US Spy Net on Israel Snares Congress

President Barack Obama announced two years ago he would curtail eavesdropping on friendly heads of state after the world learned the reach of long-secret US surveillance programs. But behind the scenes, the White House decided to keep certain allies under close watch, current and former US officials said. Topping the list was Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The US, pursuing a nuclear arms agreement with Iran at the time, captured communications between Prime Minister Netanyahu and his aides that inflamed mistrust between the two countries and planted a political minefield at home when Prime Minister Netanyahu later took his campaign against the deal to Capitol Hill. The National Security Agency’s targeting of Israeli leaders and officials also swept up the contents of some of their private conversations with US lawmakers and American-Jewish groups. That raised fears -- an “Oh-s--- moment,” one senior US official said -- that the executive branch would be accused of spying on Congress. White House officials believed the intercepted information could be valuable to counter Prime Minister Netanyahu’s campaign. They also recognized that asking for it was politically risky. So, wary of a paper trail stemming from a request, the White House let the NSA decide what to share and what to withhold, officials said. “We didn’t say, ‘Do it,’ ” a senior U.S. official said. “We didn’t say, ‘Don’t do it.’ ”

In closed-door debate, the Obama Administration weighed which allied leaders belonged on a so-called protected list, shielding them from NSA snooping. French President François Hollande, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and other North Atlantic Treaty Organization leaders made the list, but the administration permitted the NSA to target the leaders’ top advisers, current and former US officials said. Other allies were excluded from the protected list, including Recep Tayyip Erdogan, president of NATO ally Turkey, which allowed the NSA to spy on their communications at the discretion of top officials. Privately, President Obama maintained the monitoring of Prime Minister Netanyahu on the grounds that it served a “compelling national security purpose,” according to current and former US officials. President Obama mentioned the exception in his speech but kept secret the leaders it would apply to.