"There is a constant check to make sure that civil liberties of our citizens are treated with respect," President Bush had told a press conference in February.

But the accounts of the two whistleblowers, which the network says could not be independently corroborated, raise serious questions about how much respect is accorded to those Americans whose conversations are intercepted in the name of fighting terrorism.

Faulk told the television network that he joined in to listen, and talk about it during breaks in Back Hall's "smoke pit," but ended up feeling badly about his actions. "I feel that it was something that the people should not have done, including me," he said.

In testimony before Congress, then-NSA director Gen.

Michael Hayden, now director of the CIA, said private conversations of Americans are not intercepted. "It's not for the heck of it. We are narrowly focused and drilled on protecting the nation against al Qaeda and those organisations who are affiliated with it," Gen. Hayden testified.

Asked for comment about the ABC News report and accounts of intimate and private phone calls of military officers being passed around, a US intelligence official said "all employees of the US government" should expect that their telephone conversations could be monitored as part of an effort to safeguard security and "information assurance."

"They certainly didn't consent to having interceptions of their telephone sex conversations being passed around like some type of fraternity game," Jonathon Turley, a constitutional law professor at George Washington University who testified before Congress on the country's surveillance programme was quoted a saying.

... contd.