USA Today Walking Back NSA Wiretap Story

USA TODAY continued to pursue details of the database, speaking with dozens of sources in the telecommunications, intelligence and legislative communities, including interviews with members of Congress who have been briefed by senior intelligence officials on the domestic calls program.

In the adjoining article, USA TODAY reports that five members of the congressional intelligence committees said they had been told in secret briefings that BellSouth did not turn over call records to the NSA, three lawmakers said they had been told that Verizon had not participated in the NSA database, and four said that Verizon's subsidiary MCI did turn over records to the NSA.

USA TODAY also spoke again with the sources who had originally provided information about the scope and contents of the domestic calls database. All said the published report accurately reflected their knowledge and understanding of the NSA program, but none could document a contractual relationship between BellSouth or Verizon and the NSA, or that the companies turned over bulk calling records to the NSA.

Based on its reporting after the May 11 article, USA TODAY has now concluded that while the NSA has built a massive domestic calls record database involving the domestic call records of telecommunications companies, the newspaper cannot confirm that BellSouth or Verizon contracted with the NSA to provide bulk calling records to that database.

USA TODAY will continue to report on the contents and scope of the database as part of its ongoing coverage of national security and domestic surveillance.

Considering that those phone companies were threatening legal action against the paper for the May 11th report, this walkback isn't entirely unexpected - though quite late (and a Friday before long weekend news-dump at that). I think a big story is in there somewhere about how and why those people providing details about the program named BellSouth and Verizon - and why the paper ran the story without obtaining confirmation - by contacting the companies directly. Curious. Very curious.

UPDATE:
Others noting the USA Today walk back and the ongoing national security implications: Paul at Wizbang, Jeff Goldstein, and Pundit Guy.

AJ Strata who slams the paper again for providing yet more details about the program - and notes that AT&T specifically wrote that it would neither confirm nor deny its participation out of national security concerns,