What Obama Didn’t Say

Merkel found out the NSA had been listening to her phone. She called Obama about it. He called back with this promise: The United States does not monitor and will not monitor your communication. Beautiful. Not a word about the past, just a very formal assurance about the future. If you read it carefully—and apparently everyone did, even the laziest reporters—you could see the actual message hiding in the gaps. Yeah, we did it. We’re not planning to do it again. That was the whole conversation right there.

The thing about official language is that it’s built from true pieces arranged so carefully that lies just disappear into what doesn’t get said. You can be technically honest and completely lying at the same time. Obama probably slept fine. Merkel got her call, the intelligence agencies kept doing their thing, and everybody went home. Well done, ’merica.