The National Security Agency (NSA) responded to Fox’s Tucker Carlson, declaring that he “has never been an intelligence target.” But, of note, they did not deny Carlson’s charge, which was that they have been “monitoring [his] electronic communications.” (The NSA regularly collects intelligence on non-targets.) Carlson’s original charge was that an NSA whistleblower had provided him with material that could only have come from his private emails.
The NSA’s statement also included their boilerplate language: We have “a foreign intelligence mission.… With limited exceptions (e.g. an emergency), NSA may not target a U.S. citizen without a court order.” Carlson’s retort was: “Just minutes before air tonight, the NSA sent us an infuriatingly dishonest formal statement, an entire paragraph of lies written purely for the benefit of the intel community’s lackeys at CNN and MSNBC — all those people they hire with their titles on the screen.”
