Its curious that the GCHQ statement doesn't actually contradict Trump. Trump claims he was wiretapped before the election, but GCHQ have denied spying on him when he was president-elect, i.e. after the election.
I wouldn't try to read anything logical or coherent into that tweet, Sean Spicer has been trying to walk it back and say it's just about surveillance in general and wasn't specifically about Obama.
All it really says is that they were not asked to perform wiretapping by Obama. They could still have been collecting data as part of their normal duties.
GCHQ is signals intelligence, so if he was tapped, it was probably by GCHQ. But let's face it, he wasn't, Trump is an imbecile that is just parroting right-wing media accusations.
You kind of have to wonder if Trump is even aware of the implications and consequences of what happens when POTUS spouts off completely unsubstantiated conspiracy theories. You have to wonder if he fully groks that he isn't "just some rich guy" any more.
You're probably right - although saying the accusations are "nonsense, utterly ridiculous and should be ignored" isn't strictly speaking the same as saying that they're untrue. GCHQ could believe that (although they happen to be true) it's nonsense and utterly ridiculous for commentators to be asserting so without any evidence, and it would be much better for everyone to ignore the accusation.
> although saying the accusations are "nonsense, utterly ridiculous and should be ignored" isn't strictly speaking the same as saying that they're untrue.
I would think that "nonsense" implies "untrue". I.e. it is "The subset of untruths that also are logically inconsistent"
We are splitting hairs of the fine parsing of the wording from GCHQ, when words of any kind are highly unusual.
I'm British, we don't like to overstate things. When you see GCHQ call something "nonsense" and "utterly ridiculous" you can be assured that they are denying it.
And I think there's something more. I would read into their statement that they are very angry.
It's funny how you, me and louthy (in a sibling comment) all read into this "You are a total buffoon (or similar words)". I can imagine someone sitting in Cheltenham just shaking their head.
Indeed, there's nothing to be gained from denying it. They could have kept totally quiet, and everyone would just assume 'that's what spy agencies do'. A denial, especially in these very strong terms, never happens.
It wasn't infinitely bad for James Clapper to have lied under oath about NSA's data collection. It wasn't infinitely bad for the US to have been caught spying on Merkel. Etc. etc.
Everybody spies on everybody, everybody accuses everybody, everybody lies about both, gets caught and mostly doesn't care. The allegations prove just as much as the denials - nothing. Eventually one side will be caught lying, and nothing will happen to them.
It's possible for broken clocks to be right every once in a while, depending on the type of clock.
Like if Donald Trump said "to most people in our area right now, the sky appears blue", he would probably be right, despite his general propensity for lying and manipulating other topics
> It's possible for broken clocks to be right every once in a while
Trump's nonsensical wiretap allegations, are on the other hand a quite obvious attempt to "throw a dead cat on the table" to divert from other issues. Deflective bluster is what he does.
The State Department has issued an apology to GCHQ via diplomatic channels. Which is unprecedented. The US should not be needing to apologise to one of its closest allies, ever.
I agree with John Gruber on this, POTUS's allegations are the actions of a man whose elevator does not go all the way to the penthouse of Trump Tower.
"Intelligence sources told The Telegraph that both Mr Spicer and General McMaster, the US National Security Adviser, have apologised over the claims. "The apology came direct from them," a source said.
General McMaster contacted Sir Mark Lyall Grant, the Prime Minister's National Security adviser, to apologise for the comments. Mr Spicer conveyed his apology through Sir Kim Darroch, Britain's US ambassador."
Intelligence sources told The Telegraph that both Mr Spicer and General McMaster, the US National Security Adviser, have apologised over the claims. "The apology came direct from them," a source said.
It's based on an anonymous source.
Here's another quote from that same article:
"Three intelligence sources have informed Fox News that President Obama went outside the chain of command - he didn't use the NSA, he didn't use the CIA, he didn't use the FBI and he didn't use the Department of Justice - he used GCHQ."
So we're going to discard what several anonymous sources said, but we will believe what some other anonymous source said?
Valid point. I guess we can wait and see if the Trump administration continues to point the finger at GCHQ. If not, I'd say that's pretty good evidence that it report is true, given how infrequently Trump and his people walk back or drop a claim.
Right, it goes both ways. Trump based his tweet on Fox News reporting from an anonymous source. The Telegraph is reporting from an anonymous source. Do you believe both of them?
GCHQ has now made a public statement, so the Telegraph was correct. It isn't in the habit of publishing made-up bullshit (aka fake news). Fox, on the other hand...
Bear in mind, Trump has already rescheduled a state visit to the UK leery of the reception he's gonna get from British people, whose attitude towards him could be described as "lukewarm" at best This sort of thing most certainly won't help.
Off topic: ~15 years ago a colleague stayed in a small town in Colorado where everyone seemed to use "wanker" as a term of endearment. My colleague, being from the UK, was surprised to be greeted with the statement "Oh you're from the UK you must be a wanker".
Apparently this was caused by the local policeman being from the UK and he'd been going round using the term for years and the locals had interpreted it as something nice.
As an American somewhat versed in British TV and movies, I always assumed wanker to be more equal to "asshole" or "son of a bitch", something you call your friends when they've done something bone-headed or mean-spirited. Definitely below "cock-sucker" in severity and far, far below "motherfucker".
For me, it's not that I have complete faith in the morality of Obama, NSA & GCHQ. It's that Trump has not presented any evidence for his claims, even circumstantial. If he believes something, there should be a reason for those beliefs, and he should be able to present it. There is no point debating someone who refuses to support their stance.
>For me, it's not that I have complete faith in the morality of Obama, NSA & GCHQ. It's that Trump has not presented any evidence for his claims, even circumstantial.*
Whether Trump, Obama, Clinton or even Pailin had said it, and whether they gave evidence or not, it's obvious that it happens.
Not from an smoking-gun evidence based standpoint, but from a knowing history, and people, and such agencies priorities and how lose their leashes are standpoint.
When it comes to such agencies, evidence is the last thing one would find. It's not like their advertise their operations except in extreme fiascos. But such wiretapping is completely in agreement with the essence of what they do.
I cannot base my beliefs about specific events on my general sense of what kinds of things happens. To take an example claim: "Trump is getting money that are essentially bribes from a Brazilian oil company." That feels plausible to me, and fits my general view of Trump and the world. But I don't believe it's true, in fact I just made it up.
Why would anyone ever believe what an intelligence agency says? This would be akin to listening to a snake oil salesman about the qualities of snake oil.
EDIT: My point is much larger than whether or not they wiretapped Donald Trump. My point is that what an intelligence agency says about what it's doing is completely irrelevant because it has very low correlation to what they actually do.
Suppose it is true that they wiretapped him. Then Trump has every incentive to prove it so, at huge risk of embarrassment to them. They could easily say "no comment" and nobody would blink an eye. So why actively lie about it?
What is even the problem here? Why shouldn't the GCHQ wire tap the US president? At best you could complain about US intelligence agencies if they used foreign intelligence agencies to circumvent restrictions on targeting US citizens. But foreign intelligence agencies spying on US citizens, especially politicians and not average citizens? No matter whether it is the GCHQ, Russia or somebody else, that is simply their job, especially since the US itself doesn't care much about friends and enemies in this regard.
The problem is Donald Trump appears to have made the whole thing up, and then committed the government's time and money to chasing after his paranoid fantasies.
It's as if he watched Star Trek, then demanded an investigation into Romulan incursions into the Neutral Zone.
Why would that be embarrassing for the UK? Maybe you could call it embarrassing for US counter intelligence but even there it only seems justified if it would be done in a blunt manner and still go unnoticed. I won't dispute that it would not be good for the relations between the US and the UK, on the other hand the US doesn't care much either when it is spying on allied leaders. So the UK spying on the US president seems fair game under current circumstances.
Maybe Five Eyes members give each other a special treatment, maybe they share enough information that additional spying isn't worth it. With Germany there is at least one example that I am aware of where the US spied on a close ally and as far as I can tell did so without permission.
But that is actually somewhat besides the point. I don't know whether the UK spies on the US in ways unknown to the US, I am not even sure whether or not it is likely that the UK wiretapped Trump even give the GCHQ statement. My point was merely that it would not be too surprising or outrageous if they did.
>With Germany there is at least one example that I am aware of where the US spied on a close ally and as far as I can tell did so without permission.
And that caused a big scandal. I wonder if the USA is still doing it.
The other thing to bear in mind is that the USA is more powerful than UK or Germany, so it's possible they feel they can get away with it if nobody finds out.
The US refused to sign any no-spy deal with Germany and did not rule out spying on the German government in the future. They may or may not be doing it currently, but they certainly still consider it legitimate. It also seems unlikely that Germany was an exceptional case, it seems more likely that the US is spying on all governments of interest, it just did not become public. This makes me also quite wary with respect to the UK. They may have special enough relations to get a different treatment but I don't think that the UK should feel too comfortable even with such agreements in place.
If nobody finds out, you always get away with it, no matter how much or little power you have. The interesting case is if someone finds out, how well do you survive the ensuing fallout? In this case more power may of course be helpful.
Now that Trump has severely pissed off every intelligence service, what consequences do you think this will have? Will they be more hesitant to share intelligence with him?
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[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 140 ms ] thread"just before" reads to me as the starting point in his accusation, not the ending point?
NB I don't think they did snoop on Trump, but if anyone was going to do it from the UK it would presumably be GCHQ.
There's a denial.
And there's saying it's "nonsense, utterly ridiculous and should be ignored" which goes beyond a mere denial. For GCHQ, this is very strong language.
I would think that "nonsense" implies "untrue". I.e. it is "The subset of untruths that also are logically inconsistent"
We are splitting hairs of the fine parsing of the wording from GCHQ, when words of any kind are highly unusual.
It's way beyond just stating that they're untrue.
And I think there's something more. I would read into their statement that they are very angry.
This is my interpretation too (as a fellow Brit). As far as diplomatic language goes, it's one step short of saying "He's a bit of a twat".
To say they didn't, and then get found to have done, will be infinitely worse.
It just makes no sense.
Everybody spies on everybody, everybody accuses everybody, everybody lies about both, gets caught and mostly doesn't care. The allegations prove just as much as the denials - nothing. Eventually one side will be caught lying, and nothing will happen to them.
Like if Donald Trump said "to most people in our area right now, the sky appears blue", he would probably be right, despite his general propensity for lying and manipulating other topics
Trump's nonsensical wiretap allegations, are on the other hand a quite obvious attempt to "throw a dead cat on the table" to divert from other issues. Deflective bluster is what he does.
http://www.politics.co.uk/blogs/2013/11/24/the-dead-cat-stra...
I agree with John Gruber on this, POTUS's allegations are the actions of a man whose elevator does not go all the way to the penthouse of Trump Tower.
Do you have a source for this?
"Intelligence sources told The Telegraph that both Mr Spicer and General McMaster, the US National Security Adviser, have apologised over the claims. "The apology came direct from them," a source said.
General McMaster contacted Sir Mark Lyall Grant, the Prime Minister's National Security adviser, to apologise for the comments. Mr Spicer conveyed his apology through Sir Kim Darroch, Britain's US ambassador."
Intelligence sources told The Telegraph that both Mr Spicer and General McMaster, the US National Security Adviser, have apologised over the claims. "The apology came direct from them," a source said.
It's based on an anonymous source.
Here's another quote from that same article:
"Three intelligence sources have informed Fox News that President Obama went outside the chain of command - he didn't use the NSA, he didn't use the CIA, he didn't use the FBI and he didn't use the Department of Justice - he used GCHQ."
So we're going to discard what several anonymous sources said, but we will believe what some other anonymous source said?
Apparently this was caused by the local policeman being from the UK and he'd been going round using the term for years and the locals had interpreted it as something nice.
(I got asked this very question by an American relation a few years back.)
Whether Trump, Obama, Clinton or even Pailin had said it, and whether they gave evidence or not, it's obvious that it happens.
Not from an smoking-gun evidence based standpoint, but from a knowing history, and people, and such agencies priorities and how lose their leashes are standpoint.
When it comes to such agencies, evidence is the last thing one would find. It's not like their advertise their operations except in extreme fiascos. But such wiretapping is completely in agreement with the essence of what they do.
Trump's claim is not "GCHQ spied on me" - I agree this is the kind of thing that spy agencies do.
Trump's claim is "GCHQ spied on me not for the UK gov, but for Obama".
It's ridiculous to think GCHQ did this.
Lacking concrete evidence, that's exactly the kind of thing you should base your beliefs of specific events on.
You don't have to believe them as absolute facts, just assign a possibility to them.
After all, nothing, even "this table is real" has a 100% fact status (we might be in a dream or a simulation).
EDIT: My point is much larger than whether or not they wiretapped Donald Trump. My point is that what an intelligence agency says about what it's doing is completely irrelevant because it has very low correlation to what they actually do.
It's as if he watched Star Trek, then demanded an investigation into Romulan incursions into the Neutral Zone.
Because it would be highly embarrassing for the UK if that actually happened, and would severely damage the special relationship.
But that is actually somewhat besides the point. I don't know whether the UK spies on the US in ways unknown to the US, I am not even sure whether or not it is likely that the UK wiretapped Trump even give the GCHQ statement. My point was merely that it would not be too surprising or outrageous if they did.
And that caused a big scandal. I wonder if the USA is still doing it.
The other thing to bear in mind is that the USA is more powerful than UK or Germany, so it's possible they feel they can get away with it if nobody finds out.
If nobody finds out, you always get away with it, no matter how much or little power you have. The interesting case is if someone finds out, how well do you survive the ensuing fallout? In this case more power may of course be helpful.