President Obama didn't know about the NSA's surveillance of 35 world leaders until after the Edward Snowden leaks this year, the Wall Street Journal reports, citing unnamed US officials.



Obama ordered a review of surveillance activities after the leak and ordered an end to the snooping on some—but not all—of the leaders after he found out about it, according to the officials, who say the president was briefed on intelligence-gathering priorities but wasn't involved in choosing targets. "These decisions are made at NSA," one official says. "The president doesn't sign off on this stuff."

The White House says it won't "comment publicly on every specific alleged intelligence activity," but the NSA issued a statement yesterday to deny a report that Obama had been briefed on the surveillance of German Chancellor Angela Merkel back in 2010, reports the Guardian. Merkelmade an angry phone call to Obama last week after learning that her phone had apparently been monitored by the NSA. A database entry in the Snowden documents suggests the surveillance began in 2002, well before she was chancellor.