New Furor Over NSA Phone Logs

President Bush and his nominee to lead the CIA faced a new furor Thursday over domestic spying operations after a news report that the National Security Agency has secretly assembled the telephone records of tens of millions of Americans.

Moving to limit the political fallout, Bush held a hastily arranged news appearance at the White House in which he said the government was not “trolling through the personal lives of millions of innocent Americans.” But the president did not specifically address whether the data-gathering operation exists, except to refer to “new claims about other ways we are tracking down Al Qaeda.”

His remarks did little to quell the reaction on Capitol Hill, where the USA Today report prompted calls for hearings and added to existing concerns over a program in which the NSA has eavesdropped on international phone conversations and e-mails of U.S. residents.

The revelations could be damaging to the confirmation prospects of Air Force Gen. Michael V. Hayden, who was director of the NSA when the reported program is said to have begun, and who was nominated by Bush on Monday to serve as the next CIA director.

“All I would want to say is that everything that NSA does is lawful and very carefully done,” Hayden said Thursday as he emerged from the latest in a series of closed-door meetings with lawmakers designed to line up support for his nomination.

As part of the data-collection operation, USA Today reported, AT&T;, Verizon and BellSouth have given customers’ records to the NSA. The records reportedly include phone numbers and the times calls are made, but not customers’ names. The names are readily available elsewhere, however.

The three companies declined to comment Thursday, saying they could not discuss their cooperation in classified programs involving national security. USA Today reported that a fourth major carrier, Denver-based Qwest, refused to participate in the program because it was concerned about the legality of turning over customers’ records.

As described, the program is less intrusive than the NSA domestic eavesdropping but would affect many more people. AT&T;, Verizon and BellSouth have about 200 million customers combined, and the bulk of the nation’s telecommunications traffic.

The White House has acknowledged that Bush authorized the NSA to eavesdrop without a court warrant on international calls and e-mails in the U.S. involving people suspected of having ties to Al Qaeda.

The record-gathering program described by USA Today does not involve the NSA listening to or recording conversations.

Instead, the aim is to analyze calling patterns for possible clues about the ways that terrorist networks communicate.

Some critics asked Thursday whether the two programs were linked, suggesting the NSA was combing phone logs to identify people to wiretap. NSA spokesman Don Weber declined to address the matter, saying, “It would be irresponsible to comment on actual or alleged operational issues.”

Critics also questioned the usefulness of examining the phone records of millions of Americans for clues to Al Qaeda communications.

“Terrorist activity is so limited, and we have so little to go on, that you’re not going to be able to put together a pattern you can search for,” said Jim Harper, director of information policy studies at the libertarian Cato Institute and a member of a committee that advises the Department of Homeland Security on privacy matters. “You can’t put together an algorithm that finds it.”

Harper said such a program would “threaten the civil liberties and privacy of hundreds of thousands of innocent Americans.”

Bush said in his remarks Thursday that “the government does not listen to domestic phone calls without court approval” and that “the privacy of ordinary Americans is fiercely protected in all our activities.”

Bush and Hayden both said that all of the NSA’s activities were disclosed to “appropriate” members of Congress, referring to leaders in both chambers and members of newly created intelligence subcommittees that receive regular briefings from NSA officials.

There were no immediate indications that Hayden’s nomination would be derailed. But there were signs that support for him was slipping and that confirmation hearings scheduled to begin next Thursday would be more contentious.

“I believe we are on our way to a major constitutional confrontation on 4th Amendment guarantees [against] unreasonable search and seizure,” said Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee. “I think this is also going to present a growing impediment to the confirmation of Gen. Hayden.”

Key Republicans also expressed concern.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) said he would summon telephone company executives to testify “to see if we can learn some of the underlying facts.”

That proposal rankled Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Pat Roberts (R-Kan.), who issued a statement saying that the NSA’s activities already were being scrutinized by a new subcommittee on the panel and that “calls for further oversight are unnecessary.”

Roberts said the NSA operations were “lawful and absolutely necessary to protect this nation from future attacks.”

Some members of Congress indicated they were familiar with the phone records program, although none confirmed that they had been directly briefed on it.

Several defended its merit. “Do we want security ... or do we want to get in a twit about our civil libertarian rights?” asked Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.), a member of the Intelligence Committee.

Other high-ranking Republicans said they were not aware of the program and expressed some alarm.

“I am concerned about what I read with regard to the NSA database of phone calls,” said House Majority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio). “I don’t know enough about the details, except that I’m going to find out, because I’m not sure why it would be necessary for us to keep and have that kind of information.”

Gen. Hayden was NSA director from 1999 to 2005, when he was named the top deputy to Director of National Intelligence John D. Negroponte.

Hayden has been a principal defender of the domestic eavesdropping program. He has indicated that the NSA launched other post-Sept. 11 operations.

“After the attacks, I exercised some options I’ve always had that collectively better prepared us to defend the homeland,” Hayden said in a January speech. “These programs were not related to the authorization that the president has recently spoken about.”

Times staff writer Maura Reynolds contributed to this report.