http://journals.democraticunderground.com/OnyxCollie/17
While it would seem that the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 would be the obvious place to start when discussing electronic surveillance under the Bush Administration, allegations made by former Qwest Communications International CEO Joseph P. Naccio and a statement made by Attorney General Michael Mukasey demand attention.
QWEST COMMUNICATIONS
In May 2006, USA TODAY reported that the three telecommunication carriers, AT&T, Verizon, and BellSouth had cooperated with the National Security Agency to secretly amass a database of phone call records of tens of millions of Americans (Cauley, 2006). The information was then analyzed to detect calling patterns in an effort to thwart terrorism. Following the reporting of this story, Mr. Nacchio’s attorney, Herbert Swan, released a statement that said the government had approached Qwest Communications to turn over customers’ calling records:
Mr. Nacchio made inquiry as to whether a warrant or other legal process had been secured in support of that request. When he learned that no such authority had been granted and that there was a disinclination on the part of 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. (Nakashima & Eggen, 2007).
Mr. Nacchio was convicted in April 2007 of 19 counts of insider trading, selling shares of Qwest stock before the value dropped.
In October 2007, The Rocky Mountain News, The Washington Post, and The New York Times reported that in court filings made by Mr. Naccio, the National Security Agency had approached Qwest Communications to turn over customer’s call records on February 27, 2001, nearly seven months before the terrorist attacks (Burnett & Smith, 2007, Nakashima & Eggen, 2007, Shane, 2007).
“’The Nacchio materials suggest that the NSA had sought telco cooperation even before 9/11 undermines the primary argument for letting the phone companies off the hook, which is the claim that they were simply acting in good faith after 9/11,’ said Kevin Bankston, a staff attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a civil liberties group.” (Vuong, 2007).
In return for cooperating, Mr. Naccio asserts, Qwest Communications would receive lucrative government contracts (Burnett & Smith, 2007, Nakashima & Eggen, 2007, Shane, 2007).
In a May 25, 2007 order, U.S. District Court Judge Edward W. Nottingham wrote that Nacchio has asserted that ‘Qwest entered into 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 representatives concerning the possibility of awarding additional contracts of a similar nature.’ He wrote, ‘Those discussions led him to believe that would award Qwest contracts valued at amounts that would more than offset the negative warnings he was receiving about Qwest’s financial prospects.’” Nakashima & Eggen, 2007.)
Mr. Naccio’s conviction, he contends, was retaliation for refusing to cooperate with the government (Burnett & Smith, 2007, Nakashima & Eggen, 2007, Shane, 2007).
U.S. District Judge Edward W. Nottingham would not permit the classified information about the contracts into the court, thereby sinking Mr. Nacchio’s retaliation defense (Burnett & Smith, 2007. In March 2008, a federal appeals court overturned the 19 insider trading convictions after concluding that the trial judge improperly excluded expert testimony that would have helped Mr. Nacchio advance his defense (Johnson, 2008).
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