Thread: Only 1 Big Telecom CEO Refused To Cave To The NSA: He's Been In Jail For 4 Years

Only One Big Telecom CEO Refused To Cave To The NSA ... And He's Been In Jail For 4 Years

MICHAEL KELLEY JUN. 12, 2013, 2:44 PM 21,296 55

REUTERS/Rick Wilking
Joseph Nacchio, the CEO of Qwest Communications International Inc. from 1997 to 2002, arrives at the Denver Federal Courthouse with his wife, Anne, for sentencing on 19 counts of illegal stock sales in Denver, Colorado July 27, 2007.

Verizon Allegedly Built A Fiber Optic Cable To Give The Feds Access To Communications

The Court Overseeing NSA Spying Has Already Found It Violated The Constitution

Former Qwest CEO Joseph Nacchio is currently serving a six-year sentence after being convicted of insider trading in April 2007 for selling $52 million of stock in the spring of 2001 as the telecommunications carrier appeared to be deteriorating.During the trial his defense team argued that Nacchio, 63, believed Qwest was about to win secret government contracts that would keep it in the black.

Nacchio alleged that the government stopped offering the company lucrative contracts after Qwest refused to cooperate with a National Security Agency surveillance program in February 2001.
That claim gains new relevance these days, amid leaks by whistleblower Edward Snowden that allege widespread domestic surveillance by the NSA.

Back in 2006 Leslie Cauley of USA Today, citing multiple people with direct knowledge of the arrangement, reported that shortly after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks America's three largest telecoms signed contracts to provide the NSA with detailed call records from hundreds of millions of people across the country.

Cauley noted that Qwest's refusal to participate "left the NSA with a hole in its database" since the company served local phone service to 14 million customers in 14 states.
From USA Today (emphasis ours):
The NSA, which needed Qwest's participation to completely cover the country, pushed back hard. ...

... the agency suggested that Qwest's foot-dragging might affect its ability to get future classified work with the government.

Nacchio's legal concerns about the NSA program at the time mirror those of civil liberty groups today.

Cauley, citing sources familiar with events, reported the NSA asserted that Qwest didn't need a court order — or approval under Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (which oversees NSA snooping) — to provide the data.

"They told (Qwest) they didn't want to [run the proposal by the FISA court] because FISA might not agree with them," one NSA insider told USA Today.

There is a record of the NSA running afoul of FISA: In July the FISA court ruled that the NSA violated the Fourth Amendment's restriction against unreasonable searches and seizures "on at least one occasion."

Furthermore, Nacchio felt that it was unclear who would have access to Qwest customers' information and how that information might be used. Sources told Cauley that the NSA said government agencies including the FBI, CIA, and DEA might have access to its massive database.

Nacchio entered prison on April 14, 2009 and is scheduled for release on September 21, 2013 (Federal inmates are typically required to serve at least 80 percent of a sentence, which would be 3.5 years in this case.)

SEE ALSO: Why Edward Snowden's Leaks Won't Change Anything About How The NSA Does Business (Yet)

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013...-mark-mcgwire/

Jailed Qwest CEO claimed that NSA retaliated because he wouldn’t participate in spy program

4:24 PM 06/13/2013

While National Security Agency’s harvesting of telephone data is often defended as a necessary component of post-9/11 national security, old court documents claim the spy agency was putting such a program into place months before the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

In court papers filed during his 2007 insider trading trial, former Qwest CEO Joseph Nacchio claimed that Denver-based Qwest was denied lucrative NSA contracts he believed to be worth $50-$100 million, after Nacchio refused to involve Qwest in a secret NSA program that he thought would be illegal.

Subsequent reporting at the time revealed that it was a domestic wiretapping program in which the NSA wanted to snoop on Qwest’s vast telephone network without court orders.

President George W. Bush’s administration has said that warrantless wiretapping only began after 9/11, as part of the NSA’s Terrorist Surveillance Program.

Sources familiar with the request to Qwest, quoted anonymously in the New York Times in 2007, “say the arrangement could have permitted neighborhood-by-neighborhood surveillance of phone traffic without a court order, which alarmed them.”

Nacchio claimed that the NSA retaliated for his refusal by leaving Qwest out of a $2 billion NSA infrastructure program called Groundbreaker, which was split among numerous contractors, including Verizon.

Verizon, it was recently revealed, was required by court order to give the NSA telephone records from millions of its customer as part of a sweeping surveillance program.

Nacchio revealed these details in court papers in an attempt to show that he didn’t dump Qwest stock in 2001 because he knew the company was going to post poor performance results in the future. Rather, he suspected the company would benefit from participating in Groundbreaker, which he discussed with NSA personnel in Washington D.C. on Feb. 27, 2001.

But Nacchio’s court filing says NSA officials also sought his participation in the other program, the details of which were redacted in the document, a motion for the court to allow Nacchio to testify about the meeting as part of his defense.

“[O]ne purpose of bringing Messrs. Nacchio and [Qwest Senior Vice President James] Payne into the February 27, 2001 meeting was to [redacted] and stated that Qwest was subsequently denied any agency work as a direct result of Mr. Nacchio’s refusal,” the document reads.

In an interview with prosecutors, a portion of which was included in the court filing, Payne said NSA officials would bring up the secret program frequently and that they “expressed disappointment” that Qwest wouldn’t participate.

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

“There was a feeling also,” he continued,” that the NSA acted as agents for other governmental agencies and if Qwest frustrated the NSA, they would also frustrate other agencies.

Ultimately, this argument wasn’t allowed in open court because the judge didn’t feel there was enough of a connection between the refusal to join the NSA program and Qwest not winning the Groundbreaker contract. Nacchio’s allegations didn’t come to light until the documents were unsealed six months after he was convicted in April 2007.

He was found guilty on 19 counts of insider trading and sentenced to six years. He was also fined $19 million and ordered to forfeit $52 million he made on his stock trade.

Nacchio’s lawyer, Herbert Stern, did not immediately return a phone call seeking comment.

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Tags: National Security Agency, Qwest Communications

http://dailycaller.com/2013/06/13/ja...n-spy-program/