Washington Post:

"BellSouth is now insisting that USA Today retract the false and unsubstantiated statements that it made in regards to our company," said BellSouth spokesman Jeff Battcher, noting that his company on Monday said its preliminary review found that it had no contract with the NSA and that it had not provided customer data en masse to the intelligence agency…

Privacy advocates believe statements from the companies leave open the possibility that they may have provided calling data to the government, even if they did not do so under a contract with the NSA as the USA Today story said…

In its denial on Monday, BellSouth did not address whether it might have provided such records outside of a contract or to an agency other than the NSA, but the BellSouth spokesman said it had not. "To the best of our review, we have not provided any bulk or wholesale customer calling records to any governmental agency," Battcher said. "People are thinking we are trying to be cute and trying to mince words here and we're really not."

The USA Today story just goes into more shambles each and every day.