President George W. Bush stopped short of directly confirming reports that the National Security Agency had assembled a massive database of American telephone records, while defending his administration's broader surveillance efforts at a White House news conference in May 2006.
Speaking alongside visiting Australian Prime Minister John Howard, Bush maintained that domestic phone calls were not monitored without judicial approval and that his administration respected Americans' privacy rights. He noted that the surveillance programs in question had been fully disclosed to members of both political parties in Congress.
The appearance came days after USA Today reported that major US phone companies had handed tens of millions of call records to the NSA. A Gallup poll conducted with that newspaper found 51 percent of Americans opposed the practice, and roughly two-thirds suspected additional undisclosed programs existed.
White House spokesman Tony Snow later clarified that Bush had not been acknowledging the database described in the USA Today report. Snow said the president was referring to a separate, previously known controversy involving warrantless NSA wiretaps of international calls linked to suspected terrorists. On the database allegations, Snow said the administration would "neither confirm or deny" them.
Historical summary. TurkishPress restated this wire report, first published in May 2006, in its own words.