The President Should Have Stopped the Snooping!

Angela Merkel, the Chancellor of Germany, was rightfully angered when she learned that the U.S. National Security Agency was listening in on her phone calls. In fact, that is only the beginning of our nation’s inquisitorial snooping and intermeddling.
by Charlie Leck

An examination of the documents leaked by Edward Snowden makes it clear that the telephone conversations of 35 world leaders were monitored by the National Security Agency (NSA).

Officials in government, including the White House, were asked by the NSA to share their “Rolodexes” so the agency could include more and more phone numbers of international political leaders on their “to be snooped list.”

It seems likely that the President of the United States would have known of such intrusions into the conversations of his fellow heads-of-state. If he didn’t, it is a failure on his part.

For this, our favor among the nations of the world had dropped significantly. That’s too bad because President Obama had worked so hard to raise our prestige among international leaders. Now, in one-fell-swoop, he has allowed all the results of that effort to disintegrate.

At a White House press briefing the other day, spokesman Jay Carney answered a question by saying: “The revelations have clearly caused tension in our relationships with some countries, and we are dealing with that through diplomatic channels.”

If you’d like to read an excellent story about this matter that appeared in The Guardian, you can find it here. The reporter is James Ball.

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