The Question Is What Did Obama Know and When

The arguments surrounding this scandal have shown a distinct lack of nuance: One side believes it has uncovered a uniquely malign presence that stretches its tentacles over half the globe. The other stresses that the danger terrorism poses demands a tough reaction and reminds us that spying is nothing new and goes on in every corner of the globe.

The truth lies somewhere in between. Yes, if we want to fight terrorism effectively, we do have to accept the occasional invasion of our privacy. And yes, spying is as old as the hills and will go on as long as states and other actors on the world stage have conflicting interests. The reality is that even allies will spy on and listen to each other, given the chance. This kind of thing goes on in Europe too, even though it might like to think itself above such behavior.

There are, however, limits to what is considered acceptable and sensible. The NSA’s monitoring operations have occurred on an absurdly large scale, both within the U.S. and in other parts of the world. Ostensibly, within the United States, everything has been carried out legally, but there is a great deal of doubt about whether any proper supervision was in place. It certainly seems that the White House and Congress had only a limited degree of insight into both the scale of NSA activities and what was or was not happening with the metadata.

Shady Dealings Will Always Get Exposed

At the same time, what has happened in the U.S. demonstrates that such shady dealings will always be discovered, and there are serious consequences. The field of foreign relations has sustained damage: It appears the U.S. has been bugging the leader of a friendly government, with whom there was an apparently trusting relationship, Angela Merkel. If it is true that her phone has been bugged for something like the last 10 years, not only does it cast doubt on the bond of trust, so often said to exist between Washington and Berlin, but it also raises the question of how German intelligence services did not even notice. Even if it does not bother Merkel personally, she cannot just ignore it but will have to do something about “the digital occupation,” as it is being called already in Berlin.

In the United States, an old question has been resurrected: What did the president know and for how long? So far, Barack Obama has not shown a steady hand in dealing with the NSA bugging scandal. He denied that the leaders of friendly regimes were being bugged, but at the same time, he promised to put an end to it; he said he knew nothing about any of it but then that he did know about at least some of it.

At the moment, I am reading an interesting biography on John Foster Dulles and Allen Dulles, written by Stephen Kinzer, formerly a correspondent for The New York Times. John Foster and Allen Dulles were two brothers who had a very important influence on U.S. foreign policy during Dwight Eisenhower’s presidency in the 1950s — Foster, as secretary of state, and Allen, as director of the brand new CIA. There are striking parallels between what Obama is doing now and how Eisenhower used covert operations then.

Gen. Eisenhower found himself in the White House at a time when fear of communist expansionism gripped the United States. Republicans argued that his predecessor Harry Truman’s containment policy had failed and demanded a more offensive policy known as “rollback.” But as a military man, Eisenhower was imbued with a horror of war, and his strategic insight told him there was little to be gained in engaging in open confrontation. For this reason, he adopted an approach to Korea that his own party sharply criticized and, in fact, continued following Truman’s same policy. However, he also gave free rein to espionage and covert operations. In the Dulles brothers, he had two zealous practitioners.

The Specter of Terrorism

In the year 2013, the demons are no longer communists but terrorists. Obama has a completely different background than Eisenhower, but he is also very reluctant to get involved in military interventions. Obvious reluctance marks even how the “necessary war” in Afghanistan is conducted. Once again, covert action takes its place: Drones attack terrorist hideouts, and the NSA provides an invisible digital shield.

The problem is that the shield is no longer really invisible and seems to have outgrown itself. More than failing to discover terrorists, insulting its allies has caused Washington to get itself into trouble. For Eisenhower, it was the U-2 flights over the Soviet Union. Just like him, Obama is discovering that poorly planned espionage activities have a habit of coming back to bite.