When the media puts on its befuddled face over Trump's allegations, remember what Obama was doing little more than a year ago.
The National Security Agency's (NSA) continued surveillance of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Israeli leaders may also have swept up private conversations involving members of Congress, the Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday night.
Further, the Journal reports that intercepted conversations between Israeli leaders confirmed Israel's knowledge of the talks, as well as its intent to undermine any nuclear deal with Iran by leaking its details. When Netanyahu and his top aides came to Washington to talk with Jewish-American groups and members of Congress to lobby against the deal, the NSA was there to pick up the conversations.
Senior officials told the WSJ that those conversations collected by the NSA raised fears "that the executive branch would be accused of spying on Congress." The White House wanted the information anyway, however, because it "believed the intercepted information could be valuable to counter Mr. Netanyahu's campaign."
So in order to avoid leaving a trail, the White House left it to the NSA to figure out what to share, and the NSA obliged, deleting names of members and any personal attacks on the administration.
To summarize...
1. Obama Inc. used surveillance of an ally and of domestic groups, even members of Congress, to defend its own political agenda
2. It did so relying on plausible deniability
3. The information was shared across the administration and planted in the media
Kerry justified his accusation by pointing to Israeli media reports, but those reports were a convenient source, given that "Intelligence officials said the media reports allowed the U.S. to put Mr. Netanyahu on notice without revealing they already knew his thinking. The prime minister mentioned no secrets during his speech to Congress," wrote the Journal.
There was no firewall between spying for national security and for a political agenda. That was the most important point here. Everything else is plausible deniability.
White House officials believed the intercepted information could be valuable to counter Netanyahu’s campaign. They also recognized that asking for it was politically risky. So, wary of a paper trail stemming from a request, the White House let the NSA decide what to share and what to withhold, officials said. “We didn’t say, ‘Do it,’ ” a senior U.S. official said. “We didn’t say, ‘Don’t do it.’ ”
When you hear the current Obama denials, remember that they almost certainly played another variation of the same game.