The National Security Agency's (NSA) continued surveillance of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Israeli leaders may also have swept up private conversations involving members of Congress, the Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday night. 
 
 Although President Obama had promised to curb eavesdropping on world leaders who are U.S. allies after Edward Snowden leaked documents revealing the extent of the surveillance, there were a few leaders the White House wished to continue monitoring, including Netanyahu. 
 
 The original reason for the stepped up surveillance of Netanyahu, according to the WSJ, was the fear that he would "strike Iran without warning." By 2013, that fear had dissipated. The administration then became concerned about the Iran nuclear deal that was being negotiated. U.S. officials believed that the Israelis were spying on the negotiations and would try to scuttle the deal, the report said. 
 
 Further, the Journal reports that intercepted conversations between Israeli leaders confirmed Israel's knowledge of the talks, as well as its intent to undermine any nuclear deal with Iran by leaking its details. When Netanyahu and his top aides came to Washington to talk with Jewish-American groups and members of Congress to lobby against the deal, the NSA was there to pick up the conversations. 
 
 Senior officials told the WSJ that those conversations collected by the NSA raised fears "that the executive branch would be accused of spying on Congress." The White House wanted the information anyway, however, because it "believed the intercepted information could be valuable to counter Mr. Netanyahu's campaign." 
 
 So in order to avoid leaving a trail, the White House left it to the NSA to figure out what to share, and the NSA obliged, deleting names of members and any personal attacks on the administration. 
 
 National Security Council Spokesman Ned Price wouldn't comment on the intelligence activities written about in the Wall Street Journal's story, but he said in a statement, "[W]e do not conduct any foreign intelligence surveillance activities unless there is a specific and validated national security purpose. This applies to ordinary citizens and world leaders alike." 
 
 He added that the U.S. commitment to Israel's security is "sacrosanct" and "backed by concrete actions that demonstrate the depth of U.S. support for Israel." 
 
 The office of Speaker of the House Paul Ryan said only that it was looking into the matter. 
 
 Rep. Devin Nunes, chairman of the House Select Committee on Intelligence, said the committee would also be looking into the report. 
 
 "The Committee has requested additional information from the [Intelligence Community] to determine which, if any, of these allegations are true, and whether the IC followed all applicable laws, rules, and procedures," Nunes said in a statement Wednesday. 
 
 Before a campaign event in Cisco, Texas, Sen. Ted Cruz said he wasn't surprised that the administration was trying to intercept Netanyahu's communications, or even that conversations including members of Congress may have been swept up by the NSA, "because this administration views Congress, Republicans and sometimes even Democratic members of Congress as their enemy....At times, it seems like they view the American people as their enemy." 
 
 The allegations "are total nonsense," a spokesman for the Embassy of Israel in Washington told the WSJ. 
 
 Before Netanyahu came to address Congress, the NSA had intercepted Israeli messages that said Netanyahu wanted the "the latest U.S. positions in the Iran talks," the Journal wrote, signaling to to the administration that Netanyahu intended to use his address to reveal sensitive details about the negotiations. Secretary of State John Kerry then said as much to reporters on the eve of the speech. 
 
 Kerry justified his accusation by pointing to Israeli media reports, but those reports were a convenient source, given that "Intelligence officials said the media reports allowed the U.S. to put Mr. Netanyahu on notice without revealing they already knew his thinking. The prime minister mentioned no secrets during his speech to Congress," wrote the Journal. 
 
 CBS News' Mark Knoller and Walt Cronkite contributed to this report. ||||| Story highlights NSA says it monitors other countries' economic activities 
 
 Israel says spying on its officials is unacceptable 
 
 U.S. has said it is reaching out to its allies 
 
 President Obama is reviewing recommendations for changes to surveillance procedures 
 
 Israel reacted angrily Sunday to recent reports that British and U.S. intelligence officials spied on top Israeli officials' e-mails. 
 
 "The tracking after prime ministers and defense ministers is not legitimate and not acceptable to us," the spokesman of Intelligence Minister Yuval Steinitz said, according to a CNN translation. "There is an intelligence alliance between (the United States and Israel) at an unprecedented level, and we are sharing the most sensitive (intelligence) material." 
 
 On Friday, The Guardian, The New York Times and Der Spiegel newspapers reported that the communications of more than 1,000 organizations and individuals were monitored from a facility in southwest England. 
 
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 Der Spiegel, a German publication, wrote: "At least four Israeli targets are named in the lists, including an email address named as the 'Israeli prime minister.' " 
 
 The document, among those provided by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden, is from early 2009. 
 
 A spokeswoman for the NSA said Friday the United States collects foreign intelligence just as many other nations do. 
 
 "The intelligence community's efforts to understand economic systems and policies, and monitor anomalous economic activities, are critical to providing policymakers with the information they need to make informed decisions that are in the best interest of our national security," Vanee Vines said. 
 
 None of the newspapers published any of the documents they were shown, and the volume of information collected on any particular individual or organization is unclear. 
 
 On Friday afternoon, the U.S. State Department's spokeswoman said Secretary of State John Kerry has been communicating with U.S. allies. 
 
 "The secretary has been a part of engaging on this process, whether it's discussing with foreign countries their concerns, attempting -- working to alleviate those," spokeswoman Jen Psaki said. "Our goal remains to continue to strengthen our intel gathering processes and relationships. But I'm not going to speak to different reports or allegations." 
 
 President Barack Obama vowed this month to find ways of reforming the NSA, though he also defended the agency's work. 
 
 Obama is going through 40 recommendations made last week by the independent presidential Review Group on Intelligence. He will make a "definitive statement" on surveillance programs in January after he returns from a Hawaiian vacation. 
 
 Surveillance program is now Obama's to own 
 
 Israel has said it would never spy on the U.S. in the wake of the conviction of a former U.S. Navy intelligence analyst who was caught spying for Israel in 1985. 
 
 Jonathan Pollard was sentenced to life in 1987 after he was convicted of one count of espionage, and since then many Israeli leaders have appealed to U.S. presidents for his release. 
 
 Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the newest revelations have no bearing on the case. 
 
 "We do not need any special event in order to discuss the release of Jonathan Pollard. We are dealing with it. I am dealing with it, with all U.S. presidents, including President Obama, all the time, including now," he said Sunday at the weekly Cabinet meeting. "We hope that the conditions will be created that will enable us to bring Jonathan home. This is neither conditional on, nor related to, recent events, even though we have given our opinion on these developments." 
 
 Pollard has dual citizenship.
– In 2013, after Edward Snowden dropped his NSA bombshell, President Obama called for an end to spying on certain world leaders. But Benjamin Netanyahu and other Israeli bigwigs remained on the "keep an eye on" list for "compelling national security" reasons, current and ex-US officials tell the Wall Street Journal. Included in the US spying sweep were conversations between Israeli officials and US lawmakers and American-Jewish groups, which, as one senior US official tells the paper, resulted in an "Oh s--- moment" that the executive branch would be nailed for spying on Congress. The White House, though, felt the info necessary to rebut lobbying Netanyahu might do against a US-Iran deal; still, it was "wary of a paper trail stemming from a request." And so "we didn't say, 'Do it' [to the NSA]," a senior US official tells the Journal. "We didn't say, 'Don't do it.'" Instead, the administration more or less let the NSA share whatever info it saw fit, and the NSA did just that, reportedly following tight mandates about spying on communications "to, from, or about" Americans, the paper notes. For example, the agency took out names of individual lawmakers and any personal info in reports it submitted to the White House and also omitted any "trash talk" about the administration, officials tell the Journal. At least one presidential candidate isn't surprised by the revelations. "This administration views Congress, Republicans, and sometimes even Democratic members of Congress as their enemy," Ted Cruz tells CBS News. "At times, it seems like they view the American people as their enemy." A National Security Council spokesman, however, tells CBS, "[W]e do not conduct any foreign intelligence surveillance activities unless there is a specific and validated national security purpose. This applies to ordinary citizens and world leaders alike."