Fox News host Tucker Carlson let the world know that he was a target of the National Security Agency. On his program in June, Carlson explained that a government whistleblower told his team “that the NSA, the National Security Agency, is monitoring our electronic communications and is planning to leak them in an attempt to take this show off the air.”
“Now, that’s a shocking claim, and ordinarily we’d be skeptical of it” Carlson continued. However, “the whistleblower, who is in a position to know, repeated back to us information about a story that we are working on that could have only come directly from my texts and emails. There’s no other possible source for that information, period.”
On June 29, shortly after Carlson’s accusations, the NSA emphatically, yet vaguely, denied his claims. The NSA’s official Twitter account put out “A statement from NSA regarding recent allegations:
On June 28, 2021, Tucker Carlson alleged that the National Security Agency has been “monitoring our electronic communications and is planning to leak them in an attempt to take this show off the air.” This allegation is untrue. Tucker Carlson has never been an intelligence target of the Agency and the NSA has never had any plans to try to take his program off the air.
A statement from NSA regarding recent allegations: pic.twitter.com/vduE6l6YWg
— NSA/CSS (@NSAGov) June 30, 2021
NSA has a foreign intelligence mission. We target foreign powers to generate insights on foreign activities that could harm the United States. With limited exceptions (e.g. an emergency), NSA may not target a US citizen without a court order that explicitly authorizes the targeting.
Now, there will be an investigation into the NSA for its alleged illegal surveillance after all. The Western Journal Reports, “On Tuesday of this week, the Office of the Inspector General of the National Security Agency, which is tasked with investigating potential wrongdoing on the part of the NSA, announced an investigation into ‘recent allegations that the NSA improperly targeted the communications of a member of the U.S. news media.”
NSA Inspector General Robert P. Storch announced in a news release that he would be conducting the review of the NSA’s alleged wrongdoing. “The National Security Agency Office of the Inspector General (OIG) announced that it is conducting a review related ot recent allegations that the NSA improperly targeted the communications of a member of the U.S. news media” wrote Storch.
