Did the NSA spy on Barack Obama?

Here's a follow-up to this morning's post...

Before Ed Snowden, there was NSA whistleblower Russell Tice. We've talked about him a great deal in the past. A reader just turned me on to this interview with the man. If the following doesn't make your jaw drop, it must be wired into place.

Tice: Okay. They went after -- and I know this because I had my hands literally on the paperwork for these sort of things -- they went after high-ranking military officers; they went after members of Congress, both Senate and the House, especially on the intelligence committees and on the armed services committees and some of the -- and judicial. But they went after other ones, too. They went after lawyers and law firms. All kinds of–heaps of lawyers and law firms.

They went after judges. One of the judges is now sitting on the Supreme Court that I had his wiretap information in my hand. Two are former FISA court judges.

They went after State Department officials. They went after people in the executive service that were part of the White House–their own people. They went after antiwar groups.

They went after U.S. international -- U.S. companies that that do international business, you know, business around the world. They went after U.S. banking firms and financial firms that do international business.

They went after NGOs that -- like the Red Cross, people like that that go overseas and do humanitarian work. They went after a few antiwar civil rights groups.

So, you know, don’t tell me that there’s no abuse, because I’ve had this stuff in my hand and looked at it...

Interviewer: Now Russ, the targeting of the people that you just mentioned, top military leaders, members of Congress, intelligence community leaders and the -- oh, I’m sorry, it was intelligence committees, let me correct that -- not intelligence community, and then executive branch appointees. This creates the basis, and the potential for massive blackmail.

Tice: Absolutely! And remember we talked about that before, that I was worried that the intelligence community now has sway over what is going on.

Now here’s the big one. I haven’t given you any names. This was is summer of 2004. One of the papers that I held in my hand was to wiretap a bunch of numbers associated with, with a 40-something-year-old wannabe senator from Illinois. You wouldn’t happen to know where that guy lives right now, would you? It’s a big white house in Washington, DC. That’s who they went after. And that’s the president of the United States now.

So: Are journalists now going to mount an attack-the-messenger campaign against Tice? Mark my words -- that is precisely what will happen if this interview is heard widely enough. Some reporter somewhere will find the guy's old college girlfriend, and she will reveal that Russell Tice used to hide boogers under the sofa and that's why we shouldn't listen to anything said by that awful, awful man. It'll be something like that.

Let's speculate as to what the NSA may have found on Obama. Anyone remember Tony Rezko and his links to Obama? Anyone remember Rezko's links to international crook Nadhmi Auchi? Anyone remember Evelyn Pringle's investigative pieces? Anyone remember that Pringle said that every time corrupt Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich got a pay-off, State Senator Barack Obama got a smaller pay-off (even when the money came from those goombahs in Vegas)?

In a statement on the NSA scandal, Obama made the memorable claim that he himself was a likely target. Now we know what he was getting at.