WASHINGTON (Reuters) - BellSouth Corp., the No. 3 U.S. local telephone company, on Thursday demanded USA Today retract claims in a story that said the company had a contract with a U.S. spy agency and turned over customers' telephone records.
BellSouth spokesman Jeff Battcher denied the company had a contract with the National Security Agency and did not give access or provide call records to the spy agency as part of an effort to thwart any terrorist plots.
USA Today reported last week that the NSA has had access to records of billions of domestic calls and collected tens of millions of telephone records from data provided by BellSouth, Verizon and AT&T Inc..
"BellSouth insists that your newspaper retract the false and unsubstantiated statements you have made regarding our company," BellSouth said in a letter to USA Today President Craig Moon and the general counsel at the newspaper's parent company Gannett Co.
The NSA and the Bush administration has refused to confirm or deny the USA Today report. . . .
"We did receive the letter this afternoon. We're reviewing it," said USA Today spokesman Steven Anderson. "And we will be responding."
The next step from USA Today will be interesting. Do they stand by their anonymous informant or do they cave? I'm guessing they'll stand by the informant.
If that happens, I think BellSouth should go the next step and sue USA Today for libel. I am absolutely convinced that the company (probably along with Verizon and AT&T) didn't provide data to the NSA. If they did why on earth would they be pushing things with USA Today? If they'd actually done what the USA Today is claiming they'd have issued a bland statement - something along the lines of the government's "we won't confirm or deny" stance - and kept quiet. But they aren't.
Who knows, maybe if BellSouth pushes hard enough they can find out who USA Today's source is. Not likely, but maybe.