we will recover from this as we have recovered from past periods of time where there have been difficulties, but it will take some time. obviously there's a loss of comfort and potentially trust at the leadership level and that probably will dog the president the remainder of his time in office. >> you were spokesman at the state department and worked at the state department for a long time. how offended -- actually, forget the offended. how surprised would angela merkel be that her phone was listened into by u.s. intelligence? would that be something that wouldn't even occur to her? >> i think in the abstract, people do understand that nations spy on each other and actually, for very good reason. think of it this way. over the past 30 days, where we were going through a government shutdown and the debate, the debt debate, i'm certain that a number of foreign intelligence services were being asked what is obama going to do, what is john boehner going to do, what happens if the americans drive over the cliff. so i'm sure there was some