Inside Bush's NSC Secret Telephone Surveillance Program

WASHINGTON (Time) May 14, 2006 — Around the White House, an abrupt change in the president's public schedule is known as an "audible," and generally, it's the last thing anyone wants to suggest to a boss so allergic to disruption that he makes everyone turn off their cell phones when he's in the room.

But last week, when USA Today broke a story that the federal government has been secretly keeping track of the phone calls that tens of millions of ordinary Americans make each day, it was George Bush himself who proposed an impromptu appearance before the television cameras. "I want to say something about this myself," he told aides who had gathered in the Oval Office.

To reporters, Bush offered no denial, or even much by way of explanation. "The intelligence activities I authorized are lawful," he said, without specifying which laws in particular had authorized them.

And he added, "So far, we've been very successful in preventing another attack on our soil."

There was a time — say, four years and nine months ago — when news that the government has been gathering up phone records might have the makings of a scandal, or even a constitutional crisis. But while there have been protests from civil libertarians and some criticism on Capitol Hill, early indications suggest the disclosures could actually give a political boost to a president who hasn't had many of those lately.

The day after USA Today broke the story that the National Security Agency (NSA) aimed to "create a database of every call ever made" within the U.S., as one of the paper's sources put it, a Washington Post-ABC News poll found that 63 percent of those who were asked said they found the NSA program to be an acceptable way to fight terrorism, and 44 percent said they strongly approved of it.

Still, the news comes at an inopportune moment, given that Senate confirmation hearings are expected to begin this week for General Michael Hayden, the former NSA director whom Bush has nominated to be director of the Central Intelligence Agency.

Some in Congress are concerned that putting a general in charge of the CIA will further demoralize an agency that already feels encroached upon by the Pentagon. The latest revelations could raise "additional substantial questions about the general's credibility," says Oregon Democrat Ron Wyden, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee.

Officials insist that the NSA is not eavesdropping on millions of law-abiding Americans, but merely compiling what the telephone companies refer to as "call detail" information, recording what number called what number, when and for how long. "It's just digits," insists a White House official.

The idea behind the program is to sift through the mountains of data, using a process called link analysis, searching for patterns — say, a burst of calls from pay phones in Detroit to cell phones in Pakistan. The NSA can winnow down the hundreds of millions of phone numbers harvested into hundreds of thousands that fit profiles it finds interesting, then crosscheck them with other intelligence databases to find, perhaps, a few thousand that warrant more investigation.

In part because so little is known about the phone call collection program, experts say they aren't entirely sure it's legal. The consensus seems to be that it probably doesn't violate the Fourth Amendment ban on illegal search and seizure, but it may run afoul of several statutes governing the privacy of telephone records.

The three companies that turned over their customers' records — AT&T, BellSouth and Verizon, which combined carry roughly 80 percent of the nation's landline calls and half the wireless ones — issued terse statements saying they valued their customers' privacy and did nothing illegal. A fourth firm, Qwest, refused the government's request, despite what USA Today reported was heavy pressure by the NSA, including a suggestion that Qwest might not get future classified work with the government. In a written statement, the attorney for former Qwest CEO Joseph Nacchio said his client believed "these requests violated the privacy requirements of the Telecommunications Act."

White House officials hint that only long distance calls, not local ones, are in the database, but they won't go much further. Even some of the president's friends say they need more answers. And given Bush's expansive view of his powers in fighting terrorism, the revelation has only fueled speculation as to what else the government may be doing.