A cyber security media outlet called The Record is reporting that the NSA, after an investigation of themselves, say that they weren’t targeting or spying on Tucker Carlson.

Oh, goodie, I’m always comforted when government agencies investigate themselves. Especially given the sketchy statement that they put out when the issue exploded last month.

Don’t know whether NSA is *specifically* spying on Carlson, but this statement is worthless. 1st, it denies a compound allegation re “monitoring” *and* taking show off air. 2nd, it says he’s not a “target,” which is a term of art. Real danger is so-called “incidental collection.” pic.twitter.com/xfKP5DGdML

— Justin Amash (@justinamash) June 30, 2021

Attorney Harmeet Dhillon went through some of the problems with the statement.

If a cynical senior partner redlined your draft crisis management … pic.twitter.com/4vuISx58K0

— Harmeet K. Dhillon (@pnjaban) June 30, 2021

What they are admitting, at least according to this report, was that his name came up in a discussion and his name was unmasked when some government official asked for it to be.

Fox was furious at the report.

From The Record:

“For the NSA to unmask Tucker Carlson or any journalist attempting to secure a newsworthy interview is entirely unacceptable and raises serious questions about their activities as well as their original denial, which was wildly misleading,” a Fox News spokesperson told The Record.

The NSA declined to comment.

Mark Steyn addressed the issue on Tucker Carlson’s show tonight.

The NSA now admits that it "unmasked" Tucker's identity after an intelligence intercept. Plus: the tyrants at Facebook confirm that they have been censoring this show. pic.twitter.com/AeYbQzNWLI

— Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) July 24, 2021

Harmeet Dhillon was a guest and she said this explanation was inconsistent with the information that Tucker had about what had happened — that the government was looking at Tucker’s messages. In this NSA reported admission, they were talking about third parties talking about him. Further, Dhillon notes that there are only a few people who have the right to unmask people and, as she noted, that right was “widely abused” under Barack Obama when they were unmasking people on the Trump team.

“This raises more questions than it answers,” Dhillon concluded. She also said no American journalist should be surveilled this way. Finally, Dhillon excoriated the NSA for leaking the information about it to the media, to begin with, which the report doesn’t explain. The NSA hasn’t explained how Axios had the communication.

So it would appear the NSA is trying to spin it without being an official comment, to see if people buy it. But as Dhillon says this just raises more questions. Why were they unmasking his name? This doesn’t pertain to his messages, so what about that? And what justification would there be for leaking to the media. Hint: there isn’t one, unless you are trying to harm him in media, which goes back to the point Tucker originally made — that this was done with purpose to hurt him.