The National Security Agency has reportedly conducted an internal investigation which found that the National Security Agency did nothing wrong when surveilling the communications of Fox News host Tucker Carlson. The NSA did admit that Carlson’s identity was “unmasked” by unidentified government officials, according to The Record.
The Record reported on Friday that “two people familiar with the matter” told the publication that the Fox News host’s communications “were not targeted – as the NSA has previously stated publicly – nor intercepted through so-called ‘incidental collection,’” though the agency reportedly found that “Carlson was mentioned in communications between third parties and his name was subsequently revealed through ‘unmasking,’ a process in which relevant government officials can request the identities of American citizens in intelligence reports to be divulged provided there is an official reason,” confirming Carlson’s allegations that he had been unmasked.
A Fox News spokesperson stated in response to the story, “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.”
The news has already been made the subject of derision by NSA critics, who point out the irony in an agency accused of illegal agency finding themselves not guilty of said illegal activity through an internal investigation.
As National File previously reported, Carlson was made aware that the government was reading his private communications by a government whistleblower:
“Yesterday we heard from a whistleblower within the U.S. government who reached out to warn us that the NSA, the National Security Agency, is monitoring our electronic communications and is planning to leak them in an attempt to take this show off the air,” Carlson stated. “Now that’s a shocking claim, and ordinarily we’d be skeptical of it, it is illegal for the NSA to spy on American citizens, it’s a crime. This is not a third-world country, things like that should not happen in America. But unfortunately, they do happen, and in this case, they did happen.”
“The whistleblower, who is in a position to know, repeated back to us information about a story we are working on that could have only come directly from my texts and emails. There’s no other possible source for that information, period,” Carlson continued. “The NSA captured that information without our knowledge and did it for political reasons. The Biden administration is spying on us. We have confirmed that.”
The NSA has issued vague denials in response to Carlson’s reporting.