"It's inappropriate for the government to be awarding a contract conditioned upon an agreement to an illegal program. That truly is what's going on here."
And that, evidently, is what happened to Qwest when it refused to participate in the NSA's wiretapping without warrant program: its government contracts were cancelled. But the spookiest part of the Washington Post report is this:
[Former Qwest CEO Joseph] 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. [emphasis added]
Nacchio was convicted of insider trading six years ago -- which raises the possibility that at least some of this information may have been fabricated as part of his defense. But here's what the most recently released government documents tell us:
The newly released court documents say that, on Feb. 27, 2001, Nacchio and James Payne, then Qwest's senior vice president of government systems, met with NSA officials at Fort Meade, expecting to discuss "Groundbreaker," a project to outsource the NSA's non-mission-critical systems.
The men came out of the meeting "with optimism about the prospect for 2001 revenue from NSA," according to an April 9, 2007, court filing by Nacchio's lawyers that was disclosed this week.
But the filing also claims that Nacchio "refused" to participate in some unidentified program or activity because it was possibly illegal and that the NSA later "expressed disappointment" about Qwest's decision.
Slam dunk?
