Last week on his show, Tucker Carlson said that a source told him that the Biden Administration is spying on his private communication and he’s filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request in response.
Carlson alleges the NSA plans to leak his private communications to get his show canceled.
Well, yesterday Axios broke a story that shows that Tucker Carlson was monitored and unmasked by the NSA.
Axios reports “Tucker Carlson was talking to U.S.-based Kremlin intermediaries about setting up an interview with Vladimir Putin shortly before the Fox News host accused the National Security Agency of spying on him, sources familiar with the conversations tell Axios.”
The Axios story points out,
“In order to know that the texts and emails were Carlson’s, a U.S. government official would likely have to request his identity be unmasked, something that’s only permitted if the unmasking is necessary to understand the intelligence.
In [another] scenario, interceptions might not have involved Carlson’s communications. The U.S. government routinely monitors the communications of people in Putin’s orbit, who may have been discussing the details of Carlson’s request for an interview.
But under this scenario, too, Carlson’s identity would have been masked in reports as part of his protections as a U.S. citizen, and unmasking would only be permitted if a U.S. government official requested that his identity be unmasked in order to understand the intelligence. And it’s not clear why that would be necessary here.”
The agency has been tight lipped about this.
On his show last night, Carlson said:
“Yesterday, we learned that sources in the so-called intelligence community told at least one reporter in Washington what was in those emails. My emails. It was nothing scandalous in there. Thank God. We're happy to report that.
Late this spring, I contacted a couple of people I thought could help get us an interview with Russian President Vladimir Putin. I told nobody I was doing this other than my executive producer, Justin Wells. I wasn't embarrassed about trying to interview Putin. He's obviously newsworthy. I'm an American citizen. I can interview anyone I want and I plan to.
But still, in this case, I decided to keep it quiet. I figured that any kind of publicity would rattle the Russians and make the interview less likely to happen. But the Biden administration found out anyway, by reading my emails. I learned from a whistleblower at the NSA plan to leak the contents of those emails to media outlets. Why would they do that? Well, the point, of course, was to paint me as a disloyal American. A Russian operative. Been called that before. A stooge of the Kremlin, a traitor doing the bidding of a foreign adversary.
And of course, I'm hardly the only person who's been accused of those things in the last several years. We've seen this movie several times now. At the same moment, the Communist Chinese government increases its already stunning level of control over this country, our leaders prattle on about the threat of Vladimir Putin. He's an evildoer, they tell us. A totalitarian dictator.
Vladimir Putin does things that no American leader would even consider. He runs domestic disinformation campaigns. He lies to the public. He punishes people for opposing him, or for believing the wrong things. He even uses intelligence agencies to spy on his own citizens. Beyond the pale stuff. So no decent American would interview Vladimir Putin, at least no reporter from Fox News. That was the point they wanted to make. That's why they plan to leak the contents of my emails to news organizations. And yesterday, as noted, we learned they actually did it.
Even now, some of the media are claiming that we deserve this. Emailing with people who know Putin, are you? Of course, the NSA is watching you. That's what you get. But that's hardly the point. By law, the NSA is required to keep secret the identities of American citizens who've been caught up in its vast domestic spying operations. So by law, I should have been identified internally merely as a US journalist or American journalist. That's the law.
But that's not how I was identified. It was identified by name. I was unmasked. People in the building learned who I was and then my name and the contents of my emails left that building at the NSA and wound up with a news organization in Washington. That is illegal. In fact, it is precisely what this law was designed to prevent in the first place. We cannot have intelligence agencies used as instruments of political control.
Both parties used to agree on that. Democrats were especially adamant on the point, but not anymore. So that's exactly what is happening here. We need to find out how this happened, who did it, who allowed it?...
We don't have a lot of power, we’re just a TV show. But we're going to keep pushing for that because it matters. Not just to us, but to the entire country. You can't have a democracy in a place where unaccountable spy agencies keep people in line by leaking the contents of their emails, discrediting them with their own emails, which they thought were private. It doesn't work if you allow that. And we suspect congressional Republicans will also demand an answer.
Many have finally awakened to the fact that the intelligence agencies, which they have blindly supported for so long, are not, in fact, their friends. They're not the friends of anyone in this country. They're dangerous. That's obvious.”