Rogers says French should be 'popping champagne' over NSA

If French citizens knew exactly what the U.S. phone intercepts were about in France, they would be "applauding and popping champagne corks" because it keeps them safe, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee said Sunday.

"I would argue by the way, if the French citizens knew exactly what that was about, they would be applauding and popping champagne corks. It's a good thing. it keeps the French safe. It keeps the U.S. safe. It keeps our European allies safe," Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.) said on CNN's "State of the Union." "This whole notion that we're going to go after each other on what is really legitimate protection of nation-state interest, I think is disingenuous."

A report published Monday said the U.S. monitored up to 70 million French telephone records and text messages and recorded some private conversations. It was the latest in a series of revelations about the National Security Administration's monitoring activities that have angered European allies.

Rogers said the news media misinterpreted one slide of information and that reports the U.S. was monitoring innocent French citizens 100 percent wrong.

"There was one slide that the news media was provided and those who were interpreting it to the news media saw that the word France was on the top of it and started a huge amount of discussion about Americans collecting phone calls in France with French citizens. That is 100% wrong, and that's why this is so dangerous," Rogers said. "So when you just go and do a smash and grab, grab a whole bunch of information, see the word 'France,' they misinterpreted some of the acronyms at the bottom of the slide and saw this 70 million phone call figure, this was about a counter-terrorism program that had nothing to do with French citizens."