So, Obama needs Edward Snowden to be fully informed. Can it be true?

[Coyotl]

The blowback (shitstorm) will be worth watching, the public part of it that is. Imagine the background part!
No doubt, Sen. Feinstien isn't too pleased Intelligence Comm. members were also spied on.

One has to wonder if the NSA is also listening in on everything Obama says.

======================================
Obama, Congress Owe Snowden Thanks, and a Pardon
by Robert Scheer - http://www.commondreams.org/view/2013/10/29-0

Now we know that even the president needs leaks from Edward Snowden to be fully informed about the dastardly acts of his own top spy agency. It was Snowden’s recent revelations that led Obama to order an investigation into spying on private communications of 35 world leaders, including our closest allies, a clear betrayal of the trust needed to establish a more peaceful world.

According to a Wall Street Journal account from senior U.S. officials, the president had been kept in the dark as to the extent of the NSA spy program: “President Barack Obama went nearly five years without knowing his own spies were bugging the phones of world leaders. Officials said the NSA has so many eavesdropping operations under way that it wouldn’t have been practical to brief him on all of them. They added that the president was briefed on and approved of broader intelligence-collection ‘priorities,’ but that those below him make decisions about specific intelligence targets.” Huh?

So it’s beneath the president’s pay grade to approve a decision on bugging the phones of most of the free world’s leaders, and the president didn’t know this was going on until Snowden leaked it? Yes, NSA spokeswoman Vanee Vines confirmed, employing the finest of bureaucratic gobbledygook: “The agency’s activities stem from the National Intelligence Priorities Framework, which guides prioritization for the operation, planning and programming of U.S. intelligence analysis and collection.”

On Sunday, Vines added the reassuring news that the report in the German newspaper Bild alleging that President Obama personally authorized the tapping of German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s phone back in 2010 was false. In any case, we already know, thanks again to information Snowden provided to another German publication, Der Spiegel, that the monitoring of Merkel’s cellphone began back in 2002, when George W. Bush ....

[2naSalit]

1. A while back

maybe a couple years ago now, I saw an ad on the TeeVee (at a friend's house) for a mini series or a show or TeeVee movie (?) titled "Need to Know" I think it was. The ad showed how a black president was kept in the dark about the super secret workings of some shadow government or something and he was at risk of assassination especially after he discovered it and tried to either find out more, expose them or both.

Kind of makes one wonder, sometimes, just how much reality is somehow imparted in that medium for those who don't want to pay attention otherwise... (House of Cards could be an example but I haven't seen that either).

Wonder if I can find those online to watch them see if that's possible.

[Coyotl]

3. A lot of "fiction" is social comentary on reality.

[Recursion]

2. I don't doubt that for a second

Assange has pointed out that military personnel were using the wikileaks IRC to get manuals for weapons systems because it was quicker and easier, and that doesn't surprise me for a second, and I used to write those manuals.