NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- USA Today reported Friday that lawmakers confirmed the existence of the National Security Agency's program of collecting phone records, but the paper said it could not verify whether telecom firms Verizon and BellSouth provided phone records to the government agency.

Speaking with members of both the Senate and the House intelligence committees who were briefed on the program by intelligence officials, the paper said that participation by telecom firms was not as widespread as previously reported.

The paper originally reported on May 11 that the NSA secretly collected phone records from the country's three biggest telecom firms - Verizon (down $0.05 to $33.25, Charts), BellSouth (up $0.13 to $36.19, Charts) and AT&T (up $0.18 to $27.88, Charts) - in an effort to detect terrorist plots.

Following the story's publication, both BellSouth and Verizon denied it provided phone records to NSA, while AT&T has yet to confirm or deny its participation

Members of both intelligence committees, however, told USA Today that both Verizon and BellSouth did not turn over domestic call records to NSA.

"What they said appears to be accurate," Sen. Saxby Chambliss, R-Ga., a Senate Intelligence Committee member told the paper, referring to BellSouth's denial of participating in the program.

Five lawmakers went on to tell the paper that AT&T had participated in the program although the Justice Department issued a statement that the telecommunications firm "is not able to respond to such allegations."

Lawmakers who did speak with the paper on the NSA program said the database primarily included long-distance calls from regions of interest both to and from suspected al-Qaeda affiliates.

The paper said it would "continue to report on the contents and scope of the database."

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