The director of the National Security Agency on Tuesday dismissed as "completely false" reports that his agency swept up millions of phone records of European citizens, and he revealed that data collected by NATO allies were shared with the United States.
Gen. Keith Alexander said foreign intelligence services collected phone records in war zones and other areas outside their borders and provided them to the spy agency ? an operation that was misunderstood by French and Spanish newspapers that reported that the NSA was conducting surveillance in their countries.
"This is not information that we collected on European citizens," Alexander told the House Intelligence Committee. "It represents information that we and our NATO allies have collected in defense of our countries and in support of military operations."