Celebrity2 min(s) read
Published 16:23 08 Jul 2021 GMT
Tucker Carlson has claimed that he was "unmasked" by the National Security Agency for trying to interview Vladimir Putin.
According to Axios, the 52-year-old Fox News anchor was speaking with American-based Kremlin intermediaries about setting up an interview with the Russian President.
Per New York Post, Carlson appeared to corroborate this story on Wednesday, July 7, stating:
"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 other than my executive producer, Justin Wells."
Carlson claimed that he had attempted to keep the planned interview clandestine in order to avoid startling the Russian press, but stated that his plans had been curtailed when the Biden administration got hold of his emails.
The anchor then stated that a so-called "whistleblower" told him that the NSA planned to leak his emails to a number of media outlets in an effort to damage his credibility and credentials as an American patriot.
Per New York Post, Carlson added: "By law, I should have been identified internally merely as a US journalist, or American journalist. That’s the law. But that's not how I was identified. I was identified by name. I was unmasked."
Unmasking is a technique used within the intelligence community referring to the practice of revealing the names of Americans who are in correspondence with foreign nationals under surveillance by the United States.
Carlson then called upon NSA Director Gen. Paul Nakasone and Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines to explain who asked for his name to be unmasked.
In a statement issued on Twitter, a spokesperson for the National Security Agency denied that they had been Carlson's previous claims that he was being monitored, stating: "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.
"NSA has a foreign intelligence mission. We target foreign powers to generate insights into foreign activities that could harm the United States. With limited exceptions [...] NSA may not target a US citizen without a court order."
