White House: NSA targeting of Russian president ‘non-event’ at face-to-face with Obama

But deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes told reporters that the “issue did not come up” when Putin and Obama met Monday afternoon.

{mosads}”Nothing came up associated with the recent disclosures, so it was a non-event at this meeting,” Rhodes said.

According to The Guardian, which first reported the surveillance effort, the NSA intercepted communications between Medvedev’s delegation and the Russian embassy.

Rhodes indicated that the NSA spying attempts probably came as little surprise to the Russians. In 2010, 10 Russians were arrested in the United States as part of an alleged spy ring. In May, Russian officials arrested an American in Moscow they alleged was a CIA operative.

“As a general matter, I think the United States and Russia are well aware that each of us has an intelligence community and we have had dialogues on these issues for years,” he said. “But this didn’t emerge as an issue at this meeting.”