Behind-The-Scenes, White House Preoccupied By NSA Surveillance Controversy - WaPo

[WillyT]

Behind-the-scenes, White House preoccupied by NSA surveillance controversy
By David Nakamura - WaPo
Published: January 9, 2014

<snip>

In public, President Obama has focused this week on income inequality, touting initiatives to help the poor and unemployed. But in private, the president and his top aides have spent more time dealing with another issue.

Obama met Thursday with a bipartisan group of lawmakers to update them on his review of the National Security Agency’s vast surveillance program. A day earlier, he huddled separately with top intelligence officials and a White House advisory panel on privacy issues and civil liberties. He also called German Chancellor Angela Merkel, whose mobile phone had been tapped by the NSA, and invited her to Washington.

In addition, his top lawyer, White House Counsel Kathryn Ruemmler, met with privacy advocates Thursday, and executives from the nation’s largest Internet companies were scheduled to visit the White House on Friday.

Ever since Edward Snowden stole 1.7 million classified files from the NSA last summer, the Obama administration has been under siege and looking for a way out.

The behind-the-scenes effort to manage the fallout from the Snowden leaks has been so wide-ranging and time-consuming that officials from the George W. Bush and Obama administrations compare it to White House deliberations over the 9/11 and Iraq intelligence commissions’ reports, the U.S. military surge in Afghanistan, and the WikiLeaks disclosures.

The challenge is, in some ways, even more complicated this time...

<snip>

More: http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/behind-the-scenes-white-house-preoccupied-by-nsa-surveillance-controversy/2014/01/09/2d6ee2ba-789b-11e3-8963-b4b654bcc9b2_story.html

[cantbeserious]

1. When One Administration Adopts The Previous Administration Policies - One Reaps What One Sows

eom

[DJ13]

2. Damage Control 24/7 is tiring?

Whoda thunk?

[Rosa Luxemburg]

3. Thought they had moved on?

[Wilms]

4. ^