CIA Didn't Bother Informing Obama About Blown Cover Of German Double Agent Before His Call With Merkel
from the finding-out-from-the-papers-again dept
We've pointed out before how bizarre it is that President Obama seems to gleefully admit that he's almost totally in the dark about what the intelligence community is doing. Last year, he admitted that he keeps finding out what the NSA is doing from the press reports on the Snowden documents and then he goes to ask what the NSA has been up to. It appears this "keep him in the dark" status is reaching new and ridiculous heights. As you probably heard, over the weekend the Germans arrested an employee of the German BND, who had apparently been spying for the Americans (via the CIA), and who had been tasked with keeping tabs on the German investigation into the Snowden leaks. This morning, there are reports about a second spy as well. Reports suggest that the first guy was a bit of a bumbling buffoon who was caught because he sent via email classified documents to the Russians, offering to spy for them as well (leading to an investigation that turned up his existing spying activities for the CIA), but it's still a diplomatic black eye for the US.However, the craziest bit about this is that no one bothered to inform the President that the cover of a CIA plant had been blown in Germany -- even though President Obama was scheduled to talk to Angela Merkel a day after the arrest. While that call went off without a hitch, and the spy wasn't brought up, the fact that President Obama was apparently unaware of the situation, once again, raises serious questions about the rogue nature of the intelligence community. No one expects the President to know specifically about CIA plants, but once one is blown -- especially concerning a big ally where previous revelations already made a bit of a diplomatic mess -- you'd think that someone inside the intelligence community would think to brief the President.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Filed Under: angela merkel, barak cobama, bnd, cia, ed snownde, germany, nsa, surveillance
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
I guess the dems love their weak simpleton leaders!
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re:
G.W. Bush anyone? It's not just one party that loves a charismatic but stupid(willful or not) figurehead, they both do.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re:
Clinton had balls, but he moved the Democratic party to the right completing the absolutely-no-difference between the 2 parties an axiom.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
In a nutshell, the German government has decided to extend the duration of their resentment from three to five days. A five-day period of resentment is considered the strongest diplomatic retaliation that Germany can bestow on the U.S.
Something like that.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re:
Apart from that, it's really horrible to see how the German government kowtows before the USA. Instead of strongly condemning the actions, evicting all intelligence officers with a diplomatic pass and stopping certain negotiations and other programs (SWIFT data transfer, TTIP, etc.), the actual action taken strongly resembles that the satire news magazine "Der Postillon" describes.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
I see nothing!
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Another Bit of Solid Evidence that Obama is a Muppet
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
No need
As to the 'bizarre' bit about how he only learns about what the NSA is doing from the press... yeah, nothing 'bizarre' about that, it's called 'willful ignorance', or 'plausible deniability'. He doesn't know what they're doing because he doesn't want to know.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: No need
It is to a large extend either criminal negligence from the president or the agencies when plausible deniability is used in this context. As important core functions of a government, a president has as much of a duty to keep informed and act if the government bureaucracys actions seem inappropriate as passing laws. That duty cannot be fulfilled when plausible deniability is used.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: No need
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
From sergeant Schultz to President Obama, I know nothing, I see nothing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34ag4nkSh7Q
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Nahh
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
He's just the most powerful puppet and can't know anything important, unless his masters tell him to.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
This seems like very poor management
In this case, it seems like the intelligence community is not giving proper oversight to the president. The intelligence community seem to be poor managers of the elected officials. Both of the president and the senate intelligence committee.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: This seems like very poor management
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: This seems like very poor management
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
They love to call themselves the "intelligence community" but apperantly they are completly retarded
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Odd that no one seems curious about WHO??
https://archive.org/details/DwightD.Eisenhower-FarewellAddressmilitary-industrialComplexSpeech
L inks to parts 2 & 3 below part 1
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
They can't think for themselves and are always doing what they are told to do. They only get information when it is given to them and they don't have time to validate anything. It's the nature of how they exist, too busy doing stuff and making sure they don't do/say something stupid while having to say this and that.
Obama, like almost all other leaders is a machine that is always on. No time to think... be here for breakfast, there for meeting, then here for a lunch, go there for another meeting, then here for a press statement, go there for dinner etc...
It's why they age so much. They don't even get a lunch break and even going out to dinner is a job that requires hours of saying this and not saying that.
Until that is fixed... stories like the "ill informed" leader will always be occurring.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Its just a job... but the pay is awesome!
You'd think that if you still believed the President was anything more than a hired gun for Wall Street Billionaires.
On the other hand, if you realized that Obama was just an employee of the men running the USA these days, you would understand that what Obama knows is exactly what he needs to know when he's about to lay down another lie on the US Public.
He already had his German meeting script memorized, so there was no need to confuse the con with stuff that was immaterial to that meeting.
Now that he might need to spin some BS to the public about this "bumbling minion", he will be briefed and handed his new script by the same folks who wrote his German meeting script.
I can barely wait to hear this one. :)
[ link to this | view in chronology ]