Spying on Friends

On the 29th, Adam Entous and Danny Yadron had an interesting story about spying on allies [http://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-spy-net-on-israel-snares-congress-1451425210 ] in the Wall Street Journal.  Actually, it was more about spying on some allies and not spying on others, like Merkel and French President François Hollande.  The person named as a continuing target of spying was Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.  It was apparently because he conspired with certain Congressmen, who were also monitored, to undermine the nuclear treaty with Iran.  Such a terrible thing should be dealt with as a national security matter, since it was obviously not in keeping with the White House political view of the world.  So, it apparently matters more where they stand on issues than where they stand in the leadership of their country.  

As I have said in my books, monitoring the views of world leaders is a fundamental of intelligence - a required fundamental.  In order to know where a government stands on issues, an intelligence service (not just ours) has to be ahead of the leaders who announce these policies.  Everyone spies on world leaders so they can tell their own leaders what other leaders are thinking about doing.  Any country is foolish to not do it.  The Chinese and Russians have spied on our world leaders before they became world leaders, by starting to spy on them during election campaigns.  We are naive if we think they stopped after the election was over.  

What makes this different is spying for political purposes.  Netanyahu was pretty open about his opposition to the agreement with Iran, even coming to the U.S. to speak directly to Congress about it.    It was hardly a hidden agenda.  The Congressmen supporting him were not always as open about their concerns.  Other world leaders he might want to influence were also not as well known, though Saudi Arabia was vocal enough to get a visit from our leaders.  The agreement with Iran was not well liked by citizens of the U.S.  Others also didn't  think much of it.  So when does  opposition to a position deserve this kind of response?