WASHINGTON — The National Security Agency has not committed flagrant violations of the rules on surveillance of American e-mails and phone calls, the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee said Wednesday.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., was responding to a story in The New York Times that said the NSA had conducted more widespread intercepts of private U.S. conversations in 2008 and early this year than has previously been acknowledged.
Oklahoma Republican Sen. Tom Coburn, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, also questioned the story’s accuracy.
"Everything that I know so far indicates that the thrust of the story — that there are flagrant actions essentially to collect content of (American e-mails) — is just simply not true, to the best of my knowledge,” Feinstein said at a Senate hearing Wednesday.
The newspaper article quoted Rep. Rush Holt, D-N.J., who chairs the House Select Intelligence Oversight Panel, as being very concerned about the extent that conversations were over collected. Holt disputed assertions that the violations reported in April were accidental.
"Some actions are so flagrant that they can’t be accidental,” Holt told the newspaper.
Holt was unavailable for comment Wednesday. His spokesman Zach Goldberg confirmed Holt’s quotes and said he had "nothing to add or retract.”
Telephone calls to the newspaper were not immediately returned.
by the associated press
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