Former President Jimmy Carter said President Obama is “unfortunately” not calling him for advice, even though “previous presidents have call on me and the Carter Center to take action.”
When asked on Meet the Press this morning why Obama doesn’t come asking for his wisdom, Carter replied “that’s a hard question for me to answer, you know, with complete candor.”
“I think the problem was that in dealing with the issue of peace in between Israel and Egypt, the Carter Center has taken a very strong and public position of equal treatment between the Palestinians and Israelis. And I think this was a sensitive area in which the president didn’t want to be involved,” he said.
“When he first came out with his speech in Cairo calling for the end of all settlements and when he later said that the ’67 borders would prevail he and I were looking at it from the same perspective. But I can understand those sensitivities and I don’t have any criticism of him.”
Carter also said he felt that he was personally being snooped on by the NSA or other intelligence agencies.
A program such as the NSA’s collection of metadata “has been extremely liberalized and I think abused by our own intelligence agencies.”
“As a matter of fact, you know, I have felt that my own communications were probably monitored. And when I want to communicate with a foreign leader privately, I type or write the letter myself, put it in the post office and mail it,” Carter said. “…Because I believe if I sent an e-mail, it will be monitored.”
On Russia, the former president said “there has to be a concerted international prohibition against Putin going any further than Crimea.”
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