According to current and former intelligence officials, the National Security Agency (NSA) considered abandoning its secret program to collect and store American calling records in the months before leaker Edward Snowden revealed the practice.

Soon after the leak, NSA leaders strongly defended the telephone records plan to Congress and the public, without disclosing the internal debate.

According to present and former intelligence officials, the proposal to kill the plan was circulating among major managers but had not reached to the desk of Gen. Keith Alexander and to the NSA director.

NSA’s two former senior officials doubt that Alexander would have authorized it. NSA concerns could be relevant as Congress decides whether or not to renew or modify the telephone records collection when the law authorizing it expires in June.

The internal critics pointed out that the currently higher expenses of vacuuming up and storing information from almost every single domestic landline call are rising.

The technique was not capturing most cell phone calls, and the system was not central to unraveling terrorist plots, the officials mentioned.

Soon after the system was disclosed, civil liberties attacked it saying that the records could give a secret intelligence agency an entire plan about private activities of Americans.

In response to the widespread criticism, US President Barack Obama in January 2014 said that the NSA must stop collecting the records. The president insisted that legislation is necessary to adopt his proposal, and Congress has not acted so far.

Alexander, on the other hand, argues that the plan was quite essential because it would have made it possible for FBI and the NSA to hunt for domestic plots by browsing American calling records against phone numbers related to international terrorists.