This stems from a Wall St Journal report, to which I do not have access.
Dec. 29, 2015 -
U.S. Spy Net on Israel Snares Congress
This article revealed that the Obama administration used the NSA to cast a wide net of surveillance around not just Israeli officials and diplomats, but American lawmakers who were friendly towards Israel as well as Jewish-American groups.
In this case, the theory is that surveillance was used as leverage to get legislators to vote for the Iran deal.
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The author of the link below wrote an article on Dec. 31, 2015 entitled
WHY THE WHITE HOUSE WANTED CONGRESS TO THINK IT WAS BEING SPIED ON BY THE NSA. He was trying to figure out why the NSA was still spying on Israel months after the Iran Deal took place, and he referenced the WSJ article above.
On Tuesday The Wall Street Journal reported that the Obama Administration tasked the National Security Agency to spy on Israel. An even more explosive revelation in the Journal story is that in its “targeting of Israeli leaders and officials,” the NSA “also swept up the contents of some of their private conversations with U.S. lawmakers and American-Jewish groups.”
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Since the Susan Rice surveillance issue has blown up, I guess he recalled what went on back then, and now it all makes sense.
DID THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION’S ABUSE OF FOREIGN-INTELLIGENCE COLLECTION START BEFORE TRUMP?
“At some point, the administration weaponized the NSA’s legitimate monitoring of communications of foreign officials to stay one step ahead of domestic political opponents,” says a pro-Israel political operative who was deeply involved in the day-to-day fight over the Iran Deal. “The NSA’s collections of foreigners became a means of gathering real-time intelligence on Americans engaged in perfectly legitimate political activism—activism, due to the nature of the issue, that naturally involved conversations with foreigners. We began to notice the White House was responding immediately, sometimes within 24 hours, to specific conversations we were having. At first, we thought it was a coincidence being amplified by our own paranoia. After a while, it simply became our working assumption that we were being spied on.”
So in this case, Israel was the excuse used to spy on Americans. Now it doesn't say anyone was unmasked, but the intent is dubious at best.
During the long and contentious lead-up to the Iran Deal the Israeli ambassador was regularly briefing senior officials in Jerusalem, including the prime minister, about the situation, including his meetings with American lawmakers and Jewish community leaders. The Obama administration would be less interested in what the Israelis were doing than in the actions of those who actually had the ability to block the deal—namely, Senate and House members.
If anyone has access to the WSJ article - please give it a read.
Seems like the Obama Administration took advantage of a loophole to spy on Americans.
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