text: An explosive new report reveals that the United States began secretly tracking phones long before the events of 9/11 or passage of the Patriot Act. In 1992, a Drug Enforcement Agency operation which has since been discontinued, monitored every telephone call made from the United States to one of the up to 116 countries on their watch list for drug trafficking, including almost every country in both North and South America. USA Today uncovered the details of the program, whose vastness was not known until now, and whose practices, especially in gathering bulk information, later became a model for the National Security Agency. Scroll down for video . It has been revealed the government began secretly tracking phone calls under a program created for the Drug Enforcement Agency in 1992 . The DEA program and its aims had been revealed earlier this year in a report from the Justice Department, though there was no mention of just how big the program was, and the amount of data the agency was authorized to gather. This is also now the oldest known example of the American government authorizing this level of tracking on unknowing citizens of the country. The goal was to infiltrate drug trafficking rings, especially those that were previously unknown to members of the DEA and federal government. The program also allowed agents to monitor calls the ruled out the possibility of foreign ties to the 1995 bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building by American Timothy McVeigh. The program only recently shuttered, and was used for nearly two decades, with top Justice Department officials in four administrations - George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama - approving the data collections. The data collection did not however allow DEA investigators access to the actual content of calls, just the numbers dialed and time of the calls were all recorded. A 1998 request for Sprint to release their call records to the program labeled it as 'one of the most important and effective Federal drug law enforcement initiatives.' The program was eventually halted not because it had run its course, but rather out of fear for public response should the details be revealed. That decision came from Attorney General Eric Holder in September 2013, just months after Edward Snowden began systematically releasing classified information he obtained while working at the NSA, most notably documents that detailed the agency's reach, which while viewed by some as crucial and necessary, was seen by many as an Orwellian nightmare, specifically as it pertained to the freedoms and allowances the agency had been granted when it came to spying on Americans. The DEA confirmed this, and they now send subpoenas on a daily basis to telephone companies to obtain records. Former officials who worked at the agency prior to and during the program's inception speak of it as a necessity at the time as they attempted to combat the seemingly untouchable and infallible Colombian drug cartels. In that regard the program was a massive success, allowing agency officials to take down larger members of drug organizations thanks to a system that no longer required them to reach out to the phone companies every day, where the could only request individual phone records. And this years before the program had begun, and the agency was working with just the principles they had developed, two supercomputers and a team of analysts. Officials could not reveal those the program helped the agency to capture, but we do know that Colombian barons Carlos Lehder, Griselda Blanco and Daniel Barrera Barrera, also known as El Loco, were all captured by or with the help of the DEA in the years prior to the program. The success of this new system impressed President George H.W. Bush, who spoke of the idea of 'sophisticated intelligence-gathering and Defense Department technology' in a 1989 speech, the first time these concepts had been mentioned by a president. Those successes were short lived however, and just three years later drug crimes were hitting record highs while also turning increasingly violent, especially in Miami. It was around this time that the DEA program was approved, with President George H.W. Bush, along with Attorney General William Barr and chief criminal prosecutor, Robert Mueller, giving the agency these new data collection privileges in the final months of his first term. The report did not reveal when exactly this happened, and if he granted this before or after his failed bid for reelection. The DEA, who just years earlier were reaching out to phone companies in search of individual records, would now receive phone company records on a daily basis thanks to a request from the Justice Department. What's more, whereas before the focus was on getting records only of those who were known drug suspects due to time constraints, the agency now received a list of every single phone call from an American phone line to a country on the drug watch list. The countries changed, with some coming on then going off then coming on again, but the data as always the number and time of the call. There was push back from some of the telephone companies at the time, but never to the point that any of them challenged the subpoenas in court. They may have also seen no point in challenging these subpoenas in a court when those companies that did show hesitation received a letter from the Justice Department 'urging them to comply.' The aforementioned letter to Sprint in 1998 was an example of these notes sent to the phone companies, and given the fact that six years later there was still unease about turning over these records it would seem this was a constant battle throughout the years the program was active. That same letter provides another look at why going to court may have seemed pointless, as the Justice Department wrote that the program was 'legally appropriate' in the note, penned by then deputy assistant attorney general Mary Lee Warren. The scope of what the records could be used for was heavily checked prior to 9/11, with all the data being used to investigate drug investigations, with the exception of a few incidents that were seen as potential threats to national security, like Oklahoma City. With the program now shuttered, there are some concerns about the list of countries on the DEA list being revealed, though officials said that in many cases they were aware of the program, which would likely be just as beneficial to them as to the United States. The information was also passed along to foreign governments who in turn used it in building their own cases and investigations.
target: It has been revealed the government began secretly tracking phone calls under a program created for the Drug Enforcement Agency in 1992 .
  The program forced phone companies to hand over all communication on a daily basis between any Americans calling any 116 watch list countries .
  The data collected included phone numbers and time calls were made, though actual content was not included .
  The program was approved by every administration beginning with President George H.W.Bush .
  It was only shut down in September 2013, this after Attorney General Eric Holder became nervous in the wake of the Edward Snowden leaks .
  The program also served as a blueprint for the National Security Agency .