Qwest’s Nacchio: NSA pushed long before 9/11

October 13, 2007

Earlier this week, the Rocky Mountain News broke word that Joseph Nacchio, the former CEO of Qwest, accuses the National Security Agency of retaliating against his company because he refused to cooperate with a domestic-spying scheme.

The WaPo moved the ball forward today, with a solid front-page piece. The key point to take away from the story, however, is the timing.

A former Qwest Communications International executive, appealing a conviction for insider trading, has alleged that the government withdrew opportunities for contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars after Qwest refused to participate in an unidentified National Security Agency program that the company thought might be illegal.

Former chief executive Joseph P. Nacchio, convicted in April of 19 counts of insider trading, said the NSA approached Qwest more than six months before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, according to court documents unsealed in Denver this week.

Details about the alleged NSA program have been redacted from the documents, but Nacchio’s lawyer said last year that the NSA had approached the company about participating in a warrantless surveillance program to gather information about Americans’ phone records.

In the court filings disclosed this week, Nacchio suggests that Qwest’s refusal to take part in that program led the government to cancel a separate, lucrative contract with the NSA in retribution. He is using the allegation to try to show why his stock sale should not have been considered improper.

Now, Nacchio is hardly an unimpeachable source, and this is part of a legal defense that may not withstand scrutiny. But it’s that part about February 2001 that stands out.

Nacchio’s account, which places the NSA proposal at a meeting on Feb. 27, 2001, suggests that the Bush administration was seeking to enlist telecommunications firms in programs without court oversight before the terrorist attacks on New York and the Pentagon. The Sept. 11 attacks have been cited by the government as the main impetus for its warrantless surveillance efforts.

It’s almost as if the Bush gang, almost immediately after taking office, began a legally-dubious power grab that included warrantless-domestic spying.

I suppose some of the president’s allies might be tempted to spin this as encouraging. If the administration was pressuring telecoms as far back as February 2001, the president and his team were taking the terrorist threat seriously long before 9/11.

This might be more persuasive if, six months after the NSA allegedly leaned on Qwest, the president didn’t blow off a certain Presidential Daily Briefing, telling his CIA briefer, “All right. You’ve covered your ass, now.”

As for the big picture, Mike German, policy counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union, said the documents from the Nacchio trial show “that there is more to this story about the government’s relationship with the telecoms than what the administration has admitted to.”

I think that’s a safe bet.

But what the hell was the REASON for the Bush administration to spy on Americans in February 2001? I mean, there’s no reason even now, but at least the administration gives one. Wonder what they’ll say was the reason right after Bush was inaugurated into office? Yeah, they MIGHT say it was to guard against terrorism even then, but if so, THAT flopped like a dead cat.

Damn, it’s hard not to come to sinister conclusions…

  • Anney #1 says “But what the hell was the REASON for the Bush administration to spy on Americans in February 2001?”

    Knowing just some parts of what Bush/Rove have actually done, I expect it was just more of the same, spying on Americans for political gain and control.

  • Bush was out to spy on Americans unrelated to any terrorist threat. That being the case then what was his motivation if it were not to go after democratic campaign donors and the democratic party at large, since they are who Bush/Cheney identify as the ‘real’ enemy?

    Qwest is just another example of what happens if you refuse to cooperate with this WH. A crime family indeed but the GOP is part of it and no republican minds it at all as long as it is their crime family.
    Democrats are naive if they still believe that republicans care about the people of this country, or about justice or constitutional freedom. Look at what they have become, what they are now, not what they used to be or what we wish they would be. They have become detrimental to our country and our economy and to our freedom. Qwest is an excellent example of governmental blackmail.

  • This poses two major problems for the Bush WH. The fist—approaching Quest on 2/27/01—would suggest that the initial planning for such a program (warrantless domestic eavesdropping) may have begun before the 2000 election ever took place. The second—and this is the bigger of the two, IMHO—is that the Bush administration knew something about 9/11 at least six months before the towers fell, and chose to do nothing about it.

    The first simply makes Bush a criminal; the second makes him at least an accessory to the blatant, cold-blooded murder of thousands of US citizens.

    Why is this pig still president?

  • Please read this site. http://www.newamericancentury.org/

    It is the neo-con’s “manifesto” where they actually say that they’ll need a
    “new Pearl Harbor” to accomplish their goals.

    So what happened 8 months after this monster was SELECTED in 2000?

    9/11.

    I absolutely believe they didn’t LET it happen, they MADE it happen.

    We have mass murderers running our country.

    Please watch these Google videos:
    9/11 Press for Truth, Loose Change 2nd Edition, 9/11 Mysteries, Terror Storm

  • Good heavens. Benen deserves better readers than these comments would suggest.

    I’m sure that some middle-level people in the administration were very, very worried indeed about al-Qaeda in February 2001. Read the 9/11 Report, or the books by Richard Clarke and Steve Coll.

    And given what we know about the Bushies, it takes no imagination at all that their attitude towards the need for intelligence was “screw the Constitution, we’ll cut a deal with the telcos.” I’m sure that Karl Rove had some CEO’s cell-phone numbers in his Blackberry.

  • Congress definitely should not cave in and grant immunity to the telecoms for their illegal complicity in government eavesdropping. And they CERTAINLY should not get immunity until we find out exactly what they did, and when.

  • I certainly would like to know what reason NSA gave Nacchio for wanting to spy — was it terrorism or something else? Not that I’d necessarily believe the stated reason, but I’d like to know it, all the same. Another thing I’d like to know is *who* they wanted to spy on? If it had been only people outside US, or only people who might reasonably be suspected of terrorist agenda, I don’t think Nacchio would have been so worried about the possible illegality of the plan…

    Durbin is saying that the Senate *will not* grant immunity to the telecoms in the new FISA until they learn just what NSA had wanted. Nacchio may be a possible key to some answers.

  • A commenter at ThinkProgress had a good idea. The Dems could negotiate with giving amnesty from 9/11 and later, but no amnesty for illegal acts by the telecommunications companies before 9/11. The Dems definitely need to find out all the facts about this, unless of course they are afraid they may actually be called on to do something now, instead of cowering under the table that impeachment should never have been removed from.

  • Pingback: Warrantless surveillance: Jay rocks the 9/11 lie. . . again — The Seminal :: Independent Media and Politics

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