In appealing his conviction for insider trading, former Qwest Communications chief executive Joseph P. Nacchio has alleged that the National Security Agency (NSA) asked the Denver-based phone company to participate in a warrantless - and illegal - domestic spying program.
When Nacchio said no, contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars were cancelled in retaliation for the company's refusal to gather information about Americans' call records.
"Nacchio was convicted for selling shares of Qwest stock in early 2001, just before financial problems caused the company's share price to tumble," reported the Washington Post in an article called "Former CEO Says U.S. Punished Phone Firm."
{http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/12/
AR2007101202485.html?hpid=topnews)
"He has claimed in court papers that he had been optimistic that Qwest would overcome weak sales because of the expected top-secret contract with the government.
"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."
After Nacchio declined an NSA request to hand over Qwest customers' call records, other government contracts were cancelled as retribution, and Nacchio was indicted as further punishment for his refusal to participate in the illegal NSA domestic spying program.
"Verizon, AT&T and Bellsouth all reportedly complied with the NSA's request for phone records months before Sept. 11, covering nearly 500 billion telephone calls in 2005 and almost 2 trillion calls since late 2001, according to the TeleGeography research group," reported ABC News
(http://abcnews.go.com/Business/story?id=3723676&page=1)
"But Nacchio refused to turn over records without proper legal orders because he felt that would violate federal privacy laws, according to court documents released this week."
"There was a feeling that the NSA acted as agents for other government agencies and if Qwest frustrated the NSA, they would also frustrate other agencies."
The Post further reports -- "Mr. Nacchio made inquiry as to whether a warrant or other legal process had been secured in support of that request," [his attorney Herbert] Stern said. "When he learned that no such authority had been granted and that there was a disinclination on the part of the authorities to use any legal process, including the Special Court which had been established to handle such matters, Mr. Nacchio concluded that these requests violated the privacy requirements of the Telecommunications Act."
In essence, Nacchio got bushwhacked twice for his refusal to participate in an illegal spying-on-Americans program - once by getting his government contracts revoked, and twice by being personally indicted for "insider trading."
When it comes to criminal government conspiracy, the Bush Cabal and its lackeys in the NSA like to play hardball.
Moral of the story? As Paul Wolfowitz, who was the first to admit the existence of the Bush Cabal, famously said in a BBC interview -- You don't say no the Cabal...
http://www.conspiracyplanet.com/channel.cfm?channelid=2&contentid=4756&page=1
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