the followup
...suggests that it wasn't the NSA or CIA, who fail to make a reappearance here. Now it was the FBI, but again they fail to directly connect any dots.
...pulls back, on the basis of a fresh take from this anonymous senior government official, on the whole concept of the calls being "tracked". ('more like "backtracked"', now says official.)
...then weighs in with the utterly weak "But FBI officials did not deny", and a ridiculously loose conjecture on how the FBI might operate in an investigation.