A National Security Agency review of its intercepts did not find any evidence that Fox News host Tucker Carlson’s communications were intercepted by the NSA, two sources familiar with the matter told CNN.
Carlson had claimed that the agency was spying on him and planned to leak his communications to take him off air.
One of the sources said that Carlson’s name was picked up in third-party communications and his identity was unmasked, meaning others mentioned him in their communications. In the NSA foreign intelligence reports, the names of Americans are redacted, or “masked.” Certain authorized US officials have the authority to request the names of those individuals if they have a justifiable reason.
“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,” the statement said.
Translation: NSA was watching Russian targets who Tucker at least attempted contact with.
His aggressive attempted projection of the topic back onto the NSA, would seem to imply the contact was not simply unwitting on Tucker’s part.
“For the NSA to unmask Tucker Carlson or any journalist attempting to secure a newsworthy interview is entirely unacceptable and raises serious questions about their activities as well as their original denial, which was wildly misleading,” a Fox News spokesperson said in a statement to CNN.
You say “target” and he says “possible guest on my show.” Why would you say it like that? He does have a show, it’s terrible, but people need to be invited to appear on it. What is your implication here? Is TC also a dreaded RUSSIAN ASSET???
BTW, his target was Putin.
Carlson earlier this month claimed that he had been attempting to schedule an interview with Russian President Vladimir Putin before he publicly made his accusation against the NSA.
Why don’t they outright deny it? Their initial statement that “Tucker Carlson has never been an intelligence target of the Agency” just raised suspicions. And now CNN wants us to believe “two sources familiar with the matter”. lol
The statement you just quoted literally denies it.
The NSA monitors plenty of foreign nationals. If anyone talks to them, NSA will know. It’s fairly obvious this is how he came up. And based on previous Trumpy allies also being caught dealing with Russians, it’s mere common sense.
Only to a degree; they don’t deny they read his messages. Somehow it was to a level where Carlson found out about it, which is odd. So he’s suspicious, and certainly he exaggerates it and plays it up. But they didn’t deny that they read his messages. That’s what I meant, and I guess what you meant more or less too.
Yes, if you approach someone NSA monitors, or they approach you, say in texts or something, of course NSA will not just collect one end of the chat.
There is indeed a significant difference between being a target and having your messages read in a conversation with said target.
I’m not sure how he found out. I’m more wondering who he’s busy talking to. A normal person who was approached might just say yeah, someone approached me, I wanted nothing to do with that. No biggie.
But Tucker is really playing it up, to the point where it smells like projection/deflection over something he should not have been doing. My take.
I don’t think the foreign national being watched by NSA was a journalist, maybe I’m wrong.
I definitely know you’re not suggesting Tucker Carlson is, or has ever been a journalist.
Not even educated as one, for those who like to tout educational backgrounds.
Carlson was briefly enrolled at Collège du Léman, a boarding school in Switzerland, but says he was “kicked out”.[47] He attained his secondary education at St. George’s School, a boarding school in Middletown, Rhode Island, where he started dating his future wife, Susan Andrews, the headmaster’s daughter.[48] He then went to Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, graduating in 1991 with a BA in history.[27] Carlson’s Trinity yearbook describes him as a member of the “Dan White Society”, an apparent reference to the American political assassin who murdered San Francisco Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk.[49][50][51] After college, Carlson tried to join the Central Intelligence Agency, but his application was denied, after which he decided to pursue a career in journalism with the encouragement of his father, who advised him that “they’ll take anybody.”[27][52]
I don’t know, I’m just asking questions. Why would Tucker Carlson, who isn’t a journalist, be communicating with a foreign national watched by NSA? Best case, maybe someone thought he could be a useful idiot agent for them.
Whether you choose to define him as a journalist or not is so far besides the point as to be ridiculous. He is in fact a journalist, who may well communicate with a variety of people overseas in the pursuit of his actual profession.