The CIA and Tucker Carlson: This Is What Weaponized Government Looks Like

Let Me Be Straight With You

I'm not a Tucker Carlson superfan. Some of what he's said over the years I've agreed with, some I've found frustrating, some I've thought was flat wrong. That doesn't matter right now. What matters is the substance of what's being alleged: that elements of the CIA worked to have him arrested on foreign agent charges — not because he committed crimes, but because he interviewed someone they didn't want him to interview.

If that's true — and the reporting suggests it is — this is not a Tucker Carlson story. This is an American story. About whether the intelligence apparatus of the United States can be pointed at journalists and commentators who ask the wrong questions or talk to the wrong people. And the answer that this situation seems to be demonstrating is: yes, it can. Has been. May still be.

What FARA Actually Is

The Foreign Agents Registration Act is a disclosure law. It requires people who act as agents of foreign governments or foreign political parties to register that relationship with the Department of Justice. The law has existed since 1938, originally designed to track Nazi propaganda operations in the United States. For most of its existence, enforcement was rare and focused on genuine covert influence operations.

Starting around 2016 — coincidence? — FARA enforcement suddenly became a tool of choice for prosecutors and investigators dealing with political targets. Paul Manafort. Michael Flynn. And now, apparently, the foreign agent accusation was floated against Tucker Carlson in connection with his interview of Vladimir Putin. Let that land. A journalist interviewing a foreign leader — something American journalists have done for the entire history of journalism — was apparently the basis for someone in the intelligence community exploring whether Carlson could be charged as a foreign agent.

Dan Rather interviewed Saddam Hussein in 2003. Barbara Walters interviewed Fidel Castro repeatedly over decades. Peter Jennings sat down with Yasser Arafat. Was anyone in the CIA running FARA analysis on Barbara Walters? The answer is obviously no. The selectivity of the targeting tells you everything about whether this is a legitimate law enforcement question or a political operation.

The People Who Should Be Asking These Questions

My grandfather came to this country from Mexico and became a citizen. He believed — he genuinely believed — that the American system was different from what he'd left. That the government here had limits. That it couldn't just decide someone was an enemy and use the machinery of the state to destroy them. He would be disturbed by what he's seeing described here.

The First Amendment doesn't protect only journalists whom the intelligence community approves of. It doesn't protect only interviews with leaders we're not currently in conflict with. It protects journalism, period. The moment that protection becomes conditional on not annoying the right agencies, it's not protection anymore. It's a permit system with an unelected permit office.

Hispanic communities in this country have historical experience with government power being used against people who ask inconvenient questions. The civil rights era is full of examples. The lesson of that history is not that it only happens to people we agree with. The lesson is that it happens when the institutional restraints that are supposed to prevent it are eroded by people who are convinced their targets deserve it.

The Demand

Congressional oversight of intelligence agencies exists precisely for situations like this. The question of whether CIA or associated intelligence apparatus personnel were involved in efforts to pursue legal action against an American journalist is exactly the kind of question that oversight committees exist to answer — in public, on the record, with consequences for people who lie about it.

That investigation needs to happen. Not because Tucker Carlson is important. Because the principle being tested is important. And if we let it slide because we don't like the person it happened to, we've already lost the argument about what kind of country this is supposed to be.