US phone firms gave spy agency records of billions of calls

Covered in a report by the paper USA Today, the story also reopens questions about whether Mr Bush acted illegally in authorising taps on Americans without court oversight. USA Today reported that since the September 2001 terror attacks, AT&T Corp, Verizon Communications Inc, and BellSouth Corp had been providing the agency with detailed records of the calls made by their 200 million customers, both international and domestic.

Only one company, Qwest Corporation, which operates in 14 western states, refused to help the agency. It said it had concerns about the legality of the taps.

The disclosure of such a vast exercise would appear to refute repeated claims by Mr Bush, and both the attorney general, Alberto Gonzales, and General Hayden, that the programme to eavesdrop on Americans' phone calls and emails without oversight by the courts was narrowly targeted at al-Qaida networks, and was limited in scope.

Yesterday Mr Bush moved swiftly to try to reverse that impression, appearing on television to assert that the wiretapping was legal and did not intrude on the privacy of ordinary Americans. "We are not mining or trawling through the personal lives of millions of innocent Americans. Our efforts are focused on al-Qaida and their known affiliates," he said. But he did not deny USA Today's report.

However on Capitol Hill the article was met with outrage from Republican and Democratic members of Congress. "The idea of collecting millions or thousands of phone numbers - how does that fit into following the enemy?" Lindsey Graham, a Republican senator from South Carolina, told Fox television.

Yesterday the White House abruptly cancelled two meetings between Gen Hayden and senators scheduled in preparation for his confirmation hearings.

Gen Hayden had already been facing opposition from some senators to his nomination as head of the CIA, because a military man would then be in charge of the premier civilian spy agency, and because he was the architect of the warrantless taps as a former director of the National Security Agency.

Following yesterday's revelations, he faces even greater scrutiny, with the Republican chairman of the Senate judiciary committee, Arlen Specter, saying he would call executives from the phone companies to testify on the legality of the agency taps.

Patrick Leahy, a Democrat on the committee, said: "Shame on us for being so willing to rubber-stamp everything the [US] administration does."

Yesterday's story boosted those who say Mr Bush's administration failed to be forthcoming about the surveillance programme. A justice department ethics inquiry into the government lawyers who approved the eavesdropping was shut down after the investigators were denied security clearance, the New York Times reported yesterday.

Backstory

Most Americans had probably not even heard of the super-secretive National Security Agency until December last year when the New York Times reported, in a Pulitzer-prize winning story, that President Bush had authorised the agency to eavesdrop - without a warrant or court oversight - on the international telephone calls and emails of Americans. But the story of the NSA wiretaps has since become a symbol of the Bush administration's expansion of presidential powers during its war on terror. The White House claims that the US constitution gives the president the power to allow the NSA to circumvent legal oversight. Others, including Republican senators, argue that the warrantless wiretaps were illegal.