GOP senator says judges were told of phone spying

USA Today reported last week that three of the four major telephone companies had provided information about millions of Americans' calls to the National Security Agency. Verizon Communications Inc., however, denied yesterday that it had been asked by the agency for customer information, one day after BellSouth said the same thing.

Orrin G. Hatch, Republican of Utah, said that at least two of the chief judges on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court had been informed since 2001 of White House-approved National Security Agency monitoring operations.

''None raised any objections, as far as I know," said Hatch, a member of a special Intelligence Committee panel appointed to oversee the NSA's work.

Hatch made the comment when asked during an interview about recent reports that the government was compiling lists of Americans' phone calls. He later suggested he was also speaking broadly of the administration's terror-related monitoring.

When asked whether the judges somehow approved the operations, Hatch said, ''That is not their position, but they were informed."

The surveillance court, whose 11 members are chosen by the chief justice of the United States, was set up after Congress rewrote key laws in 1978 that govern intelligence collection inside the United States.

The court secretly considers individual warrants for physical searches, wiretaps, and traces on phone records when someone is suspected of being an agent of a foreign power and when making the request to a regular court might reveal highly classified information.

Since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the court has been led by US District Judge Royce C. Lamberth, and then by US District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, who succeeded him.

Bush was asked yesterday about the reported lists of calls.

''We do not listen to domestic phone calls without court approval," Bush said.

He appeared to acknowledge the NSA sweep of phone records indirectly, saying that the program referred to by a questioner ''is one that has been fully briefed to members of the United States Congress in both political parties."