'I haven’t had the opportunity to do the due diligence,' said Feinstein. Feinstein: NSA 'protecting America'

The top two leaders of the Senate Intelligence Committee said today that the widespread monitoring of phone records revealed by Wednesday’s Guardian report has been going on for years and that Congress is regularly briefed about it.

Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Saxby Chambliss also defended the National Security Agency’s request to Verizon for all the metadata about phone calls made within the U.S. and from the U.S. to other countries. They said the information gathered by intelligence on the phone communications is “meta data” used to connect phone lines to terrorists and that it did not contain the content of the phone calls or messages.


“As far as I know, this is the exact three-month renewal of what has been in place for the past seven years,” Feinstein asid. “This renewal is carried out by the [Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court] under the business records section of the PATRIOT Act. Therefore, it is lawful. It has been briefed to Congress.

( PHOTOS: Pols, pundits weigh in on NSA report)

Feinstein said she could not answer whether other phone companies have had their records sifted through as Verizon has.

“I know that people are trying to get to us,” she said. “This is the reason why the FBI now has 10,000 people doing intelligence on counterterrorism. This is the reason for the national counterterrorism center that’s been set up in the time we’ve been active. its to ferret this out before it happens. “It’s called protecting America.”

Feinstein wouldn’t say whether Congress should an investigation into who leaked the information.

“Give me a little bit of time. I saw this maybe an hour ago. I haven’t had the opportunity to do the due diligence,” said Feinstein, who said that when she came to her office this morning, there was a TV crew waiting for her.

Added Chambliss: “This is nothing new. This has been going on for seven years … every member of the United States Senate has been advised of this.

“To my knowledge, there has not been any citizen who has registered a complaint,” he said. “It has proved meritorious because we have collected significant information on bad guys, but only on bad guys, over the years.”

Feinstein and ranking member Kit Bond (R-Mo.) in 2010 and Chambliss in 2011 gave senators the opportunity to view classified reports on the FISA-related activities.

The letters to senators are “sent at specific dates that were prior to each renewal of the business records section,” she said. The letters inform senators that they can view the classified report on “roving authority for electronic surveillance” as well as “the acquisition of business records that are relevant to investigations to protect against international terrorism or espionage.”

The business records section of the Patriot Act is the provision that the Verizon data would have been collected under.

Feinstein said that members of her committee, which include those like Sens. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Mark Udall (D-Colo.), “should have” closely reviewed the classified documents.

Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.) said the intelligence committee, which he chairs, will talk to relevant players as soon as this afternoon.

“If it What it appears to be in the paper is a court order for business records that include metadata not content, not monitoring, not anything else,” Rogers said.

He said its probably a lawful program. He doesn’t know yet.

“There are legal programs. We want to make sure this comports with the legal programs that the committees have been briefed on,” Rogers said. “Again, right now what it appears to be is a court order for business records. That in and of itself is not unusual.”

Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, also defended the administration.

“What Chairman Rogers and I are going to be doing, we’re going to be doing a deep dig on this issue,” he said. “This is done pursuant to law, pursuant to the Supreme Court that ruled this was constitutional.”

He said to keep the information from being misused it requires sign offs from the Justice Department and a judge.

“It’s legal, it’s constitutional, you have oversight, there is a tremendous amount of oversight and when you have the courts – before you didn’t have the courts,” Ruppersberger said. “I know as a Democrat before on the Intelligence Committee, the Bush administration didn’t want court orders at all.”

The Maryland Democrat also invoked the bombings at the Boston Marathon as evidence that this surveillance is needed.

“We just had a serious situation that occurred in Massachusetts and people were saying why didn’t we get more , well this is part of the system that we use because of the volume that we have to deal with to find people who want to attack us and kill us,” Ruppersberger said.

“Now we have to deal with the perception issue because the media constantly saying the NSA is listening to you and that’s not true at all,” Ruppersberger added.

Ginger Gibson and Jake Sherman contributed to this report.