NSA Inspector General Announces Review Into Tucker Carlson Allegations
The National Security Agency Office of the Inspector General announced Tuesday it’s reviewing allegations about the agency targeting the communications of Fox News’ Tucker Carlson.
NSA Inspector General Robert Storch said they are looking into “recent allegations that the NSA improperly targeted the communications of a member of the U.S. news media.”
“The OIG is examining NSA’s compliance with applicable legal authorities and Agency policies and procedures regarding collection, analysis, reporting, and dissemination activities, including unmasking procedures, and whether any such actions were based upon improper considerations,” the statement says.
Carlson is not directly named, but the announcement is pretty clearly about the allegations from the Fox News host — as one source confirmed to the Wall Street Journal.
In a statement provided to Mediaite, a Fox News spokesperson said, “We are gratified to learn the NSA’s egregious surveillance of Tucker Carlson will now be independently investigated. As we have said, 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.”
Back in June, Carlson made the stunning claim that his communications were monitored by the NSA “in an attempt to take this show off the air.” His claim was met with a fair amount of skepticism, and the NSA took the rare step of putting out a statement saying, “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.”
Days later news came out that prior to his public comments, Carlson had been seeking an interview with Russian president Vladimir Putin. Carlson claimed the NSA wanted to leak his emails to media outlets to paint him as “a disloyal American, a Russian operative.”
A July report said an NSA review concluded his communications were not targeted and his name was unmasked after being mentioned in “communications between third parties.”
