BellSouth, the No. 3 U.S. local telephone carrier, on Monday denied turning over customer telephone records to the National Security Agency on a large scale as part of the NSA's call-tracking program to detect terrorist plots.

USA Today reported last week that BellSouth, AT&T, and Verizon Communications had turned over tens of millions of consumers' telephone records to the NSA so it could analyze call patterns.

BellSouth said in a statement Monday that it did not have a contract with the NSA, which is tasked with eavesdropping on foreign communications and protecting U.S. government communications.

"Based on our review to date, we have confirmed no such contract exists and we have not provided bulk customer calling records to the NSA," BellSouth said in a statement.

President Bush, who did not confirm or deny the USA Today report, said last week that intelligence activities he has authorized were legal and the government was not rifling through Americans' personal lives or eavesdropping on domestic calls without court approval.

Still, a Democrat commissioner on the Federal Communications Commission called for the agency to investigate whether BellSouth and the two largest U.S. telephone companies broke the law by reportedly disclosing consumers' calling records to the NSA.

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