(Ken Silva, Headline USA) Former Fox News host Tucker Carlson said recently that he has first-hand knowledge of certain “high-ranking” members being bought and paid for by U.S. intelligence agencies.
“There are members of Congress who are controlled by the Intel Agencies. I’m not speculating on this. I lived there for 35 years. I know this,” Carlson told former congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard in an interview circulating online.
Carlson said he had dinner with a “head” of the House Intelligence Committee, who told him this.
“He had been drinking, and said, ‘We have to talk about this.’ I said, ‘I’ll text you,’ and he said, ‘I can’t text … because the NSA reads my texts,’” Carlson told Gabbard.
“I said, ‘You’re the head guy of the intel oversight committee. You’re their boss. He said, ‘Yeah, well they’re still spying on me.’”
Carlson’s claims have a strong basis in fact.
When Sen. Diane Feinstein launched an investigation into the CIA torturing Muslims in the wake of 9/11, she soon found that the CIA was monitoring her committee.
“I have grave concerns that the CIA’s search may well have violated the separation-of-powers principles embodied in the United States Constitution, including the speech-and-debate clause,” Feinstein said in 2014. “Besides the constitutional implications, the CIA search may also have violated the Fourth Amendment [and] the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.”
The CIA’s spying may have been successful, as a full copy of the Feinstein committee’s torture report has never been released.
Headline USA is also aware of a case where the FBI was spying on a politician. Former FBI special agent William McGrath told this publication that he resigned from the bureau when his superiors improperly tried to have an informant record a phone call with a prominent New York politician. McGrath declined to name the public official on the grounds that he was never charged with a crime, but said the person is still in politics and holds a more prominent position today than he had in 1997.
McGrath is still trying to have Congress and DOJ officials investigate this. He recently told Headline USA that the FBI’s Inspection Division is reviewing his complaint about the matter.
Ken Silva is a staff writer at Headline USA. Follow him at twitter.com/jd_cashless.
