This is hugely embarrassing for the Obama administration. Hacking the personal cell phone calls of the leader of a friendly nation from 2002-2013 probably got us a lot of juicy gossip but not much in the way of useful intelligence. It is highly unlikely that Chancellor Merkel would have used that phone for any calls involving German national security or any sensitive foreign policy matters. But this is also a blow to German intelligence and Merkel herself. Germans may wonder how it's possible the NSA was able to track the personal phone calls of their leader for so many years without German security services being aware of it. Needless to say, the Germans are incensed. Reuters: The United States may have bugged Angela Merkel's phone for more than 10 years, according to a news report on Saturday that also said President Barack Obama told the German leader he would have stopped it happening had he known about it. Germany's outrage over reports of bugging of Merkel's phone by...(Read Full Post)