Is the NSA spying on Tucker Carlson in order to bring him down? — 39 Comments
There is no longer any reason to extend the benefit of the doubt concerning accusations of unethical (or illegal) behavior to any of our thoroughly-corrupted “alphabet agencies”, now beloved by the brainless commentators on CNN and MSNBC precisely because they have become completely partisan, beholden to the power of the DNC and permeated by “woke” madness. With the departure of Trump, Tucker has become the principal enemy of the “progressive” establishment, hunted as relentlessly as Javert pursued Valjean. That Tucker’s claim is far likelier to be true than not seems apparent.
It’s one of those things which seem so obvious that proving a negative, even if true, would be a sisyphean uphill fight and still people wouldn’t believe it.
I know people who will say it’s a sham, with that defiant jut of the chin which means, actually, they’re lying and there’s no way you’ll get them to admit it.
Of course they’re spying on him. I would be shocked if they weren’t.
It is time for us to abandon to notion that we live in a free society. We don’t. Obama succeeded in ‘fundamentally transforming’ America (although the foundations of this transformation had been laid long before he took office). Despite Trump’s limited (yet admirable) efforts to stem the tide, the transformation marched on.
We are 75% down the road towards soft authoritarianism. The remaining 25% will occur very quickly.
And the Intelligence Community has such a cozy relationship with the NYTimes that they never have to make anything they find public, or apply for a FISA warrant — they just tip off their friendly journalist at the Times and it appears on the front page, attributed to a “reliable source who wishes to remain anonymous.”
I’ll bet he or she wishes to remain anonymous. If he is outed, he’ll spend at least a decade in federal prison.
In my lifetime, I can’t recall a braver – and better – journalist than Tucker.
He was smart to get out in front of this. He’s certainly a threat to Dems and the Deep State.
Look at all the people who were associated with Trump and how they have been crushed: Gen. Flynn, Steve Bannon, Rudy, KT McFarlane and many others. It really chilled people from publicly backing Trump. After the election, many big corporations told their lawyers not to work on the election cases for Trump. It worked.
He was smart to get out in front of this. He’s certainly a threat to Dems and the Deep State.
I find Matt Gaetz aesthetically unappealing, but I think we should all be in his corner contra vicious schemers in the FBI. See Frei and Barnes on Gaetz reaction to the charges against him, and how they’re indicative of an innocent man who’d been blindsided.
I’m not going to be the least bit skeptical of Tucker’s contention at this point. Those are just the times in which we live.
Easy to make such claims, impossible to verify…
No govt agency will admit to it, or anything, even employment
So, you can claim what you want and the result will be a barometer of the negative ideals one holds about their own country…
I would be remiss if i didn’t point out that the NSA is mostly sigint.. and the CIA is about turning foreigners against their own country… both are into analysis…
their bailiwick is collecting information.. and TRYING to understand it
“Show me the man and I’ll find you the crime.” Lavrentiy Pavlovich Beria, head of Stalin’s secret police
The cynic in me, which is almost all of me on matters of government, says, of course they are. The government has been spying on Americans forever – back to J. Edgar Hoover at least.
The institutionalists will do anything to defend and protect the institution.
Does the NSA have Tucker’s emails? Sure, they have mine too. That’s what they do. They “hoover” up every electronic communication that they can and put it in a huge database out in, I think, Utah. It’s not that they have them that is the problem here, it’s that someone has access to them.
The access to “US Persons” electronic comms is limited by law and rules. This was the scandal that the FBI used private contractors and allowed them to dig through the FBI’s part of the NSA database to get political dirt on US Persons the FBI shouldn’t have been able to get under the law and existing rules.
If an NSA official contacted Tucker, and read to him emails Tucker wrote, then either someone at the NSA broke the law or Tucker is under investigation as a criminal of some sort, or someone who got emails from Tucker sent them on to someone that the NSA or FBI or CIA has under surveillance.
We are 75% down the road towards soft authoritarianism. The remaining 25% will occur very quickly.
You’re beginning to sound like Robert Welch.
Makes me wonder if the whistleblower might be inside the DIA instead the NSA. Recall the defector. Do we have dueling agencies? Remember who was in charge of the DIA, Mike Flynn.
Bidenism, following the progress of Obamaism. #HateLovesAbortion
Simply put..why would it not?
It has been clear for some time elected officials have no power over the alphabet agencies. So they get spy ed upon. The press does also. Those agencies then go report that none of this is happening. And whomever says so is a damn dirty liar.
If an investigation somehow does happen two things occur. Its either “classified” and redacted to the point its useless. Such as the one Sharyl Atkinson posted about them spying on her.
Or if there is enough furor. A low level flunky is forced to take the rap. Like a Kevin Clinesmith. Who then is “punished” with all the force of a feather.
As Glenn Reynolds has pointed out. We are clearly in late stage Roman-ism. In which the government is decedent and corrupt. And it it impossible to change through any mechanism the public can muster against it short of an actual war.
Yet that same public is not only generally foolish. But has become morally ignorant of what is needed to hold an actual society together. Some actively distort the lines of right and wrong to keep everyone on edge. And obsesses with utter trivialities such as “personal pronouns” that do not have an consequence other than their own moral vanity.
Mythx:
Ace reports Kevin Clinesmith is getting his law license reinstated, slap on the wrist for the Deep State critter.
Kevin Clinesmith, the Corrupt FBI Lawyer Who Forged Documents to Frame an Innocent Man, May Get His Law License Back on July 19
—Ace
The outragousness is worse. With backdating, as ace explains, KCs license will be lifted for just one month.
Anyone feeling patriotic with this obscenity? Ace asks.
“Why should anyone feel any moral obligation to obey the “laws” of the United States?
“The Ruling Class obviously doesn’t. Aren’t they always demanding that we aspire to be like them?
“Those who presume to enforce the laws must first follow them themselves.
“And they don’t. They don’t.
“And what won’t be reformed must be destroyed.”
SING IT, BROTHER!
geoffb,
Tucker is certainly under investigation by multiple agencies. One way or another, they’re planning on shutting him up.
TJ,
“Why should anyone feel any moral obligation to obey the “laws” of the United States?”
Our moral obligations are to ourselves, “this above all, to thine own self be true and it must follow as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man”
The nature of our conscience or lack of one, determines our obedience to laws. My rights stop where your rights begin and vice versa.
“Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others.
I do not add ‘within the limits of the law’ because law is often but the tyrant’s will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual.” Thomas Jefferson
“Jefferson feared that it would only be a matter of time before the American system of government degenerated into a form of “elective despotism”
I’e been reading the same story at multiple outlets, all doing their own riffs on Tucker’s video. I liked this comment at LI by Henry Bowman:
“This morning we filed an FOIA request, a Freedom of Information Act request, asking for all information that the NSA and other agencies have gathered about this show.”
“Dear Jocko: An associate of yours recently ratted you out as responsible for my recent home burglary. Please fill out and return the enclosed inventory sheets, detailing what items you stole, and how and to whom you disposed of them. Cordially…’
My 2 cents: I hope someone in the IC isn’t stringing Tucker along to tarnish his credibility, which is what I think happened to Sydney Powell and her post-election claims about the military seizing servers in Europe.
AesopFan:
That’s one of my theories about it, too.
He’s a bit more grounded than Sydney Powell. So I hope is not being led up the garden path.
If they really want to take him down all they need to do is upload some kiddie porn to his devices. Universal Panacea.
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:
In the NSA’s response that we reported on earlier, the NSA said Tucker wasn’t a “target” and they denied the specific allegation that they intended to leak the information to hurt his show. But saying he wasn’t a target doesn’t mean that they didn’t read his emails, Carlson said. They didn’t actually deny that. He shouldn’t be a “target” as an American citizen since their targets are supposed to be foreign. But that hasn’t prevented the NSA from looking at the communications of Americans in the past, despite the Americans not being the specific targets. “It is dangerous and it is wrong,” Carlson said. He said when they called the NSA again they refused to deny reading his emails.
Since the Obama administration’s spying and surveillance on reporters and the NSA scandal of that time, the unmasking scandal, and the FISA abuse and surveillance of the Trump team, allegations of spying are completely believable. Plus we’ve seen these word games in the past.
Tucker isn’t the target—only incidental to the target.
The NSA doesn’t *currently* have plans to shut down his show.
The Tucker quote is two allegations, but NSA denies it as one, the motte and bailey technique.
[Yes] This statement is consistent with Tucker being monitored.
Will this accusation prove to be true? I have no idea, but would note that whether an anonymous source is an admirable whistleblower or a contemptible partisan leaker generally depends on whose political advantage is at stake. If Tucker’s claim that the whistleblower has information that could only have been obtained by spying on him and his staff is correct, it could turn into a scandal.
My only other comment is that the idea that serving FOIA requests on the NSA and other intelligence agencies in a Democratic administration will generate any honest or meaningful response is fanciful.
“I hope someone in the IC isn’t stringing Tucker along to tarnish his credibility” AesopFan
Tucker’s assertion that his informant had information that could only have been obtained by reading his emails on a story Tucker is still putting together would appear to preclude that otherwise plausible possibility.
The late Roman period wasn’t really corupt as many people think. The real problem was how the power was handed to any successor. There were many rival emperors that were raised by provences or Legions and these set off a power struggle that led to civil war with Roman fighting Roman. The Roman army was seriously weaken because of this and could not resist Barbarian incursions. The pragmatic Romans just made a deal with the barbarians, they could settle in a area but they had to provide the manpower for the artmy. By the 5th century most of soldiers in army were actually barbarians. The barbarians soon took over and the western Roman empire just transformed into the barbaric enclaves.
Robert Shotzberger,
You’ve correctly described two interlocking problems. The second is inherent to a society that does not add to its population through voluntary assimilation.
The pragmatic Romans just made a deal with the barbarians, they could settle in a area but they had to provide the manpower for the artmy. By the 5th century most of soldiers in army were actually barbarians. The barbarians soon took over and the western Roman empire just transformed into the barbaric enclaves.
See Philip Daileader. The Roman world appears to have been suffering from autonomous demographic implosion from about 250 AD onward. Disease was one problem (see the 6th century plagues), the effect of the agrarian system on fertility another. One of the adjustments attempted was Diocletian’s degree binding peasants to the land, so the land would be occupied and generate tax revenue. There was vacant land on which the germanic tribes could settle.
With the withdrawal of the Roman legions, the political life of Britain decayed into a series of local chieftaincies. Not so the rest of the Roman world, which was organized into six territorial kingdoms. The Vandal and Ostrogothic kingdoms were conquered by Justinian in the 2d quarter of the 6th century; the campaigns which defeated the Ostrogoths were particularly destructive and Italy was just ruined in the process. (The Sueve and Burgundian kingdoms were absorbed by the Frankish and Visigothic kingdoms respectively during the 6th century). If I’m not misunderstanding Daileader, public life continued more-or-less normally in Iberia, Italy, and North Africa after the departure of the Romans until Justinian’s wrecking crew arrived and Visigothic Spain never suffered a ‘dark age’.
I LOVE the mealy mouthed “denial” by the NSA that says — just in passing and as an afterthought — “With limited exceptions (e.g. an emergency) NSA may not target a US citizen without a court order…”
Ye olde “but ith wath a emergency”
The statement also says Tucker “is not an intelligence target.” Not the same thing as saying “We are not looking at or collecting Carlson’s communications in any form.”
RE: Tucker being “punk’d” to harm his credibility.
Email systems like gmail should not be considered to be particularly secure. I recall the early stories about the hacker guccifer obtaining Hillary’s Sec. of State emails. Guccifer started by guessing Syd Blumenthal’s gmail account name and password and then tracking the IP addresses back to Hillary’s unsecured server. Of course, the FBI later said that story was false, once they had guccifer in prison.
The idea that only foreigners can be surveilled is a nice concept that doesn’t mean much. Think of everyone that you communicate with electronically. Then everyone that those people communicate with. If anyone in that large group ever visited Pakistan or had contact with a “diplomat” of China, etc., then you can be legally surveilled. And you are not a “target.” The person who visited with the diplomat is the target.
TommyJay “The person who visited with the diplomat is the target.”
But Snowden taught us from his experience that this doesn’t matter. They will do whatever they want to do to you.
A couple of pieces which might be of interest on this topic. About how FISA works and is abused. Also realize that once the inquiry is done it can go not just to future communications but also go into up to 2 years of the past ones.
‘…on persons at a 2nd or 3rd hand remove from a “target” of inquiry.’
That’s why Carter Page had to be shafted. (They had to get that plot against Trump moving.)
Which is why Kevin Clinesmith had to lie about and misrepresent Page’s CIA bona fides over and over again to the FISA court.
And which is why Clinesmith must be rehabilitated—and rewarded—-by the gangster outfit otherwise known as the Democratic Party and its media whores.
(That is, if I’ve understood this aspect of the complex Byzantine plot correctly….)
@Barry Meislin:
You have understood it correctly or we’re both crazy.
“If they really want to take him down all they need to do is upload some kiddie porn to his devices. Universal Panacea.” – Zaphod
It’s been known to happen. Or at least be possible.
This discusses how a virus accidentally triggered could direct bad stuff to your computer, but doesn’t address deliberate hacking, although that could be done if the virus is targeted toward a specific individual.
Late note as this goes to post: As Wednesday closes, Tucker Carlson has concluded his third segment on this topic. He seems to be learning more by the day about it, which is positive. We may be hopeful that some good will come out of this disclosure (whether that was the intent of the original leak is another question). I also note that members of Congress clipped in Carlson’s segment (McCarthy and Gaetz) are on the right track, not limiting their concern to NSA. (The two latest segments, from Tuesday and Wednesday, are below)
In the third segment in particular, on Wednesday, Carlson says his show interviewed NSA officials at some length, and got out of them an admission that they have been monitoring him, but had “reasons.” Since Carlson didn’t quote the language used by NSA, I can’t judge whether they actually explicitly admitted “monitoring” him at NSA.
But that’s what this article is largely about. It should help as background for understanding what readers hear as this issue moves forward. I already outlined that someone could be monitoring Carlson for “reasons,” purportedly related to national security, so that’s no surprise.
The important thing to establish is that NSA is never free to make up its own reasons for such a thing. Read this article to understand that monitoring Americans is a priority set by higher authority in an administration. That’s where voters need to focus their concern. Don’t bore-sight on NSA.
And don’t assume that every disclosure about this kind of monitoring is made as a public service. The disclosure made to David Ignatius in January 2017, about Michael Flynn and Sergei Kislyak, certainly wasn’t.
…
Original Post:
The media are gleefully reporting that the spat is blowing up quickly. This is gratifying to someone. We need to identify who it is.
The important questions here are basically two, and they both lead us back where we need to be focusing.
1) Why did NSA issue a denial?
2) Why is Carlson being told it’s NSA that’s monitoring him?
I will defer the NSA denial question, except to make the initial point that NSA doesn’t confirm or deny these things, as a rule. So it’s a legitimate question why a denial was issued. Any kind of comment one way or the other sets up expectations about the meaning of future silence, so it’s very informative that NSA broke this rule.
We’ll get back to that. Meanwhile, the equally important question is why Carlson’s source is telling him it’s NSA that’s monitoring him.
…
A few general points to begin with. One, we’ll tag the possibility that the source knows for sure it’s NSA. That knowledge would have to come from someone who could directly observe evidence of NSA doing it.
But that’s not how this problem of “monitoring Americans’ comms for political warfare” has been metastasizing over the last decade. That’s why I keep objecting on this point. It’s not people at NSA who have responsible cognizance of misusing the system politically, by doing the monitoring and exploiting we’ve heard so much about.
To the contrary, NSA has been at the forefront of blowing the whistle on the improper monitoring and exploiting. That’s what Admiral Mike Rogers did in 2016. He didn’t make a big deal of this specific point in his public commentary, but his focus, which was on FISA Section 702 non-contents queries, turned up thousands of such actions at other agencies.
Even the redacted version of the FISA court’s response to his confessional report enables us to read that between the lines. Rogers was clear that he caught some of his own people doing it, but those people he could discipline and curb in-house. The purpose of filing a bombshell report with the court was to demonstrate what the other agencies were doing: to get it on the record at a level those agencies couldn’t paper over.
…
Number two, in our list of general points: it’s possible Carlson’s source doesn’t know enough to understand that it doesn’t have to be NSA, performing the action of “monitoring” that’s at issue here.
If Carlson’s comms are being quoted to Carlson, that does mean someone is reading his comms. That someone doesn’t have to be NSA. Even if it is, it may not be done on NSA’s authority, but at the direction of someone at the Justice, ODNI, or NSC level – in which case the ire is better directed at the higher-level agency.
…
A third general point: whoever told Carlson about this committed a felony by doing so, assuming it’s at least true that Carlson is being monitored (regardless of who’s doing it). The motive to commit a felony, when the FBI can probably track this source down inside 48 hours, ought to be of high analytical interest to us.
…
There are three layers of “tasking,” let’s call it, that result in someone’s comms being monitored. Most people understand two of them; some recognize all three. But the mystery here – the one that needs to be rolled back (in an unclassified manner, speaking only to what’s known publicly) – is that NSA is not the cognizant authority for any of them.
… The layers are basically (1) amassing the data trove from the commercial telecoms so that it’s available (although it goes mostly unused); (2) prioritizing the use of it by categories of national security problems (corresponding to the “collection” stage of the conventional intelligence cycle); and (3) actually exploiting the data for specific situations.
The first layer is the one invariably referred to as bulk collection, or mass surveillance. That’s an inaccurate understanding. In the context of a data-pull environment, what it actually is is “data acquisition.”
The second layer is the least known by the general public. It’s the one where national security letters come into play, along with other methods of stating national priorities and authorizing the use of the bulk-acquired data.
The third layer is where “Tucker Carlson” would come up as an exploitation tasker. His comms could be exploited through the front door (i.e., via FISA authorization), for a statutory and prioritized purpose. Or they could be exploited as we saw so often in Spygate (whether with rampant unmasking or FISA Section 702 queries), using national surveillance tools loosely and without accountability.
NSA is not ultimately in charge of setting the parameters for any of these layers or activities. NSA makes expert input to the chain of command on most of them, especially in its assigned operational functions with foreign government comms, cyber operations, and the process of amassing the Big Database.
But it’s actually the president, Congress, and the cabinet-level departments (Defense, Justice, State, Homeland Security, Treasury, ODNI/CIA, etc) that decide how each of the three layers is to be bounded, organized, and executed.
Again, we had a glimpse of that in the Michael Flynn saga, with the references to a data call in the PDB on comms there might be involving the Trump transition team and the Russian ambassador. The agencies and high officials involved in that transaction are chartered to make the decisions they made in that case. The impropriety lay in using the surveillance apparatus for the purpose of spying on domestic political opponents.
…
It was not NSA that had the motive or made the decision. That’s the point everyone needs to understand. It applies to Tucker Carlson too.
That’s why it can legitimately be said that NSA is neither targeting nor monitoring Carlson, if the only cognizant function it performs is unmasking Carlson, or acknowledging the incidental processing of his comms, at the request of another agency.
Carlson may have asked the right question, but NSA couldn’t answer it
In his response to the NSA denial, Carlson said he asked NSA this: “Did the Biden administration read my emails?”
If that’s actually what Carlson asked, it’s the right question. It’s not the same question as “Did the NSA read my emails?”
But it would be the right question. A much better question than merely asking about NSA.
Here’s what Carlson reported [this was on Tuesday – J.E.]: “NSA officials refuse to say. In a very heated follow-up conversation 20 minutes ago, they refused even to explain why they won’t answer that simple question.”
NSA isn’t supposed to give that answer to Carlson – for another agency, or even for itself.
The NSA denial said only what it could say without making the statement itself a revelation of sources and methods.
[Whatever else NSA then said on Wednesday is interesting, therefore, and I wouldn’t make assumptions about why NSA said it – especially not without knowing exactly what the officials said.]
…
Before resuming the discussion of why Carlson’s source named NSA as monitoring him, a brief stop in the IT cloud is in order.
An alternative possibility is that someone, presumably the FBI, has been examining Carlson’s files in whatever IT cloud he uses, as Rudy Giuliani said was done with his iCloud files in 2019.
Files in the cloud are not communications. Keystroke logs and temporary files, stored as documents are being updated, are not communications. Texts and emails that get stored on a cloud server are not communications in the same functional way such data files are when they undergo send-receive transactions via telecom processes.
But it’s quite possible the information Carlson’s source quoted to him, which seemed to come from Carlson’s own texts and emails, could have been abstracted from working files in his IT cloud. Cloud data is obtained via subpoena to the cloud providers, such as Google, Microsoft, and others.
It’s not routinely amassed and stored in a government cyber-vault, as telecom data is. NSA can’t issue a subpoena for it; at the federal level, DOJ has to do that, and NSA will never even see it.
Curiously enough, concerns about government monitoring and privacy in the cloud have just been raised anew in Congress this week.
…
Back to that initial question
So, why did NSA issue a denial, when that has never been the agency’s practice?
The question Cui bono? always rears its head in these cases. Who benefits from what is now going on: Carlson feuding with NSA on-air, NSA coming under fire and being targeted with public ire about monitoring (which in this case NSA may have had no hand in), Carlson potentially being discredited, if not with viewers, then at least with Fox News?
As we watch for consequences, we’ll begin to form a better idea why NSA issued the denial – as we will about why Carlson has been told “NSA,” specifically, was monitoring him.
The first consequence is this unseemly Carlson-NSA spat. Half of the observers are calling Carlson a moron; the other half think NSA is lying through its teeth. Who benefits from that?
Someone who wants to discredit Carlson, and – very possibly – spike the story he’s been working on, would benefit.
Remember also: Carlson’s source committed a felony by disclosing the monitoring to him. We’ll see if the source is pursued. If there’s no retribution against the source, that suggests the source wasn’t afraid of committing the felony.
There could be multiple reasons for NSA jumping into the fiery furnace of denial and debate, but I suspect they don’t include reputational suicide for the agency. I wouldn’t draw conclusions at this point about NSA’s motive – or about what pressures the agency is under, from any quarter.
It is positive to see that Republicans in Congress are on the right track. Carlson is taking a lot of grief, but by staying with this doggedly, he may end up turning around a situation that wasn’t intended to work to his benefit. Stay tuned.
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There is no longer any reason to extend the benefit of the doubt concerning accusations of unethical (or illegal) behavior to any of our thoroughly-corrupted “alphabet agencies”, now beloved by the brainless commentators on CNN and MSNBC precisely because they have become completely partisan, beholden to the power of the DNC and permeated by “woke” madness. With the departure of Trump, Tucker has become the principal enemy of the “progressive” establishment, hunted as relentlessly as Javert pursued Valjean. That Tucker’s claim is far likelier to be true than not seems apparent.
It’s one of those things which seem so obvious that proving a negative, even if true, would be a sisyphean uphill fight and still people wouldn’t believe it.
I know people who will say it’s a sham, with that defiant jut of the chin which means, actually, they’re lying and there’s no way you’ll get them to admit it.
Of course they’re spying on him. I would be shocked if they weren’t.
It is time for us to abandon to notion that we live in a free society. We don’t. Obama succeeded in ‘fundamentally transforming’ America (although the foundations of this transformation had been laid long before he took office). Despite Trump’s limited (yet admirable) efforts to stem the tide, the transformation marched on.
We are 75% down the road towards soft authoritarianism. The remaining 25% will occur very quickly.
And the Intelligence Community has such a cozy relationship with the NYTimes that they never have to make anything they find public, or apply for a FISA warrant — they just tip off their friendly journalist at the Times and it appears on the front page, attributed to a “reliable source who wishes to remain anonymous.”
I’ll bet he or she wishes to remain anonymous. If he is outed, he’ll spend at least a decade in federal prison.
In my lifetime, I can’t recall a braver – and better – journalist than Tucker.
He was smart to get out in front of this. He’s certainly a threat to Dems and the Deep State.
Look at all the people who were associated with Trump and how they have been crushed: Gen. Flynn, Steve Bannon, Rudy, KT McFarlane and many others. It really chilled people from publicly backing Trump. After the election, many big corporations told their lawyers not to work on the election cases for Trump. It worked.
He was smart to get out in front of this. He’s certainly a threat to Dems and the Deep State.
I find Matt Gaetz aesthetically unappealing, but I think we should all be in his corner contra vicious schemers in the FBI. See Frei and Barnes on Gaetz reaction to the charges against him, and how they’re indicative of an innocent man who’d been blindsided.
I’m not going to be the least bit skeptical of Tucker’s contention at this point. Those are just the times in which we live.
Easy to make such claims, impossible to verify…
No govt agency will admit to it, or anything, even employment
So, you can claim what you want and the result will be a barometer of the negative ideals one holds about their own country…
I would be remiss if i didn’t point out that the NSA is mostly sigint.. and the CIA is about turning foreigners against their own country… both are into analysis…
their bailiwick is collecting information.. and TRYING to understand it
“Show me the man and I’ll find you the crime.” Lavrentiy Pavlovich Beria, head of Stalin’s secret police
The cynic in me, which is almost all of me on matters of government, says, of course they are. The government has been spying on Americans forever – back to J. Edgar Hoover at least.
The institutionalists will do anything to defend and protect the institution.
Does the NSA have Tucker’s emails? Sure, they have mine too. That’s what they do. They “hoover” up every electronic communication that they can and put it in a huge database out in, I think, Utah. It’s not that they have them that is the problem here, it’s that someone has access to them.
The access to “US Persons” electronic comms is limited by law and rules. This was the scandal that the FBI used private contractors and allowed them to dig through the FBI’s part of the NSA database to get political dirt on US Persons the FBI shouldn’t have been able to get under the law and existing rules.
If an NSA official contacted Tucker, and read to him emails Tucker wrote, then either someone at the NSA broke the law or Tucker is under investigation as a criminal of some sort, or someone who got emails from Tucker sent them on to someone that the NSA or FBI or CIA has under surveillance.
We are 75% down the road towards soft authoritarianism. The remaining 25% will occur very quickly.
You’re beginning to sound like Robert Welch.
Makes me wonder if the whistleblower might be inside the DIA instead the NSA. Recall the defector. Do we have dueling agencies? Remember who was in charge of the DIA, Mike Flynn.
Bidenism, following the progress of Obamaism. #HateLovesAbortion
Simply put..why would it not?
It has been clear for some time elected officials have no power over the alphabet agencies. So they get spy ed upon. The press does also. Those agencies then go report that none of this is happening. And whomever says so is a damn dirty liar.
If an investigation somehow does happen two things occur. Its either “classified” and redacted to the point its useless. Such as the one Sharyl Atkinson posted about them spying on her.
Or if there is enough furor. A low level flunky is forced to take the rap. Like a Kevin Clinesmith. Who then is “punished” with all the force of a feather.
As Glenn Reynolds has pointed out. We are clearly in late stage Roman-ism. In which the government is decedent and corrupt. And it it impossible to change through any mechanism the public can muster against it short of an actual war.
Yet that same public is not only generally foolish. But has become morally ignorant of what is needed to hold an actual society together. Some actively distort the lines of right and wrong to keep everyone on edge. And obsesses with utter trivialities such as “personal pronouns” that do not have an consequence other than their own moral vanity.
Mythx:
Ace reports Kevin Clinesmith is getting his law license reinstated, slap on the wrist for the Deep State critter.
Kevin Clinesmith, the Corrupt FBI Lawyer Who Forged Documents to Frame an Innocent Man, May Get His Law License Back on July 19
—Ace
Mythx:
ace.mu.nu
Here.
http://ace.mu.nu/archives/394514.php
Re Kevin Clinesmith.
“Who is John Durham?”
The outragousness is worse. With backdating, as ace explains, KCs license will be lifted for just one month.
Anyone feeling patriotic with this obscenity? Ace asks.
“Why should anyone feel any moral obligation to obey the “laws” of the United States?
“The Ruling Class obviously doesn’t. Aren’t they always demanding that we aspire to be like them?
“Those who presume to enforce the laws must first follow them themselves.
“And they don’t. They don’t.
“And what won’t be reformed must be destroyed.”
SING IT, BROTHER!
geoffb,
Tucker is certainly under investigation by multiple agencies. One way or another, they’re planning on shutting him up.
TJ,
“Why should anyone feel any moral obligation to obey the “laws” of the United States?”
Our moral obligations are to ourselves, “this above all, to thine own self be true and it must follow as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man”
The nature of our conscience or lack of one, determines our obedience to laws. My rights stop where your rights begin and vice versa.
“Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others.
I do not add ‘within the limits of the law’ because law is often but the tyrant’s will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual.” Thomas Jefferson
“Jefferson feared that it would only be a matter of time before the American system of government degenerated into a form of “elective despotism”
I’e been reading the same story at multiple outlets, all doing their own riffs on Tucker’s video. I liked this comment at LI by Henry Bowman:
“This morning we filed an FOIA request, a Freedom of Information Act request, asking for all information that the NSA and other agencies have gathered about this show.”
“Dear Jocko: An associate of yours recently ratted you out as responsible for my recent home burglary. Please fill out and return the enclosed inventory sheets, detailing what items you stole, and how and to whom you disposed of them. Cordially…’
For the ins and outs of the legal side of the Intelligence Community access to your communications, J. E. Dyer has that covered:
https://libertyunyielding.com/2021/06/28/tucker-carlson-whistleblower-advised-him-nsa-monitoring-his-comms-admin-seeks-to-take-him-off-air/
My 2 cents: I hope someone in the IC isn’t stringing Tucker along to tarnish his credibility, which is what I think happened to Sydney Powell and her post-election claims about the military seizing servers in Europe.
AesopFan:
That’s one of my theories about it, too.
He’s a bit more grounded than Sydney Powell. So I hope is not being led up the garden path.
If they really want to take him down all they need to do is upload some kiddie porn to his devices. Universal Panacea.
Red State round-up of stories, covering several facets.
https://redstate.com/shipwreckedcrew/2021/06/28/report-nsa-spying-on-tucker-carlson-fox-news-show-staff-with-intent-to-leak-and-force-show-off-the-air-n404090
Shipwreckedcrew covers the basics of the breaking story, gives some of the legalities (as did Dyer), ties it to the FBI-at-the-Capitol story, and suggests we are now seeing the anti-Biden faction in the IC at work, just as we previously saw with the anti-Trump faction.
Hoo, boy.
https://redstate.com/streiff/2021/06/29/tucker-carlsons-spying-claim-matches-what-we-know-about-an-out-of-control-intelligence-community-n404522
Gives examples of the tales we’ve been told over the last 4-5 years, and how they imploded to the detriment of the Intelligence Community.
https://redstate.com/jerrywilson/2021/06/29/tucker-carlson-is-living-rent-free-in-the-nsas-head-n404628
The NSA actually responded; Wilson is not persuaded.
https://redstate.com/nick-arama/2021/06/29/tucker-carlson-rips-biden-admin-response-to-claim-of-nsa-spying-on-him-n404621
John Hinderaker:
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2021/06/nsa-vs-tucker.php
“I hope someone in the IC isn’t stringing Tucker along to tarnish his credibility” AesopFan
Tucker’s assertion that his informant had information that could only have been obtained by reading his emails on a story Tucker is still putting together would appear to preclude that otherwise plausible possibility.
The late Roman period wasn’t really corupt as many people think. The real problem was how the power was handed to any successor. There were many rival emperors that were raised by provences or Legions and these set off a power struggle that led to civil war with Roman fighting Roman. The Roman army was seriously weaken because of this and could not resist Barbarian incursions. The pragmatic Romans just made a deal with the barbarians, they could settle in a area but they had to provide the manpower for the artmy. By the 5th century most of soldiers in army were actually barbarians. The barbarians soon took over and the western Roman empire just transformed into the barbaric enclaves.
Robert Shotzberger,
You’ve correctly described two interlocking problems. The second is inherent to a society that does not add to its population through voluntary assimilation.
The pragmatic Romans just made a deal with the barbarians, they could settle in a area but they had to provide the manpower for the artmy. By the 5th century most of soldiers in army were actually barbarians. The barbarians soon took over and the western Roman empire just transformed into the barbaric enclaves.
See Philip Daileader. The Roman world appears to have been suffering from autonomous demographic implosion from about 250 AD onward. Disease was one problem (see the 6th century plagues), the effect of the agrarian system on fertility another. One of the adjustments attempted was Diocletian’s degree binding peasants to the land, so the land would be occupied and generate tax revenue. There was vacant land on which the germanic tribes could settle.
With the withdrawal of the Roman legions, the political life of Britain decayed into a series of local chieftaincies. Not so the rest of the Roman world, which was organized into six territorial kingdoms. The Vandal and Ostrogothic kingdoms were conquered by Justinian in the 2d quarter of the 6th century; the campaigns which defeated the Ostrogoths were particularly destructive and Italy was just ruined in the process. (The Sueve and Burgundian kingdoms were absorbed by the Frankish and Visigothic kingdoms respectively during the 6th century). If I’m not misunderstanding Daileader, public life continued more-or-less normally in Iberia, Italy, and North Africa after the departure of the Romans until Justinian’s wrecking crew arrived and Visigothic Spain never suffered a ‘dark age’.
I LOVE the mealy mouthed “denial” by the NSA that says — just in passing and as an afterthought — “With limited exceptions (e.g. an emergency) NSA may not target a US citizen without a court order…”
Ye olde “but ith wath a emergency”
The statement also says Tucker “is not an intelligence target.” Not the same thing as saying “We are not looking at or collecting Carlson’s communications in any form.”
RE: Tucker being “punk’d” to harm his credibility.
Email systems like gmail should not be considered to be particularly secure. I recall the early stories about the hacker guccifer obtaining Hillary’s Sec. of State emails. Guccifer started by guessing Syd Blumenthal’s gmail account name and password and then tracking the IP addresses back to Hillary’s unsecured server. Of course, the FBI later said that story was false, once they had guccifer in prison.
The idea that only foreigners can be surveilled is a nice concept that doesn’t mean much. Think of everyone that you communicate with electronically. Then everyone that those people communicate with. If anyone in that large group ever visited Pakistan or had contact with a “diplomat” of China, etc., then you can be legally surveilled. And you are not a “target.” The person who visited with the diplomat is the target.
TommyJay “The person who visited with the diplomat is the target.”
But Snowden taught us from his experience that this doesn’t matter. They will do whatever they want to do to you.
A couple of pieces which might be of interest on this topic. About how FISA works and is abused. Also realize that once the inquiry is done it can go not just to future communications but also go into up to 2 years of the past ones.
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/blog/2018/01/10/answering-common-questions-about-the-doj-and-fbi-2016-trump-operation/
About the usefulness of the “meta-data” that can be gathered, legally or not, on persons at a 2nd or 3rd hand remove from a “target” of inquiry.
https://kieranhealy.org/blog/archives/2013/06/09/using-metadata-to-find-paul-revere/
‘…on persons at a 2nd or 3rd hand remove from a “target” of inquiry.’
That’s why Carter Page had to be shafted. (They had to get that plot against Trump moving.)
Which is why Kevin Clinesmith had to lie about and misrepresent Page’s CIA bona fides over and over again to the FISA court.
And which is why Clinesmith must be rehabilitated—and rewarded—-by the gangster outfit otherwise known as the Democratic Party and its media whores.
(That is, if I’ve understood this aspect of the complex Byzantine plot correctly….)
@Barry Meislin:
You have understood it correctly or we’re both crazy.
“If they really want to take him down all they need to do is upload some kiddie porn to his devices. Universal Panacea.” – Zaphod
It’s been known to happen. Or at least be possible.
This discusses how a virus accidentally triggered could direct bad stuff to your computer, but doesn’t address deliberate hacking, although that could be done if the virus is targeted toward a specific individual.
https://www.cnet.com/news/a-child-porn-planting-virus-threat-or-bad-defense/
One thing that is seriously a concern is that “they” can get access to your computer without your knowledge. See Sharyl Attkisson’s story.
https://sharylattkisson.com/2020/05/attkisson-v-doj-and-fbi-for-the-government-computer-intrusions-the-definitive-summary-2/
I love this just for the headline.
https://notthebee.com/article/the-nsa-said-tuckers-claim-that-theyre-spying-on-him-is-false-and-you-should-always-trust-a-government-surveillance-agency-so-im-sure-its-all-good
This one is even better.
https://babylonbee.com/news/we-are-not-spying-on-you-insists-muffled-voice-coming-from-tucker-carlsons-toaster
Now for some serious updates.
This is a long excerpt of an even longer post, but it’s necessary to get all the essential information.
Remember that Dyer is a retired Navy intel analyst – she knows what she is talking about.
https://libertyunyielding.com/2021/07/01/asking-the-right-questions-about-the-monitoring-of-tucker-carlson/
J E Dyer