Nacchio and Qwest: Another Political Prosecution?

The political odor of this legal case has never been proper.
The issue first arose on DU with the USA firings discussion.
* Justice Weighed Firing 1 in 4 - 26 Prosecutors Were Listed As Candidates
* http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x2848874

Now, it's in mainstream press and serious legal blogs.

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Qwest: Another Political Prosecution?
BY Scott Horton - Oct 14, 2007
http://www.harpers.org/archive/2007/10/hbc-90001415

Last week, a career federal prosecutor friend told me, “Most of us have come to agree that there’s a real problem with political prosecutions on Bush’s watch, and that needs to be addressed, but you need to remind your readers that this is something truly exceptional and that the great mass of cases involve the normal functioning of the law enforcement system, with career professionals who are detached from political considerations.” For the record, I believe that’s true. I’m not sure how widespread the phenomenon of political prosecution is. I believe that it is no longer a question of “whether” such prosecutions have been brought—that’s now very well established. How widespread is this phenomenon? That’s an important question and the answers are unclear.

And this weekend more information has surfaced which would show the practice to be far more common that I first suspected. Last year, a Colorado lawyer told me that I should look at the insider trading litigation surrounding Qwest CEO Joseph P. Nacchio—there was strong evidence in that case of tawdry politics on the prosecution side. Of course, I knew that Nacchio was the only major telecom executive who refused to play ball with the administration on warrantless surveillance. But I did take a look at the case, and I didn’t see the evidence that was suggested.

But as of this morning, I have to admit that I misjudged the situation. It seems that the evidence was lacking because the trial judge suppressed it, not because it didn’t exist. There was a major account in yesterday’s Washington Post, and this morning in the New York Times. These accounts all stack up. Here’s Scott Shane’s summary for the Times:

The phone company Qwest Communications refused a proposal from the National Security Agency that the company’s lawyers considered illegal in February 2001, ......

Former CEO Says U.S. Punished Phone Firm
Qwest Feared NSA Plan Was Illegal, Filing Says
By Ellen Nakashima and Dan Eggen - Oct 13, 2007; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/12/AR2007101202485.html


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.

..................

Former Phone Chief Says Spy Agency Sought Surveillance Help Before 9/11 -
By SCOTT SHANE - Oct 14, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/14/business/14qwest.html?_r=2&ex=1350014400&en=d79ceb4f4ce279b1&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

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 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.

...............

and no corporate CEO is squeaky clean, I've smelled a political vendetta from day one.

Qwest was one of the few large telecommunications companies to tell the NSA to go pound sand.

Given this administration's tendency toward the personal vendetta, my best guess is that this is purely political and that Nacchio will eventually be vindicated.

Joe Nacchio and SOX (Sarbanes-Oxley Compliance)
By J. Robert Brown, Jr., University of Denver Sturm College of Law, on Wednesday April 25, 2007 at 3:14 pm
http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/corpgov/2007/04/25/joe-nacchio-and-sox/#more-98

I offer in this post some personal observations on the trial and conviction of Joe Nacchio, the former CEO of Qwest Communications, as well as some thoughts about the impact of SOX. The Race to the Bottom has blogged the entire trial, with students or faculty attending all of the sessions. .....

...........had Nacchio had the benefits of SOX, it is unlikely that he would have been convicted of insider trading. Instead, he now faces as much as 15 years in prison for his offenses.

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Sarbanes-Oxley Act - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarbanes-Oxley_Act

Heading the NSA when tens of millions of Americans were admittedly spied on was Michael Hayden, the current CIA chief opposing the CIA Inspector General’s office for asking questions about criminals there too. Of course, what they actually did/do and what is currently admitted are not the same things!

My informant said they route ALL communications overseas to circumvent the law. Is the "cover story" of databasing
call info just that, the current fall-back cover story for a much larger crime, spying on everyone all the time?

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NSA has massive database of Americans' phone calls
5/11/2006 - http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2006-05-10-nsa_x.htm
By Leslie Cauley, USA TODAY


The National Security Agency has been secretly collecting the phone call records of tens of millions of Americans, using data provided by AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth, people with direct knowledge of the arrangement told USA TODAY.

The NSA program reaches into homes and businesses across the nation by amassing information about the calls of ordinary Americans — most of whom aren't suspected of any crime. This program does not involve the NSA listening to or recording conversations. But the spy agency is using the data to analyze calling patterns in an effort to detect terrorist activity, sources said in separate interviews.

QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS: ................

came seven months before Sept 11, does this bother anyone else? Why would the Bu$h admin want to spy on americans in Feb of 2001, were they just getting ready for 9-11-01 to happen?

I've been keeping up with this story for that reason, and i haven't heard anyone ask that question. Seems to me that this guy wouldn't play along with the Bu$h request seven months prior to 9-11 and after because it was illegal, and now the DoJ have him charged with insider trading. This admin has no shame, and i can't understand why congress allows this to continue.

Peace!

Conyers: Tell Us More
By Paul Kiel - Oct 15, 2007
http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/004459.php

Joseph Nacchio, the former CEO of Qwest Communications, delivered a pair of twin bombshells (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/14/business/14qwest.html?th&emc=th) last week, when he asserted in a court filing that the National Security Agency had approached Qwest six months before 9/11 about participating in a legally dubious program, and that after the company declined, the administration yanked hundreds of millions in government contracts.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers' (D-MI) eyebrows are firmly in the raised position. So today he wrote (http://www.speaker.gov/blog/?p=849) Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell and senior Justice Department official Kenneth Wainstein, who both testified (http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/004222.php) before his committee last month, to inquire: "I ask that you provide the Committee with an immediate briefing on the facts behind these recent revelations, and that you then provide us with any documents concerning the nature and scope of these pre-9/11 activities and the legal basis for conducting them."

.....

Ex-Qwest Chief Nacchio Says NSA Punished The Phone Company

In a court appeal, ex-Qwest executive Joseph P. Nacchio says the company was in line to get lucrative NSA work, but was rejected after Qwest raised questions about the legality of some of the agency's work.

By W. David Gardner
InformationWeek - Oct 15, 2007
http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=202402895

Meetings held before the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks between officials of the National Security Agency and executives of Qwest Communications (NYSE: Q) International are taking on new significance as Qwest's former chief executive fights a conviction and as Congress debates the NSA's surveillance methods.

Ex-Qwest executive Joseph P. Nacchio, who has been convicted of insider stock trading charges, cites the meetings to back up his argument that Qwest was in line to get lucrative NSA work but was rejected after Qwest raised questions about the legality of some NSA work. If the NSA work had been awarded, as Nacchio anticipated, it would have helped the company's finances, Qwest's stock would have held up better, and Nacchio wouldn't have been criticized so intensely for selling stock.

The meetings are cited by Nacchio in his appeal to the U.S. 10th Circuit Court of Appeals that attempts to reverse a jury verdict for insider trading. Nacchio's attorney, Maureen Mahoney, argued that Nacchio was unfairly handcuffed regarding the government contracts; Nacchio has complained for several months that he couldn't discuss the contracts during the trial, because they involved classified information.

However, while much of the information remains classified, some new information was revealed ..........

............

What do we know about the judge in this case?

The politization of DoJ inquiry is getting ever more expansive as next Tuesday's hearing approaches.

2003 Affidavit Raises Criminal Conduct Questions About Judge Fuller

In a major news break yesterday, the malfeasance in this case is suddenly refocused, not only on the judge, but on DoJ's Noel Hillman, the head of the Public Integrity Section.

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2003 Affidavit Raises Serious Questions About Siegelman Judge
BY Scott Horton - Oct 16, 2007
http://www.harpers.org/archive/2007/10/hbc-90001430

I have received a copy of an affidavit (8.7Mb PDF) filed by a Missouri attorney in 2003 which details a number of charges of unethical and criminal conduct against Judge Mark Fuller. The attorney sought Fuller’s removal from a high-profile litigation which related to a prominent Republican who was close to both the current President Bush and his father. ....

MORE:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x1982675

Nacchio gets big guns' help
By Al Lewis - Denver Post - 10/18/2007
http://www.denverpost.com/business/ci_7218476

Let Joe go!

Two high-profile legal organizations say the U.S. District Court in Denver botched the insider-trading trial of former Qwest CEO Joe Nacchio last April, and they are asking an appellate court to reverse his conviction.

The Washington Legal Foundation, a nonprofit public-interest law and policy center, and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, an association of criminal-defense attorneys, filed briefs this week in Nacchio's appeal, which will be heard Dec. 18.

Their filings are called amicus, or friend-of- the-court, briefs.

Who knew Nacchio had friends?

"They are not 'friend-of-Nacchio' briefs," corrected Andrew Schapiro of Mayer Brown in New York, who represents the defense-lawyers group. "They are friend-of-the-court briefs. There's a principle at stake here. The lower court got it wrong."

Schapiro argues that Judge Edward Nottingham obstructed Nacchio's defense .....

Nacchio affects spy probe
His court filings point to government surveillance months before 9/11
By Andy Vuong, Denver Post, 10/20/2007
http://www.denverpost.com/business/ci_7230967

.....

Nacchio alleges the National Security Agency asked Qwest to participate in a program the phone company thought was illegal more than six months before the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks .....

.....recently unsealed documents push that time frame back to February 2001 and indicate the NSA may have also sought to monitor customers' Internet traffic and fax transmissions. .....

..... said Kevin Bankston, a staff attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a civil-liberties group.

"The fact that these materials suggest that cooperation with the program was tied to the award of certain government contracts also contradicts their (phone companies') claims that they were simply acting in good faith to help fight the terrorists when it appears that they may have been motivated by financial concerns instead," Bankston said.

....

"This is, sooner or later, going to be the stuff of congressional hearings because a new starting point has been established for this controversy. A new starting point seven months before 9/11," said Ron Suskind, author of "The One Percent Doctrine," which reported examples of how companies worked with the government in its fight against terrorism after Sept. 11.

"The idea that deals were getting cut between the government and telecom companies in secret in the early part of 2001 creates a whole new discussion as to intent, motivation and goals of the government," Suskind said.

......

Nacchio's connections to top-secret agencies date back to late 1997, according to court documents filed in 2000 and early 2001 and unsealed this month.

The first meeting Nacchio had with officials from a clandestine agency - including a three-star lieutenant general - was at Qwest's offices in Denver. The officials sought to use Qwest's fiber-optic communications network for government purposes. .......