Count me as very skeptical about the suggestions in recent days that neither the White House nor the congressional intelligence committees knew about NSA collections against leaders in allied countries.
I have a hard time believing that the President in his many hundreds of intelligence briefings—scores of which surely involved intelligence about allied leaders in run-ups to various diplomatic and political meetings—did not know that some of the information was gleaned through collection against the leaders themselves. (I am not saying that the White House is lying about what the President knew—only that its statement about the President’s ignorance is extraordinary, and that I suspect that someone in the White House knew.) If, as Senator Feinstein said yesterday, the President “was not aware Chancellor Merkel’s communications were being collected since 2002,” then it is indeed (as she said) “a big problem”—mainly for the President’s credibility as chief Executive. For this collection outside the United States against a non-U.S. person is done pursuant to Executive Order 12,333.
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