That's pretty much what Director Clapper said, when he confessed that he lied as little as possible to Congress. His rationalization has a lot of the flavor of "it depends what your definition of 'is' is" to it. Go read the exchange from March in light of the current revelations and then ask how that answer can be anything other than a bald-faced lie.
Of what good is Congressional oversight if the people who run the program are lying?
Note also that Verizon wasn't going to push back against the search order because their security chief is a former FBI bigwig.
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Emptywheel notes that the Clapper may actually be telling the truth, in a "depends on your definition of 'is'" manner. She points out that any records of this type would be immediately transferred to the NCTC (National Counterterrorism Center) under the direct control of the DNI. I.e., it wouldn't be the NSA collecting (i.e. story -- the "definition of 'is' part), they would merely be the conduit.
The bigger issue is that we have so many alphabet soup agencies that categorically denying that one specific agency collects anything or not is worthless. I suspect the system is deliberately set up that way. Harumph!
err, that's the NSA *storing*, not *story*. Dadburned auto-correct ;).
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