GROVER-GPT-2-1.5 algorithmically-generated news

##############################################################
#
# Entertaining algorithmically-generated text from GROVER
# trained as GPT-2 "1.5B". I used Google Colab notebook
# released by project team to create the following text samples
# Notebook is here: https://t.co/sgO6Wed5a6?amp=1
# Generated text after <|endoftext|> markers was removed
# (generally unrelated news-genre text noise)
#
###############################################################

Seed text:
BATON ROUGE (Reuters) - President Trump astounded supporters at a rally last night by suggesting that a secretive government program was created to listen to his thoughts using radio waves and lasers.

Sample, 1  of  10
BATON ROUGE (Reuters) - President Trump astounded supporters at a rally last night by suggesting that a secretive government program was created to listen to his thoughts using radio waves and lasers.

President Donald Trump's comments came during a rally in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, May 27, 2017. REUTERS/Jonathan Bachman

“You heard that right? They’re listening to our conversations? We have our conversations intercepted by this thing, and I don’t like it. I said stop it,” Trump said.

The Republican president’s broadside against an intelligence agency that monitors communications from foreign governments at a major rally in the deep South sounded like an unsubstantiated rant.

And it turned out he was simply revising a long-running joke for a crowd of about 3,000 fans in Louisiana that he could hear the televisions and radios they were listening to.

Trump sometimes makes off-the-cuff remarks at campaign rallies and did so at the same stop in Baton Rouge, about 160 miles (260 km) west of New Orleans, where three police officers were killed and three wounded after an ambush Tuesday night at a police car.

The threats against law enforcement by a gunman and the link to white supremacists and other extremist groups, coupled with the anniversary of a 2015 shooting at a historically black church in Charleston, South Carolina, this month, has increased the pressures on police departments nationwide.

Speaking in a gymnasium, Trump suggested the scrutiny from the National Security Agency was part of an establishment effort to undermine him.

“All my life I have heard that if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em. Well, it turns out, we can’t join ’em either, folks,” he said, trailing off.

Trump’s presidency has been dominated by his inability to convince Congress to pass healthcare legislation and other legislation he wanted to repeal and replace President Barack Obama’s signature health law.

He is now spending much of his time appealing to members of his fractured party to get behind his legislative agenda.

After the speech in Baton Rouge, Trump’s transition team reportedly began signaling that he is considering entering an antitrust lawsuit against the intelligence community to punish them.

In a memo, Trump’s transition team said the agency was hiding “intelligence” it collected “in order to perpetuate its power,” according to Politico.


Sample, 2  of  10
BATON ROUGE (Reuters) - President Trump astounded supporters at a rally last night by suggesting that a secretive government program was created to listen to his thoughts using radio waves and lasers.

Republican U.S. presidential nominee Donald Trump speaks during a campaign rally in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, U.S., September 11, 2016. REUTERS/Mike Segar

The Republican’s remarks - while reading from a teleprompter - created a storm on social media that overshadowed what had previously been a relatively subdued campaign event.

Trump, seeking to relaunch his post-July convention rally tour after stalling on a string of controversies, said it was time to draw attention to “a federal program that allows the government to monitor your conversations.”

The real estate mogul said he cannot believe his federal communications have been routinely monitored “without a warrant.”

“That is not right. That is not right,” Trump said, walking out to a crowd that roared with approval.

Trump repeatedly predicted a victory and urged voters to support his policies despite his opposition to many other elements of his platform. He rejected accusations he was racist after he ignited a firestorm by equating supporters of black athletes and football players with backers of the confederacy and slaveholders.

Throughout his tough campaign for the White House, Trump has railed against illegal immigration, illegal trade, global elitism and perceived political correctness.

He cited a report by conservative news outlet The Daily Caller on a U.S. government program called “Prism” that is believed to be monitoring cell phone data. The Daily Caller was founded by Tucker Carlson, a former Fox News television host.

“That’s how you monitor people,” Trump said in a pointed attack on the American Civil Liberties Union, which has been outspoken in its condemnation of government intelligence gathering efforts.

The Constitutional Accountability Center, a civil rights group, on Twitter that Trump’s claims showed a “disdain for our free speech.”

Unlike other Republican presidential hopefuls, such as Jeb Bush, Trump has never offered a detailed policy agenda of his own. Instead, he bashes his rivals on Twitter, and urges voters to support his proposals on taxes, borders and trade deals.

Trump has found that rallying his base while running a campaign that lacks detail often remains a successful formula for him.


Sample, 3  of  10
BATON ROUGE (Reuters) - President Trump astounded supporters at a rally last night by suggesting that a secretive government program was created to listen to his thoughts using radio waves and lasers.

U.S. President Donald Trump delivers a speech, "A big day for our country!" at the Baton Rouge International Airport in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, U.S., June 24, 2017. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque

The Democrat president, who is expected to make a formal request for more spending on National Security Agency surveillance, also shrugged off public criticism that he does not appear to be expanding U.S. security sufficiently.

In an unusually combative campaign style that many political observers have likened to president Theodore Roosevelt’s, Trump laid out a dramatically more aggressive U.S. foreign policy than he has previously hinted he would pursue.

Rallying supporters in Baton Rouge, about 100 miles (160 km) southwest of New Orleans, Trump said: “I don’t think anybody knew that NSA, the electronic spy agency, was listening to our conversations.”

“It was crazy. It was under somebody else’s charge, and somebody else. And I know. Someone named Snowden. Remember that name?”

Trump has called for a surveillance state and has frequently talked about wiretapping the phones of then-Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton. Former intelligence officials and law enforcement experts deny such actions took place, though some Republican members of Congress have raised questions.

After Trump tweeted last week that he might call on Congress to investigate reports that the Obama administration had wiretapped Trump, some lawmakers called on him to release evidence of the alleged activity, a request he has so far declined to make.

U.S. intelligence agencies and Republican lawmakers have said they have seen no evidence of a surveillance program led by Trump’s predecessor to monitor his campaign headquarters.

Trump added: “Now the cell phone companies were forced to give it up, which is something you weren’t supposed to do. But they gave it up. So wiretapping is something that you shouldn’t have done but that’s okay. You will find out soon enough.”

Republican Representatives Devin Nunes and Peter King, said in a joint statement on Friday that they had seen “no evidence of any wiretapping activity mounted against the president-elect at the time as a candidate or against his campaign.”

Trump also said he had not discussed the Paris climate agreement with foreign leaders during an official visit to Europe, after German Chancellor Angela Merkel said that she hoped he would be able to re-enter the agreement “as soon as possible.”

Trump said on Friday he had spoken to Merkel about the treaty but also wanted to renegotiate some of the provisions of the deal.

On the campaign trail, Trump frequently said he wanted to renegotiate trade deals and said China had “raped” the United States trade deficit.

His campaign critics questioned the value of his speech, but the candidate who famously scoffed, “You’re fired” was not done with saying anything.

He later weighed in on Monday on International Women’s Day, tweeting: “2 presidents 2 wives who have both been magnificent. Worth watching on @FCOWomen next Thursday.”

On Friday night, Trump tweeted again: “I am the only one who can make America great again. I am the only one.”


Sample, 4  of  10
BATON ROUGE (Reuters) - President Trump astounded supporters at a rally last night by suggesting that a secretive government program was created to listen to his thoughts using radio waves and lasers.

The President of the United States Donald Trump holds a 20 percent stake in the investor network Morningside Advisors LP,in Washington, June 9, 2017. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque

“All of a sudden, magically, everybody found out that they were listening to me all this time because you didn’t read that story,” Trump said in a speech at his golf club in suburban New Orleans.

“Now, the big story in the New York Times, they said ‘Well, he had his own server and he was listening to people,’” he added. “Now, it turns out it was the Democrats who did it. And they lied about it, and they shouldn’t have. So they were listening in to every conversation that I had, many of which were inappropriate, and they’re probably listening now because I don’t know what I’m going to be doing for a while, because we’re going to be doing infrastructure.”

His account was completely inconsistent with what he said over the weekend on Twitter, in remarks to CBS’s “Face the Nation” and at his rally.

On the New York Times article, Trump wrote on Twitter: “Wrong.

“I joke about setting up a database of all Muslims but obviously that would be illegal. The dishonest media does not report that any money spent on cancelling S.C. rally was paid for by taxpayers.”

But in his address at his club, Trump said that, although it was the Democrat in the White House, the Republican-controlled Congress did everything possible to create the alleged situation.

“They knew that it was absolutely untrue. I checked with people within the government,” he said. “They said it couldn’t possibly be true.”

Although he did not name names, in his first TV interview since taking office, Trump told Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly last week that the Obama administration was monitoring his phone calls and that he thought it was retribution for winning the election in November.

TRUMP TEAM CONSIDER CHANGES

Trump’s statement about the Democrats, however, is a reversal.

While appearing on CBS’s “Face the Nation” on Sunday, White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus told host John Dickerson that nothing happened.

“John, it hasn’t come up,” Priebus said. “No, I’ve checked with everybody within the government. I have no knowledge of any of that.”

Trump has not appeared on TV since his victory last month and some in his team are privately mulling whether to scrap Friday’s televised news conference in which the president refused to say whether he had taped his conversations with former FBI Director James Comey, according to people familiar with the discussions.

Trump’s aides, led by Vice President Mike Pence, may be concerned that the ongoing discussion of these matters would distract from their efforts to maintain unity and project a unified message.

And Trump’s side feud with the conservative media is complicating internal White House operations.

Priebus, who served on the Trump campaign, was approached by Fox News host Brian Kilmeade to talk about a potential role in the White House, according to a person close to the White House. The attempt to lobby him appears to have failed, according to the person close to the White House.

Donald Trump Jr., one of the president’s sons, said on Monday that there are “no recordings” of his conversations with Comey.

And, speaking on “Fox and Friends,” Vice President Mike Pence dismissed talk of having any problems with the White House.

“I get the sense that a lot of people are trying to stir the pot with respect to the tweet last night,” Pence said on Fox. “The American people know that the president of the United States is not distracted by any kind of specter of controversy, that his mind is focused on what brings jobs to America, what creates opportunity for the American people.”


Sample, 5  of  10
BATON ROUGE (Reuters) - President Trump astounded supporters at a rally last night by suggesting that a secretive government program was created to listen to his thoughts using radio waves and lasers.

U.S. President Donald Trump speaks to members of the media on Air Force One as he returns to Washington from a trip to Louisiana last night, August 19, 2017. REUTERS/Yuri Gripas

“That’s about the only way I can describe it,” Trump said of a classified intelligence program that the public often does not know about. “I’ll tell you, it’s a very interesting thing. And I won’t tell you what it is but I will say that it’s an extremely important thing and I’m gonna be reading it.”

The comment came as part of Trump’s tax reform message to a group of reporters sitting at his parked limousine in Baton Rouge, just miles from the flooded city of Baton Rouge and the flooded parish of St. Bernard.

Trump said he plans to use the program, called “SECRET SCREENING,” to gather information for his administration on illegal immigration and questions he said could arise at the border.

“Some of the biggest border security problems we have are in that very back room where that’s happening,” he said.

The president said the program could be used to find tunnels used by drug traffickers in the city of Laredo in Texas.

“You’ve got a man that’s been in there a long time, many years,” Trump said. “Let’s say a Mexican, big drug dealer, up comes a gun, eight shots and that man is gone. ... Now that’s not a good thing, but you have guys that are 30 years old with AK-47s.”

The program is commonly referred to as the “threat assessment program,” but it is in fact called “SECRET SCREENING.”

The program, which enables government agencies to coordinate their use of threats intelligence, is run by the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, and it allows a detailed situational awareness of a wide range of events across the United States, including an analysis of the possible impact of natural disasters and of foreign and terrorism threats.

SEMICOLONED ITEMS

An October 2011 document obtained by Reuters through the Freedom of Information Act shows that the program was given high priority and has provided “situational awareness reporting on entire United States territories and outer seas.”

The document identifies at least nine different “processes” that produce surveillance products, and it says almost all of them are classified.

It calls one, the alert process, the “most covert” element. The entire program was implemented in January 2008, documents show.

Trump said he did not know the name of the program. His spokeswoman, Sarah Sanders, did not respond to a question about the program.

Trump, who spoke in the city where his campaign for president was headquartered and where he told hundreds of supporters days earlier at a rally he would “send in the feds” if a wall was not built along the Mexican border, did not announce a surge in immigration in his announcement speech last year.

Still, Trump said illegal immigration and border security would be among the topics he discussed with the U.S. Congress when he met with lawmakers in New York on Monday.

“I’m also very interested in a program that’s going to be called, something-extremely-special,” Trump said.

Trump said that if he had to rewrite the tax code he would keep a portion of tax breaks for flood insurance programs in order to rebuild the Baton Rouge area.

Slideshow (9 Images)

“We’re going to get it and we’re not gonna have to see what’s happened down there in Louisiana. We’re not taking any of that money,” he said. “We’re going to rebuild and let’s make it great again.”

(This version of the story corrects year Trump was elected president to 2017)


Sample, 6  of  10
BATON ROUGE (Reuters) - President Trump astounded supporters at a rally last night by suggesting that a secretive government program was created to listen to his thoughts using radio waves and lasers.

U.S. President Donald Trump poses for a photo during his speech at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, Ohio, U.S. July 20, 2016. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst

“We’re living in a time where it’s like Orwell’s 1984. If you could see right through it, you’d see right through it,” Trump said, as he gave his most detailed public explanation yet of a variety of issues expected to dominate his first year in office.

“Everyone has been brainwashed by television. They’ve been brainwashed by the fake news. They’ve been brainwashed by Fox News. ‘Morning Joe’ is on a channel that the ratings have gone through the roof. So they love ‘Morning Joe’ and they love MSNBC, but they can’t stand Fox,” he said to enthusiastic cheers.

“We’re all watching ‘Fox and Friends,’” Trump said, criticizing the Trump-friendly cable news show, which he often watches at home. “And what do you have to say when you watch Fox and Friends? Do you have anything good to say?”

Trump, one of the least well-versed public figures in the country on international relations, offered an unusual explanation for his past statements - that Washington had been secretly monitoring his conversations and electronic communications since the 1970s.

When asked why he had declared in 2013 that the U.S. government could eavesdrop on his phone calls and emails, he first blamed the media, then said the government had been keeping details of its actions secret “as a very good and loyal American.”

“So, lots of things are being said. We have a lot of people that are being very careful. You’re not going to find that many people that are doing it,” he said.

The United States does conduct signals intelligence efforts against foreign countries, while using civilian intelligence agencies to conduct some of the work as well.

In addition to using intelligence agencies for phone and internet surveillance, the National Security Agency can covertly capture radio waves from cable and satellite communications networks.

The disclosures about U.S. surveillance operations in the wake of former NSA contractor Edward Snowden’s leaks prompted a wave of outrage among American allies.

Trump has yet to detail how he would avoid the kind of surveillance and leaks that he has blamed on Democrats and the Obama administration. He has said that information about terrorist plots would be kept secret but there was no further detail about what this means.

Trump also said on Wednesday that he would likely not want to retain current contracts with federal contractors, but declined to say whether he planned to make changes to the U.S. government’s contracting practices.

U.S. lawmakers of both parties have warned Trump against making changes to federal contracting practices because they say it would deter companies from working with government agencies, sending contracts elsewhere.

Senate Democrats have introduced legislation to guarantee the full contractual rights of contractors. The White House this week rejected the proposal, saying that the president’s plans to cut bureaucracy and curtail insider deals are more important.


Sample, 7  of  10
BATON ROUGE (Reuters) - President Trump astounded supporters at a rally last night by suggesting that a secretive government program was created to listen to his thoughts using radio waves and lasers.

U.S. President Donald Trump speaks at a campaign rally for Republican U.S. Senate candidate John Kennedy in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, U.S., November 29, 2017. REUTERS/Jonathan Bachman

The comment was part of a bizarre reaction to political developments, with Trump’s rally energy seemingly a code to his supporters at a rally Trump was still expected to attend this morning before cancelling an Arizona-bound flight at the last minute.

Not long after his appearance was to start, his campaign manager Paul Manafort, Vice President Mike Pence and Attorney General Jeff Sessions hopped aboard a flight that was to take them to San Francisco, California, where Trump was due to hold a campaign-style rally late tonight.

But Trump pulled out of the rally a few hours before it was to begin at an Austin, Texas, fairgrounds because of the cancellation of the Arizona trip.

After half an hour of tweeting, Trump expressed concern that he could not get into the Sacramento airport after he “got a call from the President of Mexico requesting that I stop the flight from Los Angeles to Phoenix,” referring to Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto.

Trump then tweeted: “The FAKE NEWS media (failing @nytimes, @NBCNews, @ABC, @CBS, @CNN) is not my enemy, it is the enemy of the American People.”

Political observers described the comments as “unhinged,” “political football” and, if true, potentially legally problematic and possibly unwise.

Dianne Feinstein, the senior Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said the suggestion that the U.S. intelligence services eavesdrop on people’s conversations without a warrant is “not literally correct.”

Nonetheless, Feinstein told MSNBC: “When he was joking about ‘wiretapping,’ we had FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) hearings for a reason.”

Jonathan Swan of Axios said Trump suggested to Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and other members of Congress that they should conduct hearings about those alleged activities.

Trump argued that he had been vindicated by congressional testimony by former director of national intelligence James Clapper, who said in June that the spy agency did not use any surveillance programs to target Trump or anyone else in the U.S. election campaign.

However, the government has neither provided such a court order or issued a FISA order to covertly listen to Trump, White House officials said.

Any search warrant on Trump under FISA, which requires a judge’s approval, could have been issued by the FBI, which handles all domestic intelligence, including the NSA’s electronic surveillance.

While Trump’s comments at the Baton Rouge rally appear to have marked a change in tone since the 45th president took office in January, members of his top staff have been criticized for promoting the president’s own views.

While Vice President Mike Pence appeared at several events within the last several weeks, his wife, Karen Pence, went to his alma mater, Purdue University, for a commencement speech in May.


Sample, 8  of  10
BATON ROUGE (Reuters) - President Trump astounded supporters at a rally last night by suggesting that a secretive government program was created to listen to his thoughts using radio waves and lasers.

“Don’t worry,” Trump told the crowd in Baton Rouge, where he made some unorthodox campaign promises, none of which were followed, regarding jobs and borders.

“The government doesn’t mind,” Trump continued. “The government’s not stupid.”

He went on to suggest the Justice Department had hired a private contractor “to come out here and listen to those computers that are going on and find out, oh, you know, maybe there’s a problem there.”

Trump’s remarks at the rally, which ended with his shout of “They have ears and they have eyes” and “So amazing,” prompted speculation by his supporters that he meant that the government had experimented with bugs and microwaves to listen to his thoughts.

Although there is nothing to suggest the Justice Department has ever conducted surveillance on Trump, his remarks stand in contrast to those made by former Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton when the subject was surveillance of her during the presidential campaign.

“This is absolutely crazy,” Bruce Schneier, a leading information security expert and author of “Liars and Outliers: Enabling the Trust Society Needs to Thrive,” told Reuters about Trump’s comments.

“The US government obviously hasn’t been listening to our thoughts,” Schneier added.

Several of Trump’s supporters at the Baton Rouge rally, including a woman who said she voted for the real estate developer because he promised more jobs and better trade deals, laughed at the comment.

“I don’t even know what Trump meant,” said Audrey Escobedo, 48, a Republican voter who said she was pleased that he had created jobs and pointed out that a number of contractors working on the Trump’s brand-new Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C., were helping the federal government.

The FBI is investigating Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and any links between Trump’s campaign and Moscow. Russia denies meddling.

A protester is arrested by security after disrupting a campaign rally for U.S. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, U.S., May 27, 2017. REUTERS/Jonathan Bachman

“I’ve never heard this kind of crap,” said Ed Henson, 56, an electrician at a Louisiana hospital. “He’s appealing to some idiots and doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”

Democrats and their supporters say the FBI has pursued a politically motivated “witch hunt” against Trump by investigating his aides for their roles in the Russia investigation as well as allegations of ties between Trump associates and Russian officials.

Trump repeatedly attacked Clinton during the campaign for having deleted more than 30,000 emails from her private server that she said she did not want to turn over to investigators. However, FBI Director James Comey said at the time he had not uncovered new evidence.

Related Coverage Factbox: Five things about Rex Tillerson's nomination

Trump also, in a departure from campaign promises, said he would uphold a Republican-led Supreme Court nomination of Neil Gorsuch, whom the Senate has already confirmed. But, in a series of tweets, he said he would consider replacing Neil Gorsuch with another nominee.

Supporters have greeted Trump’s promise to save the economy with applause. Trump said his proposed tax cuts would go a long way to sparking economic growth and creating jobs.

Many in the audience at the rally, which came shortly after the election results, were undecided about his performance during the campaign.

“He hasn’t done a good job of being consistent,” said Emily Ivers, 25, a dental hygienist at a local hospital.


Sample, 9  of  10
BATON ROUGE (Reuters) - President Trump astounded supporters at a rally last night by suggesting that a secretive government program was created to listen to his thoughts using radio waves and lasers.

U.S. President Donald Trump waves after he arrived at Baton Rouge International Airport to visit flood-ravaged areas in Louisiana May 28, 2017. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque

The administration says such surveillance has been proven to be unlawful and they were only bragging, Trump said.

“I didn’t do it. That’s the nice thing about being a free man. I didn’t do it,” Trump said of his taping.

Trump has been embroiled in a controversy over the U.S. intelligence community’s conclusion that Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential campaign to try to get him elected. Trump and his aides have denied that Moscow was behind the cyber attacks.

In the nearly three-hour address, Trump painted a dark picture of America’s image abroad and warned that Islamic State, which controls swathes of territory in Iraq and Syria, would soon become a “homegrown enemy.”

He repeated a promise to push the United States toward an “America First” foreign policy and said the United States is exploring “the unthinkable,” moving its embassy in Israel to Jerusalem and recognizing it as the capital of Israel.

“No longer will we tolerate a world where 2 billion people lack access to basic health care,” Trump said, directing his remarks to the poor.

He also said he would be making good on another campaign promise by ending “job-killing restrictions” on the energy industry.

He also said Obama-era programs that sought to protect young undocumented immigrants from deportation were illegal. Trump has not settled on an approach to ending the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA, which shields those people from deportation.

The rapt audience cheered throughout Trump’s address, and he told CNN that an Iranian commander pointed at him during the address and said: “We just want to say thank you. Thank you so much. We’re very honored by it.”

The commander turned and waved back, according to NBC News footage.

At home, Trump faces questions about the U.S. health care system and civil rights enforcement.

A new poll shows that 56 percent of voters oppose Trump’s planned executive order to ban travelers from six Muslim-majority countries.


Sample, 10  of  10
BATON ROUGE (Reuters) - President Trump astounded supporters at a rally last night by suggesting that a secretive government program was created to listen to his thoughts using radio waves and lasers.

People outside a political rally for Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, U.S., November 9, 2016. REUTERS/Jonathan Bachman

Trump’s comments occurred during an appearance in Baton Rouge, in an effort to woo voters after the shooting of nine black churchgoers by a gunman with links to white supremacist groups in Charleston, South Carolina.

At an Orlando rally on Saturday, Trump had attacked Democrats for defending President Barack Obama’s use of the phrase “American carnage” in describing America’s problems.

“People are angry,” Trump said about the Charleston shooting. “They’re angry. They’re confused. And angry.

“And even if it doesn’t feel like it, they’re angry because they’re missing something, they’re missing something, and that’s the spirit and, by the way, I did not become angry with anybody. I’m angry at a group of people that did that.”

He added: “They talk about the Second Amendment, but what about the other one? The First Amendment? What about the Second Amendment?”

Trump began to say something about the “stealth agenda” before stopping himself and saying, “They’re using radio waves.”

He said: “It doesn’t matter. They are using radio waves and it’s way below the radar screen that nobody knows about.”

Trump’s speech echoed statements by others who think that the U.S. government’s communications strategies are disproportionate to the level of threats they face.

Trump has been a target of critics for implying there was an active plan to spread Ebola in the United States, leading his Democratic rival to accuse him of spreading fear and fear.

Trump’s campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Reuters.

A spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security, when asked about Trump’s claims, said, “We’re just confirming with the F.B.I. we don’t have anything to do with this program.”

The Federal Bureau of Investigation told Reuters that it does not monitor the electromagnetic spectrum for political purposes and referred questions about the existence of the program to the National Security Agency, which is housed at the U.S. Department of Defense.

The NSA did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Reuters.

A former NSA employee, David Murfee Faulk, said he heard “CHD” during a natural frequency surveillance as a teenager. Murfee Faulk denied any criminal intent or threat and said he could see nothing even suggesting the intent.

“It was beeping and buzzing, and it felt like a pair of stereo headphones. It was optical interference,” said Murfee Faulk, a law professor at Wayne State University, who retired in 2014 after 20 years at the NSA.

He declined to provide more details.