We have no way to know if this is true — that’s the whole problem in a nutshell when it comes to double-super-secret spying. It’s just too easy to turn that apparatus against anyone. Back in 2004 a big story hit that the NSA was tapping US citizens without even using the secretive and allegedly flimsy FISA court warrent process. Russ Tice, the same whistle blower who helped bring warrantless wiretapping to light, now says then Senator Obama may have been one of the targets:

HuffPo — Speaking on “The Boiling Frogs Show,” Tice claimed the intelligence community had ordered surveillance on a wide range of groups and individuals, including high-ranking military officials, lawmakers and diplomats.

“Here’s the big one … this was in summer of 2004, one of the papers that I held in my hand was to wiretap a bunch of numbers associated with a 40-something-year-old wannabe senator for Illinois,” he said. “You wouldn’t happen to know where that guy lives right now would you? It’s a big white house in Washington, D.C. That’s who they went after, and that’s the president of the United States now.”

Host Sibel Edmonds and Tice both raised concerns that such alleged monitoring of subjects, unbeknownst to them, could provide the intelligence agencies with huge power to blackmail their targets.

“I was worried that the intelligence community now has sway over what is going on,” Tice said.

Now add in the Intel-Industrial complex. We’ve seen, up close and dirty, what the for-private private sector will do to get business and government hand outs. It’s Darwinian; the companies that pull the strings best behind the scenes have an adaptive advantage in the volatile business environment. Despite what ever froth the fringe-osphere has been whipped into on a given day, Obama’s so squeaky clean I doubt there would much in the way of juicy info useful for blackmailing. But the same cannot be said of more subtle forms of influence or what other politicians might be checked on — purely for their own protection of course.