What does the NSA Know about Obama?

CFP - National Security Agency (NSA) veterans Bill Binney, Russ Tice and Kirk Wiebe spoke at a Friday news conference at the National Press Club, in Washington, D.C., with Tice declaring that the spy agency monitored Barack Obama’s telephone conversations—and those of his wife—in 2004, apparently as a result of Obama’s run for the U.S. Senate and emergence as a major figure in the Democratic Party. This should have been big news. However, the claim was ignored or dismissed by most of the major media.

A major exception was NBC News, which posted a clip from the press conference and an item noting that “Former NSA analyst Russ Tice says that, during his tenure, the NSA had a program that spied on phone and email messages of Congress, the Supreme Court, reporters, military and an up-and-coming politician named Barack Obama.” These are sensational charges.

Jeff Mason of Reuters interviewed Tice about Obama’s proposed “reforms” of the agency, but didn’t include any comments on the agency’s alleged surveillance of Obama.

Why would the NSA watch Obama? Could it have something to do with his communist and foreign connections?

Tice, who says he supported Obama for president even though he had been a conservative Republican, told Russia Today (RT) television that “...a high-level person at NSA told me this was being directed from the vice president’s office. That would be Vice-President Dick Cheney. I don’t know that for sure, but that’s what I was told from a very senior person at NSA.” Tice also told the Moscow-funded propaganda channel that Obama may somehow be “controlled” as President as a result of its surveillance of him.

Tice cannot be dismissed completely as a nut by the Left, since he was one of the sources used in The New York Times’ reporting in December 2005 on domestic surveillance activity. The media have treated him as credible in the past. His affiliations reportedly include his roles as a former intelligence analyst for the U.S. Air Force, Office of Naval Intelligence, Defense Intelligence Agency, and the National Security Agency." 

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