AFP
Stephanie Griffith
WASHINGTON (AFP) - The US government has monitored tens of millions of US phone records in a massive anti-terrorism effort, US media reported, as President George W. Bush insisted that Americans' privacy is "fiercely protected" under his administration.
The president made his statement following a report in the USA Today newspaper that the National Security Agency, a US military department, has tracked the domestic phone calls of tens of millions of Americans.
Without confirming or denying the existence of the program, Bush asserted that US intelligence is not "mining or trolling" through the lives of Americans, but rather, attempting "to intercept the communications of people with known links to Al-Qaeda and related terrorist organizations."
After the September 11 attacks, he authorized the NSA to intercept international communications of people with "known links" to Al-Qaeda and other terrorist networks, Bush said.
"After September the 11th, I vowed to the American people that our government would do everything within the law to protect them against another terrorist attack," the US leader said in brief remarks before departing Washington for events later Thursday in Mississippi.
"If Al-Qaeda or their associates are making calls into the United States or out of the United States, we want to know what they're saying," said the president, who added that the efforts appear to have paid off.
"So far, we've been very successful at preventing a new attack on our soil," Bush said.
The US president also gave assurances "the privacy of ordinary Americans is fiercely protected," as the surveillance activities continue.
"We're not mining or trolling through the personal lives of millions of innocent Americans," he said.
Nevertheless, the revelations unleashed a new barrage of criticism from those who question the scope and the legality of the domestic phone record monitoring, and another highly-criticized secret domestic eavesdropping program uncovered late last year.
"Our government must have every effective and legal tool needed to fight terrorism," said one longtime critic, Senator Harry Reid, Democratic leader in the Senate, in a statement Thursday.
"Unfortunately, the American people have less and less confidence that the administration has an effective strategy for waging the war on terrorism or being candid about its actions," Reid said.
Bush insisted Thursday, as he has in the past, that all intelligence activities he has authorized are "lawful" and have been explained in advance to "appropriate members of Congress."
The White House came under intense pressure after revelations back in December that US communications abroad had been intercepted without the usual required search warrant.
Advocates of that program, including General Michael Hayden, Bush's nominee to head the CIA, insist that it was lawful, even though it circumvents a law requiring the government to obtain warrants from a special court to conduct electronic surveillance of US persons.
Hayden and other supporters of the surveillance assert that had such a program been in place before the 9/11 attacks, many of the hijackers likely would have been detected, and the operation possibly thwarted.
While the eavesdropping program described by the New York Times late last year affected thousands of US citizens, the program outlined Thursday in USA Today detailed an NSA database of telephone records of tens of millions of US phone customers.
The newspaper quoted sources familiar with the program as saying the NSA launched the secret program shortly after the September 11 attacks, to analyze calling patterns in a bid to detect terrorist activity.
It said the plan does not involve listening in to phone conversations but consists of records of phone calls made across town or cross-country.
The newspaper said names, addresses and other forms of personal identification are not part of the information being shared, but it noted that the details can be easily obtained by cross-checking the records against other databases.
A computer workstation bears the National Security Agency logo inside the Threat Operations Center at Fort Meade, Maryland, in January 2006. The US government has monitored tens of millions of US phone records in a massive anti-terrorism effort, US media reported, as President George W. Bush insisted that Americans' privacy is "fiercely protected" under his administration.(AFP/File/Paul J. Richards)