R.I.P. Scout26
Just one major telecommunications company refused to participate in a legally dubious NSA surveillance program in 2001. A few years later, its CEO was indicted by federal prosecutors. He was convicted, served four and a half years of his sentence and was released this month.Prosecutors claim Qwest CEO Joseph Nacchio was guilty of insider trading, and that his prosecution had nothing to do with his refusal to allow spying on his customers without the permission of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. But to this day, Nacchio insists that his prosecution was retaliation for refusing to break the law on the NSA's behalf.After his release from custody Sept. 20, Nacchio told the Wall Street Journal that he feels "vindicated" by the content of the leaks that show that the agency was collecting American's phone records.Nacchio was convicted of selling of Qwest stock in early 2001, not long before the company hit financial troubles. However, he claimed in court documents that he was optimistic about the firm's ability to win classified government contracts — something they'd succeeded at in the past. And according to his timeline, in February 2001 — some six months before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks — he was approached by the NSA and asked to spy on customers during a meeting he thought was about a different contract. He reportedly refused because his lawyers believed such an action would be illegal and the NSA wouldn't go through the FISA Court. And then, he says, unrelated government contracts started to disappear.His narrative matches with the warrantless surveillance program reported by USA Today in 2006 which noted Qwest as the lone holdout from the program, hounded by the agency with hints that their refusal "might affect its ability to get future classified work with the government." But Nacchio was prevented from bringing up any of this defense during his jury trial — the evidence needed to support it was deemed classified and the judge in his case refused his requests to use it.
Let’s put this in sharper focus. Nacchio discovered that the NSA was engaged in a project to gather warrantless surveillance data on millions of Americans. He took advice of counsel. His lawyers told him, correctly, that this was illegal. They probably also warned him that if Qwest participated in the program, it would be committing a felony. So Nacchio said, no, sorry, I can’t work with you on this. But I can help if you want to change the law. And the reaction of the NSA? It was, apparently, to cut Qwest out of a series of contract awards by way of retaliation. (If that charge sticks, it would probably be yet another felony.) And the second reaction? To try to build a criminal case against Nacchio as a means of retaliation against him. (And if that charge sticks, it would probably be yet a third felony–on the part of the Government officials who did it). We are seeing the Government engaging in a sweeping pattern of criminal dealings, and ultimately, one of the biggest crimes of all, abusing the criminal justice process to strike out at an individual who refused to play their crooked game. Oh, and by the way: who was heading the NSA when all of this transpired? Michael Hayden, the man who now runs the CIA, and is busily dismantling the CIA Inspector General’s office because it has apparently raised questions about potentially criminal conduct on his watch there, too.....At the same meeting, N.S.A. officials made an additional proposal, whose exact nature is not made clear in the censored documents. “The court has prohibited Mr. Nacchio from eliciting testimony regarding what also occurred at that meeting,” one of the documents states. Another passage says: “The court has also refused to allow Mr. Nacchio to demonstrate that the agency retaliated for this refusal by denying the Groundbreaker and perhaps other work to Qwest.”
In the past I would have been very skeptical that a businessman was hounded and politically prosecuted for refusing to enable police-state action. I am much less skeptical nowadays of such claims.
I don't buy the "connection" at all between NSA and his conviction. Had NSA wanted to deal with it, he simply would have disappeared.
Uhm. Why would you want to black bag the guy? Then folks don't know what happened. Maybe he's in Costa Rica, maybe he committed suicide, maybe the wife's boyfriend bumped him off. Putting the CEO in prison on blatantly bumpkis charges shows raw power. Short of extremely blatant criminal activity, you only put a CEO of a megacorp in prison to send a political message. Otherwise, they buy their away out of it or get a slap on the wrist.
Absolutely.Black bagging and death squads is backwaters banana republic stuff. Controlling the corporations, congressmen and whatever SCOTUS Justices you need, is real power. The power is applied by simply enforcing or more importantly, not enforcing laws at will.
"Uhm. Why would you want to black bag the guy?"Uhm.How did you get from my rather innocuous statement and make the totally illogical leap to my wanting to black bag the guy?
How did you get from my rather innocuous statement and make the totally illogical leap to my wanting to black bag the guy
Everyone here fears you.
