They could have done worse with their flimsy pretense, in wiretapping the office of the German Chancellor and using the excuse “She just happened to be German Chancellor at the time, which is really just a coincidence.”
The paper said that the information's source is an anonymous, high-ranking NSA official stationed in Germany.Interesting. Either brave, given that the list of "high-ranking" NSA officials stationed in Germany can't be all that long, or part of the US' political calculus done in order to scare someone or to obtain some other piece of information. This just seems too weird to be so easily explained as some high-ranking person mentioning it to journalists.
I didn’t know there were 320 important Germans, but I guess it’s a step up from having just one.
I have trouble believing that this was a whistleblower. I think a press release is more likely. Of course the next question is by whom and why.
On possibility is that it is supposed to antagonize the German government and public in a limited and deniable way in order to prove to a domestic audience that nothing really changed and no substantial concessions were made.
Or perhaps for some hidden reason they really want to make fundamental changes and escalate the situation to demonstrate that it is necessary.
Is the NSA out of control in that it is leaking, or out of control in that it is an organization more powerful than the president?
“NSA spooks then cooked up a way of continuing to spy on Chancellor Merkel anyway, using a flimsy pretense unworthy of four-year-old.”
"i’m not spying on you. i’m not spying on you. "~nsa
out of control in that they are not listening to the people who are supposed to be controlling them.
Nothing that is for public consumption can be of any importance, so IF this was a press release, then it probably wouldn’t be to provoke a reaction, it would be to placate.
Who and why indeed 
Anyway, I don’t personally subscribe to this theory of counter-propaganda
Anonymous whistleblowers? Those losers. If they were real men, they would out themselves on the Tonight Show and surrender to police, to be waterboarded for the next 40 years.
Oh I almost forgot, why do they hate America?
Those rascals. Just you wait until Uncle Barack hears about this, he will be outraged.
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