Nothing to Hide and Nowhere to Hide It in Joshua Cohen’s Internet Novel

The conspiracy theorist answer is that they have some kind of dirt on Obama and/or he’s been promised future earnings if he plays along, and he’s now a puppet of the spooks. (The future earnings thing isn’t even all that far-fetched, considering how well plenty of other ex–public servants from both parties are doing in industry these days.)

The more likely/charitable story is some combination of: (a) the weight of being President and access to various confidential information and continuous exposure to a group of intelligence officials’ beliefs caused him to feel that the surveillance &c. is necessary, or (b) pragmatically as a political matter, especially to keep campaign contributions flowing in for future Democratic politicians, Obama thought it necessary to at least partly sell out to the so-called military-industrial complex, possibly in exchange for political support on other issues.

One way or another, it is pretty disappointing how far some of his actions on torture, surveillance, etc. have been from his campaign promises.