What We Know (And What We Don't) About The Tucker-NSA Ordeal
The Whisteblower Needs To Go Public
On June 29, Fox News host Tucker Carlson claimed that Joe Biden’s National Security Agency was trying to get his show off the air.
Said Tucker:
It's not just political protesters the government is spying on, yesterday, we heard from a whistleblower within the US 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.
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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. This morning we filed an FOIA request of Freedom of Information Act request asking for all information that the NSA and other agencies have gathered about this show. We did it mostly as a formality. We've also contacted the press office at both NSA and the FBI. We don't expect to hear much back. That's the way that usually goes.
As they say on Twitter, "big, if true.”
But, Tucker provided no evidence for this beyond simply asserting he has an anonymous whistleblower. The evidence, such as it was, was that the NSA can not be trusted and pre-conceived perceptions of “the deep state.” Whether you believed Tucker was determined by what you thought of him.
For more dispassionate observers there were four possible explanations:
Tucker is telling the truth and this is the biggest scandal since Watergate.
The NSA did monitor Tucker’s communications, but there is a much more innocent explanation.
Tucker was the victim of a hoax.
Tucker is lying for ratings and to push an agenda.
On July 7, Axios came out with a report that revealed that Tucker had sought an interview with Russian President Vladimir Putin. The most reasonable explanation became that Tucker was talking to someone (or more than one someone) who was under NSA surveillance and therefore his communications were indirectly collected. This would seem to eliminate options one, three, and four above.
Both sides claimed victory and poor Jonathan Swan had to explain to people that their pre-determined narrative was not proven. To The Federalist’s Sean Davis, who claimed that Tucker was proven correct, Swan tweeted:
Tucker himself claimed vindication:
Nobody in Washington seemed to care in the slightest in fact the usual shills for a second had a ready explanation for it: either it never happened at all, just a cable news show lying for ratings or there must have been a good reason it happened and they began furiously making excuses for why the NSA did it
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As we told you repeatedly it did happen, now that has been confirmed. Yesterday, we learned that sources in the so-called intelligence community told at least one reporter in Washington what was in those e-mails, my e-mails, it was nothing scandalous there, thank God, we’re happy to report that. Late this spring, I contacted a couple of people I thought could help us get an interview with Russian President Vladimir Putin. I told nobody I was doing this except my executive producer Joseph Wells.
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But, the Biden Administration found out anyway by reading my e-mails. I learned from a whistleblower that the NSA planned to leak the content of those e-mails to media outlets.
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And yesterday, as noted, we learned they actually did it. Even now some in the media are claiming we deserve this, ‘e-mailing the people who know Putin, are you? That’s what you get.’
There’s a lot to unpack here. First, Tucker is moving the goalposts. His initial claim was that the NSA was trying to get a critic of the current “regime” off the air. Here, he drops that claim for the embarrass charge.
That Tucker’s critics did not believe Tucker’s and initial story and believed in alternative explanations proves nothing, especially as an alternative explanation appears likely.
Secondly, that Tucker’s claim to be vindicated because he told nobody other than his executive producer is just silly. If person X e-mails person Y and tells person Z about it, it is not just X and Z who know about the e-mail, person Y knows about it too as well as anyone Y tells.
If person Y is under NSA surveillance, that does not mean person X is being targeted. It is not a question of “that’s what you get,” as Tucker portrayed, but of standard operating procedure.
Third, Tucker still provided no proof for his claim that the NSA planned to leak the content of his e-mails for the purpose of embarrassing him. While not the same as trying to get his show off the air, it would still be a massive scandal. But, is important to remember that the Axios story on Tucker’s desire for a Putin interview came after Tucker made the allegation. Swan, being a good journalist, probably just wanted to know more about such a serious allegation and see if there was any merit to it, so, he reached out to his contacts for that purpose.
However, while it would be wrong to say that the Axios story proved Tucker correct, it would also be wrong to say that there is nothing to see here, so please move along. To Keith Olbermann, Swan tweeted:
On the subject of unmasking, Swan noted in the article, “it's not clear why that would be necessary here,” and as he told Olbermann, journalists interview U.S. adversaries all the time.
The controversy of Tucker’s unmasking got hotter on Friday when The Record, confirmed that he was indeed unmasked:
the nation’s top electronic spy agency 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, such as helping them make sense of the intelligence documents they are reviewing.
On one hand, that Tucker was discovered by reading “communications between third parties” moves us even further from his initial allegation, which was at the NSA was trying to get his show off the air.
On the other, however, we now know for sure Tucker’s identity was unmasked and the question now is why. What is a justifiable “official reason” for unmasking a TV host who wants to interview Putin? How common is it to unmask journalists who interview him?
Of course it is possible that Tucker is correct and everything listed above is based on a web of lies and half-truths spun by the NSA, but the spirit of this country is that the burden of proof is on the affirmative and Tucker, at this point, has not met that yet.
There are two steps that need to happen for us to get the true picture of what happened. First, the NSA needs to explain why it unmasked Tucker. If someone at the NSA planned to leak those communications for the purpose of embarrassing him, there needs to be repercussions.
Second, Tucker’s whistleblower needs to go public and submit him or herself to adversarial questioning, not just softballs on Tucker’s show. Did the whistleblower simply say “hey, we picked up your e-mails over here” or did the whisteblower have evidence to that pointed to some leak campaign. Tucker claims the latter, presumably this whistleblower has proof, let’s see it. The longer this whistleblower remains anonymous, the harder it is to believe Tucker because allegations are not evidence.
The first would be making mountains out of mole hills, the second would be a genuine scandal.