Court Papers: NSA Warrantless wiretapping, "The Program", started pre-9/11.

[leveymg]

The Rocky Mountain News reports today that in early 2001, Qwest, a Denver-based wireless telecom company, pulled out of a major NSA program believing the spy agency was involved in illegal domestic operations. See, http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/tech/article/0,2777,DRMN_23910_5719566,00.html

That project, Project Groundbreaker, was awarded on July 31, 2001 to Verizon and a consortium of telcos and defense contractors. Groundbreaker effectively privatized NSA surveillance. Ever since, most of the NSA's domestic wiretapping and intelligence analysis function has been performed by the same telephone and high-tech companies for which some in Congress are now seeking a grant of immunity for massive warrantless wiretapping.

The documents indicate that likely would have been at the heart of former CEO Joe Nacchio's so-called "classified information" defense at his insider trading trial, had he been allowed to present it.

The secret contracts - worth hundreds of millions of dollars - made Nacchio optimistic about Qwest's future, even as his staff was warning him the company might not make its numbers, Nacchio's defense attorneys have maintained. But Nacchio didn't present that argument at trial.

The documents suggest U.S. District Judge Edward Nottingham refused to allow Nacchio to present the argument about retaliation. Nottingham also said Nacchio would have to take the stand to raise the classified defense.

SNIP

The partially redacted documents were filed under seal before, during and after Nacchio's trial. They were released Wednesday.

Nacchio planned to demonstrate at trial that he had a meeting on Feb. 27, 2001, at NSA headquarters at Fort Meade, Md., to discuss a $100 million project. According to the documents, another topic also was discussed at that meeting, one with which Nacchio refused to comply.

The topic itself is redacted each time it appears in the hundreds of pages of documents, but there is mention of Nacchio believing the request was both inappropriate and illegal, and repeatedly refusing to go along with it.

The NSA contract was awarded in July 2001 to companies other than Qwest.

USA Today reported in May 2006 that Qwest, unlike AT&T and Verizon, balked at helping the NSA track phone calling patterns that may have indicated terrorist organizational activities. Nacchio's attorney, Herbert Stern, confirmed that Nacchio refused to turn over customer telephone records because he didn't think the NSA program had legal standing.

In the documents, Nacchio also asserts Qwest was in line to build a $2 billion private government network called GovNet and do other government business, including a network between the U.S. and South America.

The documents maintain that Nacchio met with top government officials, including President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and then-National Security Adviser Condoleeza Rice in 2000 and early 2001 to discuss how to protect the government's communications network.

According to the Rocky Mountain News, Qwest decided Groundbreaker was illegal and opted out of The Program -- warrantless domestic spying - and the project went other major telcos and defense contractors. Note that Verizon, which is being sued along with AT&T, is among the NSA contractors. See,
http://www.nsa.gov/releases/relea00034.cfm

31 July 2001
For further information, contact:
NSA Public and Media Affairs,
301-688-6524

National Security Agency Outsources Areas of Non-Mission Information Technology to CSC-Led Alliance Team
The National Security Agency (NSA) has established an official government-industry partnership for Information Technology Infrastructure (ITI) services within the areas of Telephony, Distributed Computing, Enterprise Management, and Networks by awarding a prime contract on 31 July 2001 to the CSC-led Alliance Team. Today's acquisition, known as Project GROUNDBREAKER, concludes an extensive procurement process, following a 15-month Feasibility Study, announced in a June 2000 Press Release, and a managed competition among industry leaders, announced in a March 2001 Media Update. The winning Alliance Team, self-named as Eagle Alliance, is a CSC-led joint venture in partnership with Logicon, a Northrup Grumman company. Additionally, the team comprises strategic alliance partners that include General Dynamics for telephony and networks, Keane Federal Systems for distributed computing and enterprise management support, and Omen, Inc., a small business that will integrate the Eagle Alliance small business consortium. Technology and Service Delivery Partners for this Alliance Team include ACS Defense, BTG, CACI, Compaq, TRW, Windemere, Fiber Plus, Verizon, and Superior Communications.

As an agency in transition, NSA continues to address the technology explosion of the past decade by leveraging the expertise of the commercial marketplace through an aggressive reformed acquisition strategy. The Eagle Alliance Team will be responsible for redefining and implementing new ITI processes and end-to-end solutions under a contract that has a potential duration of 10 years with a potential value that exceeds $2 billion.

"The ability of NSA to perform its mission depends on an efficient and stable ITI, one that is secure, agile, and responsive to evolving mission needs in balance with the requirements to recapitalize and refresh technology," NSA Director Lieutenant General Michael V. Hayden, USAF, said. "This outsourcing partnership for these four ITI areas supports our transformation efforts. It allows us to refocus assets on the Agency's core missions of providing foreign signals intelligence and protecting U.S. national security-related information systems by turning over several ITI services for industry's purview."

This government-industry partnership will result in service quality improvements, continuous modernization of NSA's ITI, as well as a cost avoidance for the Agency over the duration of the contract. It is also an employee-friendly approach to redefining NSA's internal corporate structure in that the contractors will receive monetary incentives to hire a significant number of Agency employees, and offer them comparable or better pay, benefits, and opportunities. Over the contract duration, Eagle Alliance will manage the selective ITI areas while undergoing continuous governance and monitoring by NSA based on Service Level Agreements that identify the performance levels required. NSA will continue to provide transition services (e.g., career counseling, resume preparation, and seminars) for employees interested in moving to the private sector under this contract.

The contract is expected to be fully operational in November 2001, 2 months ahead of the original schedule.

America's Codemakers and Codebreakers

Maybe, the privatization of NSA didn't turn out to be such a good idea.

[Trillo]

1. Giving this a K & R

One of the more important stories of our lives.

[AzDar]

2. K & R....

:kick:

[Robbien]

3. Back when Rice and Bush were poo-pooing the PDA

stating that we were going to be attacked by foreign terrorists, the telecos were already spying on American citizens seeking out the terrorists among us?

How can this get so little play in the news?

[satya]

4. When Bush whines about needing these "tools" the response should be that it didn't stop 9/11.

If anything, it probably facilitated it; the agencies were so busy sifting thru Aunt Mabel's phone calls that they didn't have time to do anything else.

And if they were really intercepting international (not domestic) communications, shouldn't they have been hiring a lot more translators?

I would like to see Conyers' committee requesting the records PRIOR to 9/11, instead of just from 9/11 forward. Maybe if the sheeple were convinced that Bush/Cheney weren't exactly trying to keep them "safe", they'd start to connect the dots.

[BuyingThyme]

5. More links:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=364&topic_id=226611
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/011306Z.shtml

[robertpaulsen]

6. Recommending and bookmarking!

I'm mentally filing this in the same category as that strange fact that the Patriot Act was drafted prior to 9/11. Which begs the question: why? Why did Bushitler and friends take all these steps to set up a quasi-police state if they were unaware of an imminent threat? Who do they really fear: the terrorists or the American public?

[Trillo]

14. Paul Bremer?

COUNTERING THE
CHANGING THREAT
OF INTERNATIONAL
TERRORISM

Report of the National Commission on Terrorism

Pursuant to Public Law 277, 105th Congress

-snip-

• The imperative to find terrorists and prevent their attacks requires energetic use of all the legal authorities and instruments available.
  
  
• Terrorist attacks against America threaten more than the tragic loss of individual lives. Some terrorists hope to provoke a response that undermines our Constitutional system of government. So U.S. leaders must find the appropriate balance by adopting counterterrorism policies which are effective but also respect the democratic traditions which are the bedrock of America's strength.
  
  
• Combating terrorism should not be used as a pretext for discrimination against any segment of society. Terrorists often claim to acton behalf of ethnic groups, religions, or even entire nations.These claims are false. Terrorists represent only a minuscule faction of any such group.
  
  
• People turn to terrorism for various reasons. Many terrorists act from political, ideological, or religious convictions. Some are simply criminals for hire. Others become terrorists because of perceived oppression or economic deprivation. An astute American foreign policy must take into account the reasons people turn to terror and, where appropriate and feasible, address them. No cause, however, justifies terrorism.

Terrorists attack American targets more often than those of any other country. America's pre-eminent role in the world guarantees that this will continue to be the case, and the threat of attacks creating massive casualties is growing. If the United States is to protect itself, if it is to remain a world leader, this nation must develop and continuously refine sound counterterrorism policies appropriate to the rapidly changing world around us.

Ambassador L. Paul Bremer III
Chairman

Report of the National Commission on Terrorism

[formercia]

19. Making Martyrs redux

If you can ever get a copy of the Contra training manual, there is a passage in there that talks about sacrificing some of your own people in order to create Martyrs. It helps motivate the troops to fight harder.

All of this was planned long before Junior stole the election in 2000.

"Project GROUNDBREAKER, concludes an extensive procurement process, following a 15-month Feasibility Study, announced in a June 2000 Press Release,"

They were hardly in office before the program was announced.

Crashing planes into buildings by radio control was a program used in Central America.

Wake up people.

[robertpaulsen]

20. Great post! People need to know how long this has been going on.

Interesting how Michael Hayden was involved:


February 2001: ’Project Groundbreaker’ Set Up to Monitor Domestic Phone Communications?
Edit event

The National Security Agency seeks the assistance of global telecommunications corporation AT&T to help it set up a domestic call monitoring site to eavesdrop on US citizens’ phone communications, according to court papers filed in June 2006 as part of a lawsuit against AT&T (see October 2001). The NSA is expressly forbidden to spy on US citizens within US borders unless authorized by the Foreign Surveillance Intelligence Court (FISC) (see 1978). When the NSA program, which wiretaps phone and e-mail communications often without court warrants, becomes public knowledge well over four years later (see December 15, 2005), President Bush, NSA director Michael Hayden, and other White House and government officials will assert that the program was set up in response to the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. If the claims made in the lawsuit are accurate, these assertions are provably false. “The Bush administration asserted this became necessary after 9/11,” lawyer Carl Meyer will claim in 2006. “This undermines that assertion.” Unbeknownst to most Americans, the NSA is operating a secret “data mining” operation that, by 2006, will have compiled phone records and contact information on millions of domestic phone and e-mail communications. The NSA project is code-named “Project Groundbreaker,” and is ostensibly an above-board attempt announced in June 2000 to have AT&T and other firms help modernize its technological capabilities. The project originally seeks to have AT&T build a network operations center that duplicates AT&T’s facility in Bedminster, New Jersey; that plan will be altered when the NSA decides it would be better served by acquiring the monitoring technology itself. The agency is seeking bids for a project to “modernize and improve its information technology infrastructure,” including the privatization of its “non-mission related” systems support. Groundbreaker’s privatization project is expected to provide up to $5 billion in government contracts to various private firms such as AT&T, Computer Sciences Corporation, and OAO Corporation, and up to 750 NSA employees will become private contractors. Hayden, who has aggressively instituted a corporate management protocol to enhance productivity and has brought in numerous senior managers and agency executives from private defense firms, is a strong proponent of privatizing and outsourcing much of the NSA’s technological operations, and in 2001 will say that he wants the agency to focus on its primary task of breaking codes and conducting surveillance. Hayden does not admit that Groundbreaker is part of a larger NSA domestic surveillance program, and publicly, NSA officials say that the project is limited to administrative and logistics functions. The covert data mining portion of the project is code-named “Pioneer.” A former, unnamed employee of the NSA, and a former AT&T technician, Mark Klein, will provide the key information about Groundbreaker. Klein will say in 2006 that he saw the NSA construct a clandestine area within its switching center in San Francisco, and saw NSA technicians shunt fiber optic cable carrying Internet traffic into that area, which contains a large data bank and secret data mining hardware. Klein will say he knew that the NSA built other such facilities in other switching locations. He will go on to say that the NSA did not work with just AT&T traffic; when AT&T’s network connected with other networks, the agency acquired access to that traffic as well.

Entity Tags: Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, AT&T, Bush administration, OAO Corporation, Carl Meyer, Mark Klein, George W. Bush, National Security Agency, Computer Sciences Corporation, Michael Hayden

Timeline Tags: Civil Liberties
All categories: Privacy, Impositions on Rights and Freedoms, Government Acting in Secret, Government Classification, Database Programs, NSA Wiretapping
July 2001: NSA Director Falsely Claims NSA Is Not Monitoring US Citizens
Edit event

In July 2001, NSA director Michael Hayden tells a reporter that the NSA does not monitor any US citizens without court warrants from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC). “We don’t do anything willy-nilly,” Hayden says. “We’re a foreign intelligence agency. We try to collect information that is of value to American decision-makers, to protect American values, America—and American lives. To suggest that we’re out there, on our own, renegade, pulling in random communications, is—is simply wrong. So everything we do is for a targeted foreign intelligence purpose. With regard to the—the question of industrial espionage, no. Period. Dot. We don’t do that.” When asked how Americans could verify that, Hayden says that they should simply trust the NSA to police and monitor itself, along with oversight from the White House and from Congress. However, it will later come to light that the NSA began illegally monitoring US citizens from the start of the Bush administration (see Spring 2001). A former NSA official will later dispute Hayden’s account. “What do you expect him to say?” the official says. “He’s got to deny it. I agree. We weren’t targeting specific people, which is what the President’s executive order does. However, we did keep tabs on some Americans we caught if there was an interest That’s not legal. And I am very upset that I played a part in it.” Hayden also denies persistent allegations from European government officials that the agency has engaged in economic espionage to help American companies against European competitors (see April 4, 2001). In March 2001, the American Civil Liberties Union’s Barry Steinhardt says that “since there is no real check on , there is no way to know” if they are following the law. Steinhardt says that Congress is the only real check on possible NSA abuses, but it has consistently failed to exercise any sort of aggressive oversight on the agency.

Entity Tags: National Security Agency, Barry Steinhardt, Michael Hayden, American Civil Liberties Union

Timeline Tags: Civil Liberties
All categories: NSA Wiretapping

http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/entity.jsp?entity=michael_hayden


I sure would like to find out more about that Central America program for crashing planes into buildings by radio control. Do you know where I can read up on that?

[Zywiec]

21. Looking at some of the posts it appears you were the only one to read the articles

This was in process BEFORE Bush came into office, not after. Some people's knee-jerk reaction to any comment posted here is blame it

on the right-wing conspiracy. As you say: Wake up people!

[JDPriestly]

28. You are right. Clinton is also responsible for this.

I learned from a German website that Clinton was pressuring the Europeans to allow eavesdropping on electronic communications in the late '90s. That is one of the reasons I am so opposed to Hillary.

[originalpckelly]

7. Now and then there's a fool such as we.

Fuckers. This was all planned before 9/11. Makes you really wonder if they didn't LIHOP or MIHOP.

[sicksicksick_N_tired]

8. Yup. They have taken over this nation, in full dictatorial assault.

This nation is gone as a democratic one. It is just,...gone.

Checkmate.

It's over, was over in 2000 and most of us didn't even know it or suspected it and denied it or hoped it wasn't true.

[originalpckelly]

9. We all should have known when the election went down like it did.

It's not a normal thing to have preppy white people mobbing like that. Not normal, and we should have known the gig was up for democracy and lady liberty.

[formercia]

26. It was supposed to happen on Poppy's watch

but something called Iran Contra threw a wrench into the works.

They learned their leessons and were better prepared this time.

If there is a next time, you can be sure they won't make the same mistakes.

it's time to put an end to this bullshit.

[UpInArms]

10. so the spying wasn't all about "terra terra terra"!

mmmmm.....

wonder what is really up the rabid rw's sleave?

[elehhhhna]

11. Rec it up guys. Biggest story of the day, imo.

[BuyingThyme]

12. kcik

[flyarm]

13. why is this not the #1 story..k&r..lets get this to the top!! eom

[BuyingThyme]

15. ..

[benEzra]

16. Holy cow. K&R. (n/t)

[mod mom]

17. Thank you for this research leveymg-your information is always so valuable!

[EVDebs]

18. NSA major pre-9/11 policy shift

"The “Back-Off” Directive and the Islamic Bomb

… A top-level CIA operative who spoke with us on condition of strictest anonymity said that, after Bush took office, “There was a major policy shift” at the National Security Agency. Investigators were ordered to “back off ” from any inquiries into Saudi Arabian financing of terror networks, especially if they touched on Saudi royals and their retainers. That put the Bin Ladens, a family worth a reported $12 billion and a virtual arm of the Saudi royal household, off limits for investigation. Osama was the exception; he remained a wanted man, but agents could not look too closely at how he filled his piggy bank. The key rule of any investigation, “follow the money,” was now violated, and investigations-at least before September 11-began to die."

http://www.gregpalast.com/khan-job-bush-spiked-probe-of-pakistan%E2%80%99s-dr-strangelove-bbc-reported-in-2001/

New tools needed while old tools are shit-canned, eh ?

[cosmicdot]

22. knr

[formercia]

23. Don't forget the Patriot Act

Here's some quotes from Fahrenheit 911 where Jim McDermott D-WA is talking about the Patriot Act:

"Trent Lott said on the day the bill was introduced " ..maybe now we can do things we wanted to do for the last 10 years""

"..they had this on the shelf somewhere..ideas of things they would like to do..and they got 911 and they said "it's our chance, go for it!""

".they had it printed in the middle of the night and the next morning it passed. We didn't even get a chance to read it."

[robertpaulsen]

24. Error: You've already recommended that thread.

Kicking in the hope this will get a 40th rec!

:kick:

[formercia]

25. and again..

K&R

[Up2Late]

27. Nad the QWest CEO gets 6 Years in Prison for not "playing ball!!!"

<http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19996449/>