Tucker on NSA surveillance claim: 'No denial' from White House; agency response 'infuriatingly dishonest'
'Did the Biden administration read my emails? NSA officials refuse to say,' Carlson said
By Charles Creitz
June 29, 2021
"Tucker Carlson Tonight" host Tucker Carlson offered an update Tuesday after reporting Monday that a National Security Agency (NSA) whistleblower contacted him and disclosed that the agency – which conducts surveillance on foreign targets – had accessed some of his personal emails.
Carlson said the whistleblower was able to identify contents of the messages known only to the host and the recipient of them – which he said are germane to a pressing story the program is working on, alleging that the agency "is planning to leak them in an attempt to take this show off the air."
On Tuesday's program, Carlson pointed to a statement put out by the NSA moments before airtime and recounted several tense phone calls with the agency – as the program attempted to get ahold of the NSA director, Gen. Paul Nakasone.
In a statement tweeted at 8 PM ET, the agency denied Carlson's claim it was monitoring his electronic communications or trying to force "Tucker Carlson Tonight" off the air.
"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 read in part. "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."
However, Carlson said the statement did not directly address what he was asking when his team attempted to get an answer from Nakasone.
"Last night on this show we made a very straightforward claim: NSA has read my private emails without my permission. Period. Tonight’s statement does not deny that," Carlson said.
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