All they needed to do is Google Bergdahl’s name and they would have seen this coming.

Brussels, Belgium (CNN) – White House officials expected controversy when the deal was announced to free Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl in exchange for the release of five Taliban detainees from the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Despite the feel-good moment in the White House Rose Garden featuring President Obama and Bergdahl’s beaming parents last Saturday, the five-for-one trade was sure to create an uproar, a White House official acknowledged.

What came as a surprise to White House aides, one official says, was the barrage of harsh personal attacks aimed at Bergdahl and even his family.

Critics of the prisoner exchange have suggested the U.S. received the short end of the deal, in part, because of the questions about the still murky events that led to Bergdahl’s initial capture.

“It’s very interesting to me that they would be willing to release five extraordinarily dangerous Taliban members in exchange for this soldier who apparently left his post. We don’t know all the details,” Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, said in an interview on CNN’s “Out Front.”