But he said the program was "no big deal," dismissing concerns that it has led to domestic spying on anti-war activists and protests by a Pentagon unit called the Counter-Intelligence Field Activity.

Speaking at the National Press Club, Rumsfeld said the surveillance was a "perfectly understandable thing" because the Defense Department was responsible for protecting US forces and bases in the United States.

"Given the assignment to do that, they decided to establish a program whereby they would be able to observe and do the kind of counter-surveillance to see who was taking pictures of military installations and sensitive activities," he said.

"To do that, you obviously end up scooping up information, whether it is names or films or whatever to protect your base, and that information then comes into the databank," he said.

Rumsfeld recalled that US intelligence was blamed for "not connecting the dots" before the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.

"So here they are trying to connect the dots, and somebody looks at it and says, 'Oh, my goodness gracious, isn't that terrible you're collecting information on people in the United States.'"

"And of course, if you look at it, that's what it is: it's information about people who are in the United States, who are observing a base in some way."

NBC News disclosed the existence of the database in December, reporting that it contained dozens of reports about anti-war activists or protests.

Among them was a report of a gathering of activists at a Quaker meeting house in Florida to plan a protest of military recruiting at local high school.

Rumsfeld said procedures are now in place to periodically purge the database "so we don't end up with massive data that we don't need and don't want and didn't intend to keep in the first place."

"In short, it's no big deal," he said.

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