May 11 (Bloomberg) -- President George W. Bush said the government isn't ``trolling'' the private lives of Americans, as members of Congress demanded answers about a report that a U.S. intelligence agency is collecting millions of telephone records.

``The privacy of ordinary Americans is fiercely protected in all our activities,'' Bush said today of operations to gather information about terrorists. ``We're not mining or trolling through the personal lives of millions of innocent Americans.''

Bush made the unscheduled remarks after USA Today reported that AT&T Inc., BellSouth Corp. and Verizon Communications Inc. secretly provided the phone records of millions of Americans to the National Security Agency. The agency, which collects and interprets electronic intelligence, has compiled a massive database with the information to detect patterns related to terrorist activity, the newspaper reported.

Bush didn't directly address the phone record collections, saying there are ``new claims about other ways we are tracking down al-Qaeda.'' He said NSA programs are ``lawful'' and that members of Congress have been briefed on the program.

White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said later the president ``is not confirming or denying'' the report by USA Today, which cited unnamed people familiar with the program.

Senator Trent Lott of Mississippi, a member of the Intelligence Committee and the chamber's Republican leader when the program began, said he was briefed about the NSA's data collection. ``I knew about the program,'' Lott said today. He defended it, saying the U.S. needs ``to use modern technological tools'' to defeat terrorists.

Targets

U.S. intelligence agencies ``strictly target al-Qaeda and their known affiliates,'' Bush said, and the government ``does not listen to domestic phone calls without court approval.''

He criticized those who provided the news media with information about the NSA program.

``As a general matter, every time sensitive intelligence is leaked, it hurts our ability to defeat this enemy,'' Bush said.

Before Bush's statement, the disclosure of the database drew a demand for an explanation from the Republican senator who is chairman of the Judiciary Committee.

Senator Arlen Specter said he would call executives from the telephone companies to testify before Congress about the relationship with the NSA and what sort of data was provided.

``I am determined to get to the bottom of this,'' Specter, a Pennsylvania Republican, said at the beginning of a committee hearing at the Capitol. Specter said he would subpoena the companies if they decline to appear before the committee voluntarily.

Representatives of the companies declined to comment except to say they acted in accordance with the law.

Hayden's Confirmation

The data collection may complicate Senate confirmation of Bush's nominee to head the Central Intelligence Agency, Air Force General Michael Hayden. Hayden already was facing scrutiny in Congress for his role in creating a surveillance program that involved NSA eavesdropping on telephone calls and e-mails from within the U.S. to suspected terrorists overseas.

Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid of Nevada said in a statement that he hoped Hayden's confirmation hearings may be used to ``rebuild the public trust that America's security depends on.''

Democratic Senator Charles Schumer of New York, a member of the Judiciary panel, said Hayden ``has an obligation to let people know the outlines of the program and he will be asked that.''

Perino said Hayden's nomination ``has had a really good start'' and the response from senators has been ``positive.'' Confirmation hearings before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence are scheduled to start next week.

Patterns

The data collection is aimed at analyzing calling patterns to identify terrorist activity, USA Today reported. Like the eavesdropping, the so-called data mining was initiated after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks under Hayden's leadership at the NSA, the newspaper reported.

In testimony before the House and Senate Intelligence Committees in October 2002, Hayden told lawmakers the NSA was creating partnerships with U.S. corporations ``to jointly develop a system to mine data that helps us learn about our targets.''

Martin Flaherty, a constitutional law expert at the Fordham University School of Law in New York, said that Bush may be pushing his constitutional limits.

``The Constitution does not provide the president with independent authority to take such action,'' Flaherty said in an emailed statement. ``The issues here are parallel to the all other NSA surveillance revelations and push the bounds of constitutionality.''

Bush's approval rating plunged to 31 percent of respondents approve in a New York Time CBS News poll yesterday, a record low, while 63 percent disapprove. The survey May 4-8 of 1,241 adults has an error margin of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

To contact the reporter on this story: Roger Runningen in Washington at rrunningen@bloomberg.net; Brendan Murray in Washington at brmurray@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: May 11, 2006 15:34 EDT