Tucker Carlson says the NSA wants him off the air. Do you believe Fox News? : NPR

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Tucker Carlson, host of “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” on the set of his Fox News show. Richard Drew / AP Hide caption

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Tucker Carlson, host of “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” on the set of his Fox News show.

Richard Drew/AFP

On consecutive nights this week, Fox News host Tucker Carlson alleged that the National Security Agency — tasked with monitoring communications abroad to keep the United States safe — was spying on him in the hope of canceling his top-rated program.

“We heard from a whistleblower within the US government who called to warn us that the NSA, the National Security Agency, is monitoring our electronic communications and planning to leak it to get this show on air,” Carlson said Monday night.

Attributing political motives to the Biden administration, Carlson said the whistleblower had information about a story he was working on that could have been derived solely from his texts and emails.

On Tuesday, the National Security Agency denied spying on him or wanting to cancel his program. That night, Carlson was back in the air, crackles of anger. He continued his incendiary accusation of possible criminal acts by saying that the agency did not specifically deny that it was reviewing his communications.

However, it did not provide anything more realistic. Fox News did not specifically report Carlson’s allegations on its news programs, according to a transcript review. Not on political broadcaster Brett Baer. Not on Fox’s noon news program, John Roberts. Not even on the conspiracy theory friendly morning show, Fox & Friends.

Online, Fox News published two brief messages – one without a byline – that simply combine what Carlson said but don’t provide any new reporting. Fox News PR executives did not respond to repeated requests for comment from NPR and other outlets asking if the network was behind Carlson’s allegations. Instead, they referred to Carlson’s own statements.

When asked by NPR for further verification or documentation, Carlson wrote, “My word. Why would I make something like this? It doesn’t help me. I have enough drama.”

“But it’s true,” he said. “They haven’t denied it, including tonight. The NSA was reading my email. That’s absolutely certain.”

Carlson did not respond to NPR’s questions about whether he had contact with people in Russia or Ukraine during the 2016 election, President Hunter Biden’s son, or any related matter.

The NSA is prohibited from targeting US citizens for direct wiretapping unless a secret federal court finds that there is reason to believe that they are terrorists or agents of a foreign power. However, the agency often scans emails or other communications of Americans who are in contact with one of the agency’s external targets. Since the agency operates on such a massive global scale, the communications collected “incidentally” can be extensive.

“Tucker Carlson was never an intelligence target of the agency, and the NSA had no plans to attempt to stop his program live,” the NSA said in an official statement on Tuesday. “We target foreign powers to generate insights about foreign activities that could harm the United States. With limited exceptions (such as a state of emergency), the NSA may not target a U.S. citizen without a court order expressly authorizing the targeting.”

The NSA statement that Tucker Carlson was not a “target” of the intercepts does not conclusively mean that the agency did not collect some of his emails or text messages. If, hypothetically, Carlson was exchanging messages with someone in Russia or Ukraine as part of his platform coverage of the 2016 election, the Trump administration, or Hunter Biden, and the person was abroad under NSA surveillance, the agency may have collected their data. Messages. The agency is supposed to withhold the names of any Americans whose communications are collected in this way.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, a California Republican, announced Wednesday that he has asked Representative Devin Nunes of California to investigate the NSA over the Carlson allegations and other episodes. Nunes, the former chairman of the House Intelligence Committee when Republicans were in control of the House, has pushed conspiracy theories from former President Donald Trump and his allies about many matters, including the 2016 elections, Russia and Ukraine.

Carlson is right on one point: He’s had more than enough drama. Carlson has been attacked over some of his allegations regarding Covid-19 and public health officials and his defense of former President Donald Trump against critics. Yet Carlson has sailed a delicate dance on these, taking the pandemic more seriously, more quickly than many of his Fox colleagues, and also, at times, acknowledging the flaws of Trump himself.

Most problematic is that Carlson has adopted rhetoric that inspires white supremacists, even when he was a prominent writer on his show who quit after he was revealed to be a racist and bigot. Carlson also defended those who laid siege to the U.S. Capitol in January, which patriots mistakenly labeled libel by the tyranny of law enforcement and liberals.

More recently, and apparently paradoxically, Carlson has also argued that the FBI may have been behind the blockade.

His audience is in a constant state of rage and anger, as the target has now shifted from the ‘radical left’ and [D]emocrats, to the security state,” tweeted Joan Donovan, director of research at Harvard University’s Shornstein Center and researcher on disinformation and online hate groups.

“He makes stronger and stronger allegations of a conspiracy to overthrow the government without conclusive evidence,” Donovan wrote. “This propaganda is fueling…the collective despair of his audience that no one will do justice. For them, the government is now occupied by illegitimate forces.”

Carlson’s assertions can be true, or contain an iota of truth. But it’s not necessary for him to continue broadcasting: Fox News lawyers won a defamation lawsuit against Carlson by arguing that his words were literally unbelievable. A federal judge has embraced this logic.

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