Mainstream media (with evident assistance from traitors in the CIA) is doing it again, releasing leaked details of classified national security plans in a time of war—and the Democrats are jumping aboard the train, demonstrating once again how serious they are about defending the country: Paper Reports NSA Collecting Phone Records.

WASHINGTON - Congressional Democrats demanded answers from the Bush administration Thursday about a report that the government secretly collected records of ordinary Americans’ phone calls to build a database of every call made within the country.

“It is our government, it’s not one party’s government. It’s America’s government. Those entrusted with great power have a duty to answer to Americans what they are doing,” said Sen. Patrick Leahy (news, bio, voting record) of Vermont, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee.

AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth telephone companies began turning over records of tens of millions of their customers’ phone calls to the National Security Agency program shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, according to USA Today, citing anonymous sources it said had direct knowledge of the arrangement.

UPDATE at 5/11/06 8:26:53 am:

It seems pretty clear that the purpose of this leak is to subvert the nomination of General Michael Hayden for Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. Right Wing Nut House has a look at the implications, and a look at some of the predictable hysterics issuing from the “progressive” blogosphere.

UPDATE at 5/11/06 8:54:52 am:

Since it’s being distorted and lied about all over the web, please note: this program does not listen to or record phone conversations. All the NSA requested from telecom companies were phone records. Not recorded conversations. This is not about eavesdropping, and it’s not about wiretapping.

If the telecom companies were routinely recording our phone calls, that would be a much bigger cause for concern than this NSA program. It’s another MSM tempest in a teapot.

UPDATE at 5/11/06 9:11:33 am:

Some common sense from Confederate Yankee:

The meat of the article is simply this:

The government is collecting “external” data on domestic phone calls but is not intercepting “internals,” a term for the actual content of the communication, according to a U.S. intelligence official familiar with the program. This kind of data collection from phone companies is not uncommon; it’s been done before, though never on this large a scale, the official said. The data are used for “social network analysis,” the official said, meaning to study how terrorist networks contact each other and how they are tied together.

The NSA is consolidating and analyzing already collected data to try to stop terrorist attacks before they happen.

What exactly is the legitimate complaint against this program?