The phone company Qwest Communications refused a proposal from the National Security Agency that the company’s lawyers considered illegal in February 2001, nearly seven months before the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, the former head of the company contends in newly unsealed court filings.
The executive, Joseph P. Nacchio, also asserts in the filings that the agency retaliated by depriving Qwest of lucrative outsourcing contracts.
The filings were made as Mr. Nacchio fought charges of insider trading. He was ultimately convicted in April of 19 counts of insider trading and has been sentenced to six years in prison. He remains free while appealing the conviction.
Mr. Nacchio said last year that he had refused an N.S.A. request for customers’ call records in late 2001, after the Sept. 11 attacks, as the agency initiated domestic surveillance and data mining programs to monitor Al Qaeda communications.
But the documents unsealed Wednesday in federal court in Denver, first reported in The Rocky Mountain News on Thursday, claim for the first time that pressure on the company to participate in activities it saw as improper came as early as February, nearly seven months before the terrorist attacks.
The significance of the claim is hard to assess, because the court documents are heavily redacted and N.S.A. officials will not comment on the agency’s secret surveillance programs. Other government officials have said that the agency’s eavesdropping without warrants began only after Sept. 11, 2001, under an order from President Bush.
So for what possible purpose did the Bush administration want access to personal phone records?
And after you ponder that one until your head hurts, turn to an even darker place and ask how far they would go to get what they wanted?
Now try to sleep without a nightlight or your binkie. Can't do it can you?
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so ... not only was it 7-mos PRIOR to 9/11 that the bush adm wished to expand the accepted definition of illegal wire tapping, but it was only ONE MONTH after the dynamic duo was sworn into office! holy shit, batman, that was obviously some highly important agenda they were working on.
ReplyDeleteoh, and just wondering: "binkie"??? I always thought it was a "bankie"!
"Binkie" was the word that a lot of very young children used to describe their pacifiers, but I also heard a few people talk about their binkie in reference to their favorite blanket.
ReplyDeleteThe point is your going to want to feel a sense of security if you really think about what information like this means about our government.