towards the destination you don't want.

Often times, when faced with a plethora of information, it is easier to simply allow the status quo to continue because you don't have time to consider every issue. What should have happened is that the Justice Department, the State Department, and the NSA should have sat down and discussed the policy and procedures. The Justice Department is looking to see if we are violating international law, the State Department to see if we are violating treaties, or betraying the trust of our foreign friends. Then they prepare position papers, and present the President with the issues laid out with chapter and verse so that he can make an informed decision instead of an off the cuff on the fly let's keep going with that because again, momentum keeps us moving that way.

What I can imagine happening by filling in the blanks of the news stories is this. In 2010, a full year after President Obama was sworn in, the NSA got around to mentioning that they were monitoring and listening in on foreign leaders telephone calls and reading their faxes and emails. They probably pointed out good political intelligence we were getting on the direction of the EU etc. It was probably one of a long laundry list of things the President was briefed on, and he may have asked if everything had been reviewed to make sure it was all legal. That is reference to the inevitable contortions written up by staff lawyers for the various agencies who explain how the unthinkable is perfectly legal so long as we say it this way or don't say that. There is a joke that the reason that FDR selected Bill Donovan to run the COI, later the OSS was that when you're going to break the law, the first person you call is a lawyer, and Donovan was a very smart lawyer.

Partly the momentum I am speaking of is the willingness to trust your subordinates. You can't be as expert on the program after a few short minutes of briefing as they are with years of experience. Partly it's the way the programs are portrayed, as minimally invasive, or whatever terms they throw in there. From what I can gather, the NSA had all the email accounts, fax numbers, and phone numbers for these leaders. But I'm sure someone decided to describe it as minimally invasive, or some other twist of a phrase. And finally, partly it is an unwillingness to shake up a whole department over a few short minutes of briefings. That again falls to the subordinates you have to trust to do the right things, and to carry out your instructions, and more importantly the intent of your instructions.

was rather big by the time it fell in Obama's lap. Who knows, but I can imagine it's a bit of a shock once you get briefed on what exactly Bush* set in motion the morning after 9/11.

That machine, and the MIC it is part of, has been decades in the making. It will take something more else than a president to stand up to it.

But I don't see a significant number of people standing up to it, not even a majority on DU (I did under Bush years), and the president embraces american exceptionalism. From there, it's a small step to justifying the unjustifiable.