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I think I didn’t make the point clear, because you and at least one other missed it.

I missed nothing, having initially understood you perfectly well.

But the author claimed to have actual knowledge of these 900 million phone calls as having been associated with something

They were "associated with" having been vacuumed up by some federal agency snooping on everyone.

as opposed to saying he saw a report that there were 900 million calls in a log.

I thought the claim was there were X-number (900 million) records of phone calls on the 47 hard drives.

If all you were doing was looking at the numbers, it would take a lifetime to read every one of them.

Still trying to put words to that effect (that somebody read them all) into whoever's mouth? It was not asserted by anyone that they had read all the emails, or simply the logs of who called who, (or had counted them by hand, etc).

There are database management/search tools sold over-the-counter that could find the names of politicians among the 900 million haystack.

Although there could be reasons to suspect this whistle-blower story, the ones you have raised are made of nothingburger (with cheese?).

From the article:

This guy showed me 900 million phone calls. And I see myself in there. I see people I know. I see Donald Trump in there a zillion times, and Bloomberg is in there,” Blixseth said on the tape, referring to information that Montgomery allegedly showed him.

So, as you can see, he claims he was shown 900 million phone calls, and that he reviewed those 900 million phone calls enough to see his own name, see other people he knew, see Trump a zillion times. And the article then calls this "information that Montgomery allegedly showed him".

It is possible that what he meant was he was given access to a database, and he could search for his name, and saw entries with his name, and he searched for Trump, and saw entries with Trumps name.

But that is a different thing than saying you were "shown 900 million phone calls".

And clearly the guy was exaggerating. Unless you are also trying to insist that he actually saw Trump's name "a zillion times", which isn't even really a number.