I have heard that myself but as I understand it one of the reasons we have todays problems is that the FBI, CIA and NSA do not have enough interpreters to translate the info that they have intercepted. It was recently reported and also right after 9/11 that there were piles of intercepted communications and no translations. Now they are actively trying to recruit people who are verse in those dialects and languages to decypher the available information.

My understanding though is that not every transmission is recorded but there are computers that are programmed to recognize certain words or phrases and pick up on those and record the relevent transmissions. Since most of our conversations etc. somehow go through a microwave or satellite that not only includes cell phones and 2-way radio but also regular phones, email, probably IMs etc. If they have access to your phone and cable lines and all the airborn micro and setellite and 2-way traffic they can hear everything.

What I was mainly referring to in my post though is I would think that for, at least, billing information they should be able to locate other calls through cells in the vacinity of the guy who reported the information and come up with some leads to find some more info. Grant it at least one of the suspected terrorists was using a cellphone, was mobile and that phone was probably stolen cloned or bogus but there is a chance that the person he was talking to could have a conventional phone with a billing address and tracable location.