Fox News’s Tucker Carlson accused the National Security Agency (NSA) of wanting to paint him a “disloyal American, a Russian operative” and confirmed he reached out to U.S.-based Kremlin intermediaries about interviewing Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Carlson opened his show, noting he told viewers last week the NSA had been reading his private emails. He then went on to tell his audience he learned on Tuesday “sources in the so-called intelligence community told at least one reporter in Washington what was in those emails.”
The Fox News host confirmed he contacted a few people he believed could get him an interview with 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,” Carlson said.
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According to Carlson, the NSA planned to leak the content of the emails to media outlets.
“Why would they do that? 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,” Carlson explained.
He pointed out the NSA “is required to keep secret the identities of American citizens who’ve been caught up in its vast domestic spying operations.”
Carlson continued, “So by law, I should have been identified internally merely as a U.S. journalist or American journalist. That’s the law. But that’s not how I was identified. It was identified by name. I was unmasked.”
Stressing the need to find out who did it, Carlson added, “Paul Nakasone would know the answer. Paul Nakasone is the highly political director of the NSA. Paul Nakasone would have been required personally to approve my unmasking. That’s how it works. Paul Nakasone should explain who asked for that unmasking, and he should do it immediately.”
Concluding his show, Carlson argued, “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.”
The NSA denied that it was spying on Carlson in a statement last week, as IJR reported.
“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,” the agency said.
It continued, “With limited exceptions (e.g. an emergency), NSA may not target a US citizen without a court order that explicitly authorizes the targeting.”
