Furthermore...

He doesn’t get to get away with this.

The president’s mission, as set out on Friday, is to take credit for all the reforms that sound the best, and to re-establish the government as a trusted actor without doing much that’s new. In that May speech at the National Defense University, Obama committed to “a strong Privacy and Civil Liberties Board to review those issues where our counterterrorism efforts and our values may come into tension.” On Friday, he said that he’d “asked the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board to review where our counterterrorism efforts and our values come into tension.” Created in 2004, on the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission, the board was effectively powerless until three months ago, when it finally got a chairman, and the president’s still bland when it comes to its goals.

  Slate

”That May speech” was given on May 23. Edward Snowden had already left Hawaii on May 1. Obama knew on May 23 that the shit was going to hit the fan. The NSA was already on Snowden’s trail.