"the NSA approached Qwest more than six months before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks"....

The narrative I keep hearing regarding the FISA "compromise" goes something like this:

> FISA was broken.
> After 9/11 Bush took the initiative and did what he had to to protect the country.
> Congress moved to fix FISA so that the country could be protected.

Interesting story. And for the average American with the memory of a goldfish, I'm sure it all makes sense. Too bad it's probably full of shit.

You see, Qwest CEO Joseph Nacchio, in his attempt to defend himself from what he claims is a politically motivated prosecution, claims that he was approached more than six months before 9/11 and asked to implement illegal domestic spying:



And Nacchio is not alone:



That's what the lawsuits were all about. The Reid/Pelosi/Hoyer Congress refused to actively investigate this so citizens took the phone companies that participated to court. And now the Reid/Pelosi/Hoyer Congress is going to pass a law to retroactively dismiss the lawsuits.

Ya know, it's things like this that give credence to those silly conspiracy theorists that believe that the government had more of a role in 9/11 than we're being told.

Thanks for the thread, Junkdrawer.

The spying was WELL UNDERWAY before the 'terra, terra, terra' rants began in late 2001! Within a month of taking office, their spy program was going full steam...

They are retroactively changing the law 7 years after the law was broken!

LIHOP

Involve the Democratic leadership in 1X worth of illegal activity...

Commit 30X worth of illegal activity...

Watch as they cover your ass on that 30X so that their 1X never sees the light of day.

Thanks for a very fine thread.

A step or two over that fine moral line, and the Dems are invested in evil. The amount of the investment isn't important, just that they are invested.

Seems like it leaves a nice window of possible legal action there.
I'm sure they'll see the error...and "fix" it.

And in all probability, they missed the signs to 9/11 because they were watching Bush's political agenda, not our national security one.

With quotes like "Ok, you've covered your ass." They knew and ignored it.

-Hoot

Both are pretty bad.

don't forget that Cheney was overseeing exercises on 9/11 that involved hijacked passenger planes crashing into landmarks.....I have never forgotten that!

Nor have I forgotten that New Pearl Harbor thingy either.

-Hoot

consequences. Sickening.

and the new FISA law.

:kick:

Why BEFORE 9/11 but ignore the Daily Briefings so 9/11 happened?

Because it made it possible to do so much damage?

Simple as that. Accept fact and dig into the work. Serving America doesn't always mean wearing a uniform ;)

Where are the half-crazed maverick journalists on this thing?

:kick:

FISA, Telecommunication Companies & The Bush Administration
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x3487945

and it is our duty to declare independence from corruption. These declarations are being implemented by force not by the consent of the people.

I'll write my congressman. No point in writing my useless Republican senators.

I've posted about this on DU before and many others are surprised. This got no media coverage and everyone continues with the obvious lie that the spying was a result of 9/11.

Thank you for posting this. k&r.

Hey I think we need to get Agent 86 on this I know his boss and the VP do not get along...

Billboard courtesy of the

So there is a likelihood that this information was being obtained for political, rather than national security, purposes.

:kick:

It should be obvious by now

:(

"The NSA program was initially conceived at least one year prior to 2001 but had been called off; it was reinstated within 11 days of the entry into office of defendant George W. Bush."

Defendant... that has a nice ring to it. With any luck we'll be hearing a lot more of that in the coming years.

I won't hold my breath though, this whole immunity thing has lowered my expectations of the Dems significantly.

Meanwhile, we up against the "national security" stone wall that Nixon began building and

Cheney is putting the finishing touches on ---

This all has to be political spying --- and I'd like to see the list!

Greg Palast's 'Khan Job' article mentions the NSA's pre-9/11 "policy shift",

"A top-level CIA operative who spoke with us on condition of strictest anonymity said that, after Bush took office, "There was a major policy shift" at the National Security Agency. Investigators were ordered to "back off " from any inquiries into Saudi Arabian financing of terror networks, especially if they touched on Saudi royals and their retainers. That put the Bin Ladens, a family worth a reported $12 billion and a virtual arm of the Saudi royal household, off limits for investigation. Osama was the exception; he remained a wanted man, but agents could not look too closely at how he filled his piggy bank. The key rule of any investigation, "follow the money," was now violated, and investigations-at least before September 11-began to die."

This all ties into the spiking of what Valerie Plame's group was doing, preventing nuclear proliferation. Bush's crowd, once inside the policy and security apparatus, began tearing security apart in order to promote IN-security for fellow citizens. Lovely.

This is all something that Obama has promised to investigate: the ongoing crimes of Bush and company.

The NSA was doing the spying and the DoJ was the muscle w/ the U.S. Attorneys
as the hit men. bush & Cheney have been an ongoing criminal operation.

I knew they LIHOP, if not MIHOP!!

and we would argue for days and days. Then it came out that the NYT sat on a story for the WH for over a year. People stopped arguing. Now it is just this huge information orgy of criminal activity and warmongering. Not even a guess anymore as to why Bush lied about Iraq and ignored 911 warnings.

If any REAL investigations began, that throughly examined exactly what has happened over the last 7 years, then what would be the explosive result of that?

That the U.S. President and his administration, really has committed war crimes and has been a tyrant dictator on the world stage. Once it starts to unravel, all the evidence comes out, and the world would be demanding justice. Now think of the ramifications of that... Congress and a new White House would have to answer to the world, to turn over an American President and officials of the government for trials. How would our government react and respond? Turn over Bush & his cabal for trials like Saddam Hussein? Easier said than done, when it comes to leaders of the government.

Maybe it is really as bad as everyone thinks, and those who can do something about it, are cutting the losses, just to put him out to pasture and clean up his mess. Which is easier?

The world demanding a current or former President's head on a platter, reparations, instability within and on the world scene, U.S. holdings surrendered, etc. etc.

Or keeping it all out of court, so that the rest of the iceberg is never seen, putting him out to pasture, and repairing his destruction.

damage done by the GOPers and neocons. We are playing a wait and see game, even if Dems take over in a huge majority. Times are very volatile.

afternoon. Anyone interested in joining us is invited. We are taking a letter from several Democratic local groups.

I'd love to hear his comments prior to the vote in the senate.

EVERYONE in the Senate is very well aware of all this.

It's you and I that Reid, Pelosi & Hoyer hope are still in the dark.

yet made the comments he did on Friday?

QWEST

I shit you not. :crazy:

:kick:

Deja DU: Are ALL COMMUNICATIONS routed overseas to circumvent US law and the Constitution?
Nov-09-07 - http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x2245762

I was told years ago that ALL fiber optic communication traffic was routed overseas so that "everything" was moved outside the protections of the law and Constitution and ANYTHING could be monitored. I thought the idea quite fantastic even though it came from a very reliable source that would know exactly such things. Then, the story of the fiber optic splitters hit my radar. I now see now how easily exactly that, routing ALL COMMUNICATIONS overseas, was accomplished.

Is that Bush's and the Telecom's HUGE crime hidden and covered-up behind this story?

If the telecoms get immunity, will it aid in covering up Bush's crime.
ABSOLUTELY! That is why it is so important to the Rs! Support = obstruction of justice.

Have we arrived at the point in the history of the Bushco junta where
laws passed and people nominated are part of crimes of obstructing justice?

===================
AT&T Whistleblower: Telecom Immunity Is A Cover-Up
By Spencer Ackerman - Nov 7, 2007
http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/004662.php


Earlier today we flagged that Mark Klein, who uncovered a secret surveillance room run by the NSA while employed as a San Francisco-based technician for AT&T, is in Washington to lobby against granting retroactive legal immunity to telecommunications companies. In an interview this afternoon, Klein explained why he traveled all the way from San Francisco to lobby Senators about the issue: if the immunity provision passes, Americans may never know how extensive the surveillance program was -- or how deeply their privacy may have been invaded.

"The president has not presented this truthfully," said Klein, a 62-year old retiree. "He said it was about a few people making calls to the Mideast. But I know this physical equipment. It copies everything. There's no selection of anything, at all -- the splitter copies entire data streams from the internet, phone conversations, e-mail, web-browsing. Everything."

What Klein unearthed -- you can read it here -- points to a nearly unbounded surveillance program. Its very location in San Francisco suggests that the program was "massively domestic" in its focus, he said. "If they really meant what they say about only wanting international stuff, you wouldn't want it in San Francisco or Atlanta. You'd want to be closer to the border where the lines come in from the ocean so you pick up international calls. You only do it in San Francisco if you want domestic stuff. The location of this stuff contradicts their story .....

=======================
NSA Monitors All Web Traffic, Says Ex-AT&T Employee

NSA Monitors All Web Traffic, Says Ex-AT&T Employee
Tom Corelis (Blog) - Nov 10, 2007
http://www.dailytech.com/NSA+Monitors+All+Web+Traffic+Says+ExATT+Employee/article9620.htm


Felt "forced to the connect the Big Brother Machine" if he wanted to keep his job

Mark Klein, the former AT&T technician and whistleblower who helped kick off the AT&T/NSA eavesdropping scandal, clarified further details regarding what he witnessed while connecting a secret NSA eavesdropping facility: secure room 641A in AT&T’s San Francisco switching center, presumably commissioned by the NSA, received copies of all the traffic its splitters were connected to, including both international and domestic e-mails, web traffic, and phone calls, both from AT&T’s customers as well as other providers.

Previous statements by the government, AT&T and President Bush indicated that the only affected communications are communications relevant to national security, like those of suspected terrorists and suspicious foreign nationals. According to Klein, however, the technology used to connect the secure room was far more democratic, consisting of simple, dumb splitters incapable of any kind of contextual filtering: essentially, room 641A received “a duplicate of every fiber-optic signal routed through facilities.”

Klein, appearing on MSNBC’s Countdown with Keith Olbermann show, told viewers about his personal association with secure room 641A. “When I was a technician, I had the engineering/wiring documents, which told me how the splitter was wired to the secret room … I had to know in order to do my job,” he said, “so I know that whatever went across those cables was copied; the entire datastream was copied into the secret room.”

Referring to the equipment itself, Klein states, “the splitter device has no selective capability, it just copies everything. .............

=======================
Interview: AT&T Whistleblower Mark Klein on Bush's Illegal Surveillance and Retroactive Immunity
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A0dJJhLueEg

=======================
NSA Pressured LA Times To Kill Domestic Spying Story
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QOI1VGKcgGY

=======================
November 5th, 2007
AT&T Whistleblower to Urge Senate to Reject Blanket Immunity for Telecoms
Press Conference on Capitol Hill on Wednesday, November 7
http://www.eff.org/press/archives/2007/11/05

Washington, D.C. - On Wednesday, November 7, at 10:30am, telecommunications technician and AT&T whistleblower Mark Klein will speak out at a press conference on Capitol Hill, explaining why he is asking lawmakers to reject immunity for telecoms who assisted the Bush administration's spying on millions of Americans.

Klein witnessed first-hand the technology AT&T built to assist the government's domestic warrantless wiretapping program at AT&T's main switching facility in San Francisco. As part of his job at AT&T, Klein connected high-speed fiber optic cables to sophisticated equipment that intercepted communications from AT&T customers and then copied and routed every single one to a room controlled by the National Security Agency (NSA). Klein has provided evidence for the Electronic Frontier Foundation's (EFF's) class-action lawsuit against AT&T for its role in the illegal spying.

"My job required me to enable the physical connections between AT&T customers' Internet communications and the NSA's illegal, wholesale copying machine for domestic emails, Internet phone conversations, web surfing and all other Internet traffic. I have first-hand knowledge of the clandestine collaboration between one giant telecommunications company, AT&T, and the National Security Agency to facilitate the most comprehensive illegal domestic spying program in history," said Klein.

Also speaking at the event Wednesday ...........

=======================
Judge Orders Telecommunications Companies to Preserve Evidence in Government Surveillance Cases
Ruling Advances EFF's Class-action Lawsuit Against AT&T
http://www.eff.org/press/archives/2007/11/06


San Francisco - A federal judge today ruled on a preservation motion filed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), ordering that telecommunications companies must preserve any evidence of collaborating with the government in illegal spying on ordinary Americans.

In his ruling, U.S. District Court Judge Vaughn Walker ordered the telecommunications companies to halt any routine destruction of documents or to arrange for the preservation of accurate copies. On December 14, each party must provide the court with confirmation that the court's order has been carried out. The court order did not require the government or the carriers to reveal whether or not they had any relevant evidence.

The government and the carriers had opposed the preservation motion, claiming that the government's invocation of the state secrets privilege made it impossible to proceed with a preservation order. In litigation, parties are typically required to preserve all relevant evidence.

For the judge's order:
http://www.eff.org/files/filenode/att/393%20order.pdf

For more on the class-action lawsuit against AT&T:
http://www.eff.org/cases/att

===== MORE ======

Deja DU: Nacchio and Qwest: Another Political Prosecution?
Oct-15-07 - http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x2051298

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.

=====================
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, ......

=====================
Deja DU: TELECOM COVER-UP? Nacchio and Qwest: Another Political Prosecution?
Feb-28-08 - http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x2935817