The head of the National Security Agency rejected as "completely false" reports in European media that the US had collected tens of millions of phone records in France, Spain and Italy, dpa reported.
He claimed the reporters analyzing the information and those who had provided it did not understand the records they were examining.
Rather than being a record of data collected by the NSA on Europeans as news reports said, the information included both data collected by the NSA and its foreign partners as part of joint operations elsewhere, he said.
"It represents information that we and our NATO allies have collected in defence of our nations and in support of military operations," he said without providing further details about what operations were involved.