I'm pretty sure they didn't need it. My read on BHO is that as a non-white guy super-achieving in a quietly racist political climate (we've subsequently had a

I'm pretty sure they didn't need it. My read on BHO is that as a non-white guy super-achieving in a quietly racist political climate (we've subsequently had a refresher course in American racial politics: it never went away) he was at pains to avoid alienating factions that might work against him. He was also a lawyer: not just any lawyer, but a former editor of the Harvard Law Review (a plum niche reserved for star pupils at the #1 law school in the United States, often an early sign that the individual is on the road to the Supreme Court). Instead of heading for the bench Obama went into politics, but he is above all else a legalist (and a constitutional expert). As such, he worked only within the established legal frameworks, carefully trying to build a platform for incremental adjustments. The Espionage Age was already a feature of the system before he arrived in the Oval Office: he continued to use it as it was designed. He didn't rock the boat or try to impose a radical agenda on the DoJ. He wouldn't do anything that might give his enemies a lever against him. He was, in fact, a conservative politician: not "conservative" in the sense of Movement Conservativism (which is actually a very radical political platform), but a Burkean conservative. The spooks didn't need leverage on him: he was theirs from the outset.