U.S. spying efforts to gather information on Israel also swept up communications between members of Congress and Israeli leaders, according to a report from The Wall Street Journal. The program, which was run by the National Security Agency at the request of the Obama administration, was intended to give the White House insight into Israel’s lobbying of U.S. lawmakers against the Iran nuclear deal, current and former U.S. officials told the paper.
The U.S. continued to spy on allies despite President Barack Obama’s pledge to curb surveillance activity in 2014, following the revelations by Edward Snowden of the NSA's program, according to the Wall Street Journal. From that continued surveillance, the NSA captured communication showing Israeli officials trying to turn lawmakers against the international deal that curbed Iran’s nuclear capabilities, officials told The Wall Street Journal.
One senior U.S. official described the discovery of the communication as an "Oh s--t moment" and feared that the executive branch would be accused of spying on Congress. Wanting to leave no paper trail behind with formal written requests, the White House tasked the NSA with providing the information as the agency saw fit. As one official put it, "We didn’t say, 'Do it,'" and "We didn’t say, 'Don’t do it.'"
The NSA removed the names of the lawmakers and personal information as well as "trash talk" about the White House, Politico reported.
Pete Hoekstra, former member of Congress and ex-chair of the House Intelligence Committee, took to Twitter to express his outrage over what he said was possibly an "unprecedented abuse of power."
WSJ report that NSA spied on Congress and Israel communications very disturbing. Actually outrageous. Maybe unprecedented abuse of power.
— Pete Hoekstra (@petehoekstra) December 30, 2015
NSA and Obama officials need to be investigated and prosecuted if any truth to WSJ reports. NSA loses all credibility. Scary. — Pete Hoekstra (@petehoekstra) December 30, 2015
In a January 2014 speech at the Justice Department, Obama said the NSA would undergo changes to "maintain the trust of the American people, and people around the world."
"The task before us now is greater than simply repairing the damage done to our operations; or preventing more disclosures from taking place in the future. Instead, we have to make some important decisions about how to protect ourselves and sustain our leadership in the world, while upholding the civil liberties and privacy protections that our ideals - and our Constitution - require," Obama said, according to the Huffington Post.
He added: "We need to do so not only because it is right, but because the challenges posed by threats like terrorism, and proliferation, and cyberattacks are not going away anytime soon, they are going to continue to be a major problem, and for our intelligence community to be effective over the long haul, we must maintain the trust of the American people, and people around the world."
