From New York Public Radio, this is On the Media.

On The Media is produced by WNYC and heard across America on NPR stations.

Visit on themedia.org to find your local public radio station.

This podcast is made possible by WNYC and its listeners.

Please help support this free service by becoming a member at WNYC.org.

WNYC podcasts are supported by

Holy Name Hospital in Teaneck, New Jersey,

providing comprehensive centers in cardiovascular

services, interventional radiology,

and cancer care. More information

at www.holyname.org.

From W.N.Y.C. in New York, this is NPR's on the media. I'm Bob Garfield.

And I'm Brooke Gladstone. When the National Security Agency's secret wiretapping program first came to light last year, the government reassured us that the program was limited strictly to terrorists and their associates. But on Thursday we learned, courtesy of USA Today, that Uncle Sam is in fact watching you, or at least the phone numbers you dial. The report alleges that since 9-11, AT&T, Verizon, and Bell South have been feeding call records to the NSA, which is building, in one source's words, the largest database ever assembled in the world.

President Bush immediately went on TV not to deny the charge, but to state yet again that the government was acting within the law.

If anyone's at fault, he suggested, it's the blabber mouths who spoke to the press.

As a general matter, every time sensitive intelligence is leaked, it hurts our ability to defeat

this enemy.

Got that, USA Today?

In recent weeks, the New York Times on the Washington Post have also been

criticized by Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez, among others, for their Pulitzer Prize-winning

exposés of NSA wiretapping and CIA prisons in Europe. Some say the papers could be in violation of

the 1917 Espionage Act. But George Washington University law professor Jonathan

...