Monday, October 28, 2013

opinion--Washington Post

What did President Obama know and when did he know it ?


By , Monday, October 28, 6:39 PM 

For a smart man, President Obama professes to know very little about a great number of things going on in his administration.
On Sunday night, the Wall Street Journal reported that he didn’t learn until this summer that the National Security Agency had been bugging the phones of German Chancellor Angela Merkel and other world leaders for nearly five years.     

That followed by a few days a claim by Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius that Obama didn’t know about problems with the HealthCare.gov Web site before the rest of the world learned of them after the Oct. 1 launch.
It stretches credulity to think that the United States was spying on world leaders without the president’s knowledge, or that he was blissfully unaware of huge technical problems that threatened to undermine his main legislative achievement. But on issues including the IRS targeting flap and the Justice Department’s use of subpoenas against reporters, White House officials have frequently given a variation on this theme.
Question: What did Obama know and when did he know it?
Answer: Not much, and about a minute ago.
FULL STORY

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