On Tuesday night, Fox News host Tucker Carlson responded to the statement from the National Security Agency (NSA) that was a response to allegations the organization had been spying on Carlson.
“Last night on this show, we made a very straightforward claim: NSA has read my private emails without my permission, period. That’s what we said,” Carlson began. “Tonight’s statement from the NSA does not deny that.”
“Instead, it comes with this non sequitur, in part, quote, ‘Tucker Carlson has never been an intelligence target of the agency.’ Okay, glad to know,” Carlson continued. “But the question remains, did the Biden administration read my personal emails? That’s the question that we asked directly to NSA officials when we spoke to them about 20 minutes ago in a very heated conversation.”
“Did you read my emails? And again, they refuse to say, again and again,” he added. “And then they refused even to explain why they couldn’t answer that simple question. We can’t tell you and we won’t tell you why we can’t tell you. My emails. And the message is clear. We can do whatever we want. We can read your personal texts; we can read your personal emails; we can send veiled threats your way to brush you back if we don’t like your politics; we can do anything.”
Tucker addresses Psaki's refusal to deny his claim the NSA is spying on him in order to "intimidate" his show and discusses his "very heated" phone call earlier today with top NSA officials in which they refused to say whether or not they read his personal communications: pic.twitter.com/BMiFzbg92t
— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) June 30, 2021
After Carlson’s original allegations on Monday night, the NSA released a statement Tuesday saying, “Tucker Carlson alleged that the National Security Agency has been ‘monitoring our electronic communications and is planning to leak them in an attempt to take this show off the air.’ 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.”
Along with Carlson’s response, many people online criticized the NSA’s statement, pointing out how it was carefully constructed to only deny that Carlson was never a “target” and they never planned on trying “to take his program off the air.”
The NSA’s statement added, “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.”
Journalist Glenn Greenwald, who famously met with former NSA contractor Edward Snowden and exposed the “scale of domestic surveillance under Obama” done by the NSA, blasted the NSA’s “non-denial denial” on Twitter.
Greenwald made it a point to emphasize he was “in no way ratifying or supporting the claim that NSA collected the communications of Carlson or any Fox host,” but stated what he “know[s] for sure is that this is NSA’s non-denial denial, using the same false framework they always use to mislead the public.”
Greenwald pointed out how the “NSA has used this same deceit for years: they can spy on US citizens’ communications without ‘targeting’ the American,” and the “NSA has extremely broad authorities to collect communications without ‘targeting’ a person.”
First, it's bizarre that @NSAGov allow no replies.
Second, NSA has used this same deceit for years: they can spy on US citizens' communications without "targeting" the American.
Third, NSA has extremely broad authorities to collect communications without "targeting" a person. https://t.co/vAgaSS0x1k
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) June 30, 2021
