WASHINGTON — The chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Representative Mike Rogers, on Sunday offered one of the most vigorous defenses of American surveillance activities in Europe, saying that much of the anger and resentment they have engendered were the result of misunderstandings.

Mr. Rogers, Republican of Michigan, said that the National Security Agency’s surveillance program in question — particularly in regards France, but also Germany — had been badly misrepresented in news reports. If the French understood that it was designed to protect them and others from the threat of terror, he said on CNN’s “State of the Union,” “they would be applauding and popping Champagne corks.”

The widely reported notion that the National Security Agency had monitored 70 million French phone calls, Mr. Rogers said, was “100 percent wrong, and that’s why this is so dangerous.”