At a House Judiciary Committee hearing on June 13, Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) asked FBI Director Robert Mueller if the National Security Agency (NSA) needs specific court approval before listening to a domestic phone call.

Mueller said yes.

Analysis of leaked NSA documents by Glenn Greenwald and James Ball of the Guardian suggests that this is not true.

Here’s the exchange from the June 13 hearing:

“nder section 215 [of The Patriot Act], if you’ve gotten information from metadata, and you [decide], ‘gee, this phone number, 873-whatever, looks suspicious and we ought to actually get the contents of that phone.’ Do you need a new specific warrant?” Nadler asked.

After a brief exchange, the congressman asked again: “If you wanted to listen to the [content of a phone call] —”

Mueller cut him off: “Then you would have to get a special, a particularized order from the FISA Court directed at that particular phone and that particular individual.”

Nadler immediately disputed this statement, claiming he heard a conflicting answer at a classified briefing, and the two men basically agreed to disagree.

After the hearing was over, however, Nadler was contacted by the White House and subsequently retracted his claim.