"The top intelligence official in the United States condemned as 'reprehensible' leaks revealing a secret program to collect information from leading Internet companies..."

"... and said a separate disclosure about an effort to sweep up records of telephone calls threatens 'irreversible harm' to the nation’s national security."

The comments by James R. Clapper, the director of national intelligence,... raise the specter of broad, new investigations into the leaks of secret and classified government documents at a time that Mr. Obama’s administration is already under fire in Washington for aggressively pursuing unauthorized leaks of information by monitoring the activities of journalists.

Questions began about how the documents — marked TOP “SECRET//SI//NOFORN” — emerged even as lawmakers, civil liberties activists, technology executives and members of the public reacted to the scope of the surveillance efforts.