The Wall Street Journal opened Wednesday with a major reveal about ongoing American spying on senior Israeli officials, including wiretaps even within the inner sanctum of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s hyper-secure inner office. Not incidentally, the story also disclosed that some of the taps, which appear to be spying implements attached to devices carried by individuals into private, classified meetings, inadvertently also caught US members of Congress in their nets.
Strict restrictions apply to the ability of the National Security Agency (NSA) to eavesdrop on American elected officials. However, despite President Barack Obama announcement two years ago that the US would curtail eavesdropping on friendly heads of state, the legal restrictions do not apply when it comes to foreign leaders.
As the Obama administration pursued a nuclear deal with Iran in 2014 and 1015, its surveillance of Netanyahu and his staff, who vehemently opposed the deal, intensified.
That said, the articles most significant scoop is that two Republicans and not Netanyahu cooked up the notion that the Israeli prime minister should address Congress in order to most powerfully voice his opposition to the deal. “On Jan. 8,” the front page story divulges, “John Boehner, then the Republican House Speaker, and incoming Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell agreed on a plan. They would invite Mr. Netanyahu to deliver a speech to a joint session of Congress. A day later, Mr. Boehner called Ron Dermer, the Israeli ambassador, to get Mr. Netanyahu’s agreement.”
And yet, it continues, “Despite NSA surveillance, Obama administration officials said they were caught off guard when Mr. Boehner announced the invitation on Jan. 21.”
In fact, the value of any information gathered is in question. Barak Ravid, the diplomatic correspondent for the Israeli daily Haaretz, tweeted the question that hovered over Jerusalem corridors on Wednesday: “Did anybody really need eavesdropping & cyber ops to know Netanyahu was lobbying congress against the Iran deal? It was all in the press.”
Ya’akov Amidror, a Netanyahu confidant and his former NSA chief, suggested in an interview with Israel Army radio that the hubbub was entirely unnecessary. “The US spies on everyone, full stop. They don’t say it publicly, but everyone knows it. So what?”
Yuval Steinitz, Netanyahu’s Minister of National Infrastructure, Energy and Water Resources, said he had “no doubt the office employees of the prime minister’s office knew how to protect sensitive information.”