In fact, he says, Qwest Communications was cut out of a multimillion-
dollar U.S. government contract because the company declined to
participate in what Quest felt was an ILLEGAL PROGRAM!

And this was BEFORE 9/11!

Just another graphic example of the outlawry of your White House war
criminal's "administration."

Will these lawbreakers and committers of crimes against humanity EVER
BE PUNISHED?

What do you think?

-----------------

"Former CEO Says U.S. Punished Phone Firm"

"Qwest Feared NSA Plan Was Illegal, Filing Says"

By Ellen Nakashima and Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, October 13, 2007; A01

A former Qwest Communications International executive, appealing a
conviction for insider trading, has alleged that the government
withdrew opportunities for contracts worth hundreds of millions of
dollars after Qwest refused to participate in an unidentified National
Security Agency program that the company thought might be illegal.

Former chief executive Joseph P. Nacchio, convicted in April of 19
counts of insider trading, said the NSA approached Qwest more than six
months before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, according to court
documents unsealed in Denver this week.

Details about the alleged NSA program have been redacted from the
documents, but Nacchio's lawyer said last year that the NSA had
approached the company about participating in a warrantless
surveillance program to gather information about Americans' phone
records.

In the court filings disclosed this week, Nacchio suggests that
Qwest's refusal to take part in that program led the government to
cancel a separate, lucrative contract with the NSA in retribution. He
is using the allegation to try to show why his stock sale should not
have been considered improper.

Nacchio was convicted for selling shares of Qwest stock in early 2001,
just before financial problems caused the company's share price to
tumble. He has claimed in court papers that he had been optimistic
that Qwest would overcome weak sales because of the expected top-
secret contract with the government. Nacchio said he was forbidden to
mention the specifics during the trial because of secrecy
restrictions, but the judge ruled that the issue was irrelevant to the
charges against him.

Nacchio's account, which places the NSA proposal at a meeting on Feb.
27, 2001, suggests that the Bush administration was seeking to enlist
telecommunications firms in programs without court oversight before
the terrorist attacks on New York and the Pentagon. The Sept. 11
attacks have been cited by the government as the main impetus for its
warrantless surveillance efforts.

The allegations could affect the debate on Capitol Hill over whether
telecoms sued for disclosing customers' phone records and other data
to the government after the Sept. 11 attacks should be given legal
immunity, even if they did not have court authorization to do so.

Spokesmen for the Justice Department, the NSA, the White House and the
director of national intelligence declined to comment, citing the
ongoing legal case against Nacchio and the classified nature of the
NSA's activities. Federal filings in the appeal have not yet been
disclosed.

In May 2006, USA Today reported that the NSA had been secretly
collecting the phone-call records of tens of millions of Americans,
using data provided by major telecom firms. Qwest, it reported,
declined to participate because of fears that the program lacked legal
standing.

In a statement released after the story was published, Nacchio
attorney Herbert Stern said that in fall 2001, Qwest was approached to
give the government access to the private phone records of Qwest
customers. At the time, Nacchio was chairman of the president's
National Security Telecommunications Advisory Committee.

"Mr. Nacchio made inquiry as to whether a warrant or other legal
process had been secured in support of that request," Stern said.
"When he learned that no such authority had been granted and that
there was a disinclination on the part of the authorities to use any
legal process, including the Special Court which had been established
to handle such matters, Mr. Nacchio concluded that these requests
violated the privacy requirements of the Telecommunications Act."

Stern could not be reached for comment yesterday. Another lawyer for
Nacchio, Jeffrey Speiser, declined to comment on whether the call-
records program was the program discussed at the February 2001
meeting.
In a May 25, 2007, order, U.S. District Judge Edward W. Nottingham
wrote that Nacchio has asserted that "Qwest entered into two
classified contracts valued at hundreds of millions of dollars,
without a competitive bidding process and that in 2000 and 2001, he
participated in discussion with high-ranking [redacted]
representatives concerning the possibility of awarding additional
contracts of a similar nature."

He wrote, "Those discussions led him to believe that [redacted] would
award Qwest contracts valued at amounts that would more than offset
the negative warnings he was receiving about Qwest's financial
prospects."

The newly released court documents say that, on Feb. 27, 2001, Nacchio
and James Payne, then Qwest's senior vice president of government
systems, met with NSA officials at Fort Meade, expecting to discuss
"Groundbreaker," a project to outsource the NSA's non-mission-critical
systems.

The men came out of the meeting "with optimism about the prospect for
2001 revenue from NSA," according to an April 9, 2007, court filing by
Nacchio's lawyers that was disclosed this week.

But the filing also claims that Nacchio "refused" to participate in
some unidentified program or activity because it was possibly illegal
and that the NSA later "expressed disappointment" about Qwest's
decision.

"Nacchio said it was a legal issue and that they could not do
something that their general counsel told them not to do. . . .
Nacchio projected that he might do it if they could find a way to do
it legally," the filing said.

Mike German, policy counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union,
said the documents show "that there is more to this story about the
government's relationship with the telecoms than what the
administration has admitted to."
Kurt Opsahl, senior staff attorney for the Electronic Frontier
Foundation, said: "It's inappropriate for the government to be
awarding a contract conditioned upon an agreement to an illegal
program. That truly is what's going on here."
The foundation has sued AT&T, charging that it violated privacy laws
by cooperating with the government's warrantless surveillance program.

(Staff researcher Richard Drezen contributed to this report.)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...101202485.html



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