[jonknee]

Or from the WSJ this morning (hardly a defender of the Obama administration):

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB1000142405270230447050...

Obama Unaware as U.S. Spied on World Leaders

> The National Security Agency ended a program used to spy on German Chancellor Angela Merkel and a number of other world leaders after an internal Obama administration review started this summer revealed to the White House the existence of the operation, U.S. officials said.

...

> The White House cut off some monitoring programs after learning of them, including the one tracking Ms. Merkel and some other world leaders, a senior U.S. official said. Other programs have been slated for termination but haven't been phased out completely yet, officials said.

> The account suggests President Barack Obama went nearly five years without knowing his own spies were bugging the phones of world leaders. Officials said the NSA has so many eavesdropping operations under way that it wouldn't have been practical to brief him on all of them.

[001sky]

Good ol' plausible deniability. What is interesting, is that this is the exact same construct and "excuse" for lying as in the case I noted above. In both instances, the senior executives claim to be caught unawares.

[001sky]

I suppose cracks in the facade may be starting to show...

WASHINGTON — 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.

Professional staff members at the National Security Agency and other U.S. intelligence agencies are angry, these officials say, believing the president has cast them adrift as he tries to distance himself from the disclosures by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden that have strained ties with close allies.

http://www.latimes.com/world/la-fg-spying-phones-20131029,0,...