The recent revelations about the National Security Agency’s spying on Benjamin Netanyahu and other Israeli officials, including their communications with members of Congress, are cause for grave concern, writes Elliott Abrams. On the basis of his own experience in the State Department, he notes that, when given a similar opportunity, the Reagan administration declined to spy on an allied head of state, and explains why:
There are at least two kinds of communications that we should not monitor. The first would be communications of our close allies—people like Prime Minister David Cameron, Chancellor Angela Merkel, and top leaders of countries such as Japan, Australia, Canada, France, and Israel. To snoop on them is a betrayal of trust, of the assumption that we are dealing with each other directly as close allies. Because they are close allies, if we want to know what they are thinking and doing, we should ask them — not spy on them as a matter of course. The second category would be communications that logically and in practice intrude on members of Congress and other Americans who are going about entirely legitimate political activity. To aim at and to capture such communications is an abuse of executive power against Congress, and an abuse of citizens’ rights to engage in political activity in opposition to the administration in office. . . .
The Wall Street Journal says the NSA and the White House spied on Israeli efforts to lobby against the president’s Iran deal. . . . The administration faced a battle in Congress, and it spied on the other side. That’s the kind of conduct we see in third-world countries where control of the spy agency is one of the ways an incumbent regime holds on to power and defeats its political opponents. It ought to be a major scandal when such practices reach the United States.
Read more on National Review: http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/429133/obama-nsa-domestic-spying