[Infowarrior] - Allegation: NSA 'Groundbreaker' began before 9/11

[Richard Forno]

(if so, it might explain the infatuation with ensuring telco immunity by the
Administration........rf)

Qwest CEO Not Alone in Alleging NSA Started Domestic Phone Record Program 7
Months Before 9/11

http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/wired27b/~3/169115506/qwest-ceo-not-a.html

Startling statements from former Qwest CEO Joseph Nacchio's defense
documents alleging the National Security Agency began building a massive
call records database seven months before 9/11 aren't the only accusations
that the controversial program predated the attacks of 9/11.

According to court documents unveiled this week, former Qwest CEO Joseph
Nacchio clearly wanted to argue in court that the NSA retaliated against his
company after he turned down a NSA request on February 27, 2001 that he
thought was illegal. Nacchio's attorney issued a carefully worded statement
in 2006, saying that Nacchio had turned down the NSA's repeated requests for
customer call records. The statement says that Nacchio was asked for the
records in the fall of 2001, but doesn't say he was "first asked" then.

And in May 2006, a lawsuit filed against Verizon for allegedly turning over
call records to the NSA alleged that AT&T began building a spying facility
for the NSA just days after President Bush was inaugurated. That lawsuit is
one of 50 that were consolidated and moved to a San Francisco federal
district court, where the suits sit in limbo waiting for the 9th Circuit
Appeals court to decide whether the suits can proceed without endangering
national security.

According the allegations in the suit (.pdf):

The project was described in the ATT sales division documents as calling for
the construction of a facility to store and retain data gathered by the NSA
from its domestic and foreign intelligence operations but was to be in
actuality a duplicate ATT Network Operations Center for the use and
possession of the NSA that would give the NSA direct, unlimited,
unrestricted and unfettered access to all call information and internet and
digital traffic on ATTÌs long distance network. [...]

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.

An ATT Solutions logbook reviewed by counsel confirms the
Pioneer-Groundbreaker project start date of February 1, 2001.

The allegations in that case come from unnamed AT&T insiders, who have never
stepped forward or provided any documentation to the courts. But Carl Mayer,
one of the attorneys in the case, stands by the allegations in the lawsuit.

"All we can say is, we told you so," Mayer told THREAT LEVEL.

Mayer says the issue of when the call records program started - a program
that unlike the admitted warrantless wiretapping, the administration has
never confirmed nor denied - should play a role in the upcoming confirmation
hearings of Attorney General nominee Michael Mukasey.

Mukasey will have to "come clean on when this program started," Mayer said.
"The entire rationale was that it was necessitated by 9/11."

All of the cases pending against the nation's telecoms for allegedly
violating the nation's surveillance and privacy laws could be mooted if
Congress gives immunity to the companies, as the Administration and the
telcos powerful lobbyists are arguing for.

Immunity isn't what Mayer wants.

"The real obligation is upon the Democrats to demand turnover of these
documents," <ayer said.

But Mayer and Nacchio may not even be the only two arguing that the NSA
started a program of collecting Americans' phone records before 9/11.

In a January 2006 Slate article that came out before the USA Today totally
blew open the call records story in May 2006, Tim Naftali and THREAT LEVEL
pal Shane Harris reported:

A former telecom executive told us that efforts to obtain call details go
back to early 2001, predating the 9/11 attacks and the president's now
celebrated secret executive order. The source, who asked not to be
identified so as not to out his former company, reports that the NSA
approached U.S. carriers and asked for their cooperation in a "data-mining"
operation, which might eventually cull "millions" of individual calls and
emails.

So, the question is was Nacchio the one talking to Harris and Natfali?  Or
was it an executive from another company?

The evidence remains inconclusive, but one would think that before telecoms
get immunity for allegedly helping the government after 9/11 out of
patriotism, Congress should see if the companies began helping out prior to
9/11 with their eyes not on the flag, but on the secret dollars that the NSA
could add to their bottom lines.