Qwest chief tries to slither from conviction

Washington Post:

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.

Nacchio was convicted for selling shares of Qwest stock in early 2001, just before financial problems caused the company's share price to tumble. 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 said he was forbidden to mention the specifics during the trial because of secrecy restrictions, but the judge ruled that the issue was irrelevant to the charges against him.

...

I think the judge is correct. Qwest was one of many telecoms who were in trouble during the relevant time period and his suggestion that retribution caused his stock to fall makes little sense, especially in an insider trading case. I think he is just another example of someone playing to the paranoia of the left in this country over the issue of intercepting enemy communications.

He is trying to make himself out as a hero for refusing to help in finding the bad guys. He is certainly no hero with me. The government would be irresponsible to extend a business relationship with someone who was more interested in terrorist privacy rights than in trying to stop the next terrorist attack.

I also question the news judgment of the Washington Post for making this a lead story.

Comments

  1. Steven Ashley12:05 PM

    You might want to take a look at the Telecommunications Act of 1995.

    Which required telecoms to set up call detail record databases for later use by the Feds. For some reason no one really is interested in those efforts since they occurred under Clinton's watch instead of President Bush.

    Using those databases the Feds could trace any call made in the U.S. to any number for any time. They didn't monitor calls but you could put together a map of all callers and who called those callers and who called those ....

    Which to me is just as intrusive, but since it was democrats that thought that one up now one seems to care.

    ReplyDelete
  2. : smintheus ::1:01 PM

    Entirely predictable that you'd opine that this is "not news". I came on over to your site in order to see which excuse you'd find for burying a story that a telecom exec had refused to participate in an NSA surveillance program on the basis of its illegality. I'd supposed that you might come up with something a little more entertaining than "not news".

    ReplyDelete
  3. Prariepundit1:22 PM

    The comment on the news value was that it was not worthy of a lead news story. Page 18 would be OK.

    ReplyDelete

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