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.

Filed Under: angela merkel, barak cobama, bnd, cia, ed snownde, germany, nsa, surveillance