What Nacchio Tells Us about the NSA

by emptywheel

The documents made available by the RMN yesterday provide more details about what the NSA and other government agencies have been doing with fiber optic networks--but it's still not exactly clear what those documents show. As a preliminary, I'm going to try to put the contents of this CIPA filing into a coherent chronology, to clarify some of the issues. The filing is what Nacchio submitted when the judge said his previous CIPA filing was not detailed enough, and it has a timeline going back to the late 1990s.

From reading the filing, I think (though I think others will disagree) that what Nacchio describes as Groundbreaker is at least the physical tap into switches that we know AT&T to have accomplished. That's important, because Nacchio walked out of his meeting on February 27, 2001 willing to do Groundbreaker (at least the hardware side of it), but unwilling to do something else NSA requested at that meeting. Which means the telecom involvement goes beyond simply tapping into the switches, and the switch-related aspect is not the troubling side of it.

The rest of this chronology just describes how Qwest has built several fiber optics networks for our intelligence agencies--potentially global in scale--that they claim are "impervious to attack." While it's not clear whether these networks are connected up with public networks or not (GovNet, the proposed network for the government that got scotched with 9/11, was supposed to be private), it does raise the question of how much of these global networks are for communicating (that is, secure communication within an intelligence agency) and how much are for eavesdropping.

And boy, if I were the rest of the world, I'd be less than thrilled to know Qwest had build a redundant fiber optics network for US intelligence agencies throughout my country.

Here's the timeline:

Late 1997: Dean Wandry (the govt accounts person) and Nacchio meet with a Lieutenant General, who tells Wandry the government wants to use Qwest's network for government purposes. The General also asked that Nacchio get a security clearance. The Agency gave Qwest the business with just a phone call's notice, but prohibited Qwest from announcing it publicly.

1998: The Agency expands its work with Qwest, having it construct fiber from Qwest's international gateway that eventually linked up with a local vendor's network.

Early 1999: Qwest joins a Computer Sciences Corporation team to bid for NSA business, including Groundbreaker.

Unknown, 1999: Payne and Nacchio in discussions about $500 million business.

August 1999: James Payne replaces Dean Wandry as Qwest's govt accounts person. Qwest remained in its relationship with its first government agency customer, building redundancies into its network. At that point, Qwest had a sole source contract expected to bring in up to $500 million, and had been given a contractor rating of 96 (the average rating was in the 70s). Note that there were "Senatorial maneuverings" that held up the project at this stage.

December 1999: Nacchio attends the first meeting to discuss a business opportunity with govt agency.

Late 1999 to early 2000: Richard Clarke introduces himself to Qwest to begin discussions on GovNet.

He revealed to Mr. Payne his knowledge about the classified work the company had already done for various agencies, and impressing Mr. Payne with his vision for a future private network that would be impervious to cyber-warfare and government-wide, sweeping up both classified and non-classified agencies. This vision became known as GovNet. Mr. Payne arranged for Mr. Clarke to tour Qwest's "CyberCenter" in Sterling, Virginia on June 22, 2000.

January 2000: Second meeting to discuss business opportunity with govt agency.

June 2000: Nacchio meets with DISA about building a private fiber optic network.

July 6, 2000: James Payne attends a security briefing on some of this, and is read into various programs with the agency.

September 2000: Qwest begins to talk about building network in South America, connected to the US.

[The agency] told Qwest it wanted a continental backbone in South America and back to Washington, D.C.

September 2000: Qwest does (or contemplates) work with an "Army customer"--the description remains redacted.

September 2000: Nacchio meets a second time with DISA about building a private fiber optic network, both in the Continental US and in Europe. Payne described the opportunity this way.

My team has been working with the DOD customer and various classified agencies to move quickly to implement a world wide network using existing Qwest contract vehicles.

September 2000 to February 2001: Qwest had meetings to discuss work done outside the continental US--in this case, to extend the contracting Agency's network in Europe and the Middle East, which Qwest had already done for the Agency. This passage from the filing gives some idea of the scope of what we're talking:

Qwest's European network ended at Prague, and Mr. Nacchio concluded that he would  have to go out and get routes from there down through the Red Sea and into India to create a fully global network.

An email included as an exhibit elaborates.

The [redacted] program was awarded to Qwest on September 15, 2000. This was a joint effort with K/Q that connects [redacted] hub cities in Europe in a private line service.

Also throughout this period, the contracting agency would call Qwest with concerns about its financial viability, whether it had to do with the telecom bust, or a potential buy-out offer from Deutsche Telecom.

[Note, all four of these September 2000 references may be to the same international program, though it appears that there are at least two discrete ones, one extending existing networks in Europe and the Middle East, and one establishing a network in Latin America.]

February 2001: Discussions on Groundbreaker are started. Some descriptions of it include:

Qwest's portion consisted of a $50-$100 million opportunity, planned for implementation in 2001, to construct a CONUS (continential US) private fiber network and provide related network services.

[snip]

The Groundbreaker project grew out of the aftermath from a fire at Ft. Meade which destroyed a large NSA data center. It was thereafter decided to outsource much of this work to private industry. The project was described in a July 31, 2001 press release issued by CSC as providing "secure and non-secure telephony and network services, distributed computer services, and enterprise and security management of the non-mission information technology infrastructure at NSA headquarters and surrounding offices.

One of the suits against AT&T describes the program for "development of a center for monitoring long distance calls and internet transactions and other digital information for the exclusive use of NSA" as being named Pioneer-Groundbreaker, or Groundbreaker Enterprise System within AT&T. Like the description of the CSC team, the AT&T suit describes discussions about Groundbreaker as having started before Bush was elected, then get put on hold, then resuscitated shortly after Bush came to office.

If the AT&T suit is correct (and Nacchio's filing says they intend to corroborate the accounts of Nacchio, Wandry, and Payne with something from the AT&T suit, perhaps by subpoenaing Mark Klein, it means Qwest was willing to do at least the physical side of the deal, allowing the government to tap into their switches. Which makes sense--if it was supposed to replace a large "data center" at NSA, it would need to be involved in data. Further this seems to match Naccio's description of Qwest's bid to do a "'CyberCenter' solution to the Groundbreaker networking issue."

February 27, 2001: Nacchio's meeting at NSA headquarters. Groundbreaker was discussed, as was the request that Qwest's General Counsel would go on describe as illegal.

It was this pending opportunity that lead [sic] to Mr. Nacchio's first meeting with NSA, which took place on February 27, 2001 at the NSA Headquarters at Ft. Meade, Maryland. Mr. Nacchio expected to discuss the $50-100 million "Groundbreaker" opportunity at this meeting, and he thought great progress was made on the substantive discussions. [At least one sentence redacted.] Mr Nacchio walked out thinking that the NSA $50-100 million opportunity remained viable.

This passage makes two points clear: Qwest was bidding for the Groundbreaker program, and Nacchio remained willing to do that Groundbreaker program after the meeting at which he refused to do something else (note his expectation for the $50-100 million tied to Groundbreaker remained constant). It was not Groundbreaker that he refused.

March 2001: Announcement that "network service" on Groundbreaker delayed until 2002.

March 7, 2001: White House Situation Room meeting with Condi, Richard Clarke, General Raduege, Nacchio, Payne, and representatives from Raytheon and GTE.

At the meeting, Mr. Clarke asked the group if it was possible to create a network, then proceeded to describe [redacted]. Mr. Payne hadn't known that Clarke had the "need to know" that would have allowed him to know the details of this project.

After describing this "hypothetical" network, Mr. Clarke asked the group what kind of company could do this. Everyone said no one could, it couldn't be done. Mr. Nacchio, instead of saying "I already built this network twice, once for [redacted] and once for DISA," instead simply described how it could be done. Later, Paul Kurtz (a NSC staffer) told Mr. Payne that Mr. Clarke did this because he wanted to see Mr. Nacchio's response.

[snip]

... what Mr.Clarke had in mind for GovNet was an "airgap network," impervious to outside attack.

May 9, 2001: Meeting with Richard Clarke on GovNet at Anschutz Ranch.

June 6, 2001: Meeting with Wolfowitz on GovNet?

July 31, 2001: CSC wins Groundbreaker contract; Qwest is not included among sub-contractors. NSA's press release states the program will be "fully functional" by November 2001.

Comments

[pdaly]

Nice timeline, ew.

Does this impervious GovNet have the blessing of both political parties? Any idea whether Richard Clarke, when he stepped down from terrorism 'czar' to become internet security head honcho was acting in good faith or helping the Republicans to set up their privatized spynet?

I posted a comment on your earlier Nacchio thread. Wondering if the Fort Meade fire that destroyed NSA data sounds fishy, seeing as it was then the catalyst to privatize the NSA data storage task.

[Ishmael]

So, is there some kind of secret "black box" contract for the non-Groundbreaker aspect? Is it possible that this was connected to the exemption for reporting certain contracts to the SEC that Bush put through to allow the DCI/Negroponte to avoid reporting requirements? Are there any connections to Dusty Foggo/Brent Wilkes? And was all this driven by the worries of General Counsel at the telcoms about civil & criminal liability? It is amazing to me (well, no, actually it isn't) that the corporate and outside counsel are more concerned about violations of Sarbanes/Oxley than they are about the 4th Amendment, but there you go.

[radiofreewill]

What seems to be getting described in the article is the creation of a National NOC (network operations center) that used Groundbreaker to tap into the Switches of various Telecoms and piped the info to a redundant pair of Sites (probably east coast/west coast.)

As some of the telecom aware commenters on this site have said - you can have All the data the Telecoms have, but it's useless without the management software to understand it. So, chances are the deal also required 'contractors' from the Various Telecoms to work at the National NOC, staffing their own 'mirrored' systems.

None of this, so far, would be a problem for anybody. And, to get $50-100 Million for participating in it was probably profitable business.

My guess on where the line got drawn by qwest - that made the deal non-profitable in their opportunity analysis - was on the liability for 'hooking in' their Customer databases to the NSA's searches and possible driftnets early on, but more recently probably 'mapping' the databases to API's for entity analytics/identity resolution data-mining programs.

Qwest's responsiblity for due diligence, and ianal, would seem to be at least at the level of Plato's "Do you give a friend in a reckless state of mind a weapon when they ask for it?" (In one of the relatively few 'solved' Socratic dialogues - the answer is 'no.')

In the timeline, Qwest appears to be balking at the 'reckless' construction of an element of the project from a liability perspective, while at the same time going along with the 'safe' parts. Ultimately it appears, however, Qwest remained unsatisfied with whatever, if any, legal justifications were offered by the Government to 'immunize' them from mis-use of Their Customer Data.

[sojourner]

Connected but slight OT... I have pondered a time or two here about the reassembly of AT&T from its post anti-trust pieces.

If AT&T was handling this super double-secret program that is supposed to monitor the traffic of every telecom, how do you minimize the risk of someone spilling the beans? The answer is that you buy up all the other telecoms! That way, there are no messy agreements that have to be blessed and signed in multiple companies, which would dramatically increase the exposure to persons who may not be loyal Bush Republicans dedicated to security at all costs.

In my opinion, that is why we now have an enormous AT&T behemoth again! It is now a branch of the federal government!

[orionATL]

now this is interesting.

and really disturbing.

as an aside:

if a lady running a private "intelligence" outfit can pick off a bin laden speech by monitoring a hidden al quaeda communications network,

why must the american government have the capacity to sift thru and then zero in and listen in on american conversations - or foreign conversations for that matter?

after all, "foreign" persons are persons, too.

british and french and indian citizens are as entitled to their privacy as we are to ours.

the bush admin's mania for govt spying using telecommunications equipment, computer software, and super computers is just more of the james bond/star wars (the missile defense system, not the movie) worship of technology that is an article of FAITH to the right-wing.

their belief seems to be that there is always a science, a technology, and a resulting machine, tool, or device which will solve national security problems.

are russian missiles a threat - design an anti-missile defense. sounds reasonable, doesn't it?

want to thwart an al-quada attack - examine every frickin' phone call in the world which sifting software suggests might offer a warning of an attack. sounds reasonable, doesn't it?

of course, there's the nagging matter of human judgment and motive, e.g., pres bush ignoring (deliberately, i believe) the president's daily briefing presented to him in august 2001 which briefing suggesting terrorists might try to fly a plane into a building.

and the recent matter of the nsa, homeland security, et al having a bureaucratic spat which slowed down the application of a fisa warrant.

does this human failure remind you of anything? how about when the fbi in d.c. would not authorize surveillance of would-be airplane pilot massoui in minnesota.

but hey, all we need to solve these "human deficiencies problems" are more clever devises, devices to elicit presidential and bureaucratic good judgment - perhaps worn on the back, under the jacket.

all this faith by right-wingers (ronald regan as well as george bush) that technology is THE answer to national security problems

is a function of right-wingers illiteracy in science, coupled with their willingness to exploit it for the benefit of their movement:

spying science and engineering - good;

global warming science - bad;

control over their women's reproductive systems - bad;

new, improved nuclear weapons - good.

and so it goes.

always in the service of the movement.

about richard clarke:

i think i recall that when clark was being grilled before the 9/11 commission, he responded to a question of why he had stayed on (as national security council counter terrorism adviser) after bush was elected.

i think his answer was that he had a computer security project he had been working on that he considered of great importance.

so the "two parts" of the communications security may have been

- protect our communications system from saba toge and infiltration, developed, pre 9/11

and

-use the system to detect terrorist threats, post 9/11.

the former would have been unexceptionable and prudent.

the latter may have been, and, under bush, probably was illegal, involving great criminal as well as civil liability for the telecos.

[JGabriel]

Emptywheel: "The rest of this chronology just describes how Qwest has built several fiber optics networks for our intelligence agencies--potentially global in scale--that they claim are 'impervious to attack'."

Just for the record, 'impervious to attack' might not be as secure or well-hardened as it sounds.

The Internet itself is (or was) considered 'impervious to attack' because the TCP/IP protocol will route around problems on the network. This was a problem as early as the first Gulf War, when attempts to bring down Iraq's networks failed, due to the robustness of internet protocols.

So it's hard to tell, from this description alone, whether 'impervious' means new technology that hardens the network, or if it's just the same level of robustness typical of today's hardware and protocols. Given that we're discussing a network built, and probably designed, by a commercial entity - I suspect the latter.

This has relevance to the public/private question as well. By 'impervious', do they mean impervious to security breaches, or impervious to network network failure? For the former, you'd want a private network; for the latter, you'd want gateways to the public internet to route traffic in the event of internal failures.

I know this doesn't answer any questions, but I thought it might be useful for people to know the distinctions.

Finally, here's a little pedantic glossary moment to help people interpret and discuss these issues:

Robustness: typically means the ability to keep working despite degradation or other problems. A network that couldn't be brought down would be called robust.

Hardened: typically means that it's not susceptible to security breaches. A network that's impervious to security breaches would be called a hardened network.

[Chris Loosley]

A minor edit. This item is misplaced, appearing between August and December 1999:

June 2000: Nacchio meets with DISA ...

[smoke]

JGabriel et al

Question:
Discovery channel had a report about a botnet attack on Estonia last year, which temporarily disabled most of the network operations in that country. Has something changed about internet robustness?

[Davis X. Machina]

The problem of how to move intercepted signals to where the processing and analysis actually takes place, and disseminating the product thereof, without those signals themselves being intercepted, is as old as the hills.

I always assumed this was the real purpose of GovNet, whatever ostensible purpose was given to the public.

[kvenlander]

smoke, the internet robustness thing ("designed to withstand a nuclear war") is a bit of an urban myth. And today, when the internet is a bit bigger that the tens of ARPANET nodes of the past, the scale and volume of traffic create a different set of problems.

Basically, the backbone carriers have to be connected somewhere to efficiently route traffic between them. If you take out a major peering point, that traffic will try to go somewhere else, but the secondary routes might not be able to accommodate it. And in the Estonian case, if you have a huge amplifier (a distributed botnet) sending traffic to (or through) a central routing point, you're going to see massive delays for legit traffic. Dropped connections are often just some timeout expiring on the path of the data packet. Another often used method is to overwhelm the domain name servers, which map from human-readable names (thenexthurrah.typepad.com) to computer-readable addresses (11001100000010011011000111000011). If your computer can't resolve the name into number, it doesn't know where to send your request.

[readerOfTeaLeaves]

Internet robustness is also a function of the power grid and power supply; no electricity = no server function, IIRC. Sure, there are batteries to override brief power outages, but they generally are only a 'band aid' while the power is resupplied.

Question in case Friar Wm or any other knowledgeable commenter swings by and has a moment:
What are the implications of this setup for a political operative (Rove, for example) who has authorizations to create, overwrite, delete, and copy server logs, server files, server userID's, and server passwords?
And if there were such an individual, and also if that individual were interested in manipulating computerized electoral data, how would they ever be caught or apprehended?

In other words, if you have a system designed for secrecy, and this system is understood by a user (say, 'Rove'), and this user can exploit the system, then how would you ever trace vote fraud? or election fraud? or banking fraud? or false identities?

Who watches the Watchers watch the People?
And who is able to exploit the system the Watchers are supposed to be Watching?
And if someone can exploit the system, then the Watchers cannot -- by definition and system design -- spot The Silent Exploiter... and if the Watchers suspected a rogue, wouldn't they be one step behind The Exploiter at every stage?

Sounds like system with a lot of potential for anyone with nefarious intentions to exploit the system.
Creepy to the 1000th power.
Looks tailor-made for enabling fraud and malfeasance. Both financial and electoral.

[Rayne]

A secure second backbone...

Makes you wonder why the FAA system crashed this summer, eh? Was somebody making a point?

[chisholm]

Sorry--wildly OT--but I am jonesing for a Siegelman fix. Anybody holding?

[Elliott]

Ack, my wholly frivolous off topic post vaporized.

OT
readerOfTeaLeaves, was your comment "Who watches the Watchers watch the People?" inspired by Carl Sandburg?

[smoke]

Good background story (August) at Truthdig connecting NSA outsourcing, telecoms' easy ride to reconsolidation, with DOJ in driver's seat, selective prosecution of Nacchio, and roadblocks thrown in Qwest expansion plans.

Larry Strickling, former chief of the FCC Common Carrier Bureau, and Broadwing executive says that the outcomes of the MCI/Verizon deal and the AT&T/SBC deal “struck people as very odd and counter to standard DoJ analysis and interpretation.” After those mergers went through, the floodgates were opened.

Says Strickling: “The company that I worked for at the time of those two mergers is Broadwing, and Broadwing was quite concerned about those mergers. We, along with a lot of other companies, were trying to push both the DoJ and FCC to perform traditional antitrust analysis and require certain divestitures as part of the deal and obviously we were not successful in convincing either agency to do its job.”

When asked about the DoJ’s differing standards for requiring divestiture of lines for Qwest but not Verizon, Strickling simply says, “It was an aberration, but we’re coming to expect more and more aberrations these days.”

re: Nacchio prosecution

Bruce Afran, one of the lawyers leading the class-action suit against AT&T and Verizon for their participation in the government’s data-mining program, has followed the Nacchio case closely. When pressed during an interview, Afran chooses his words carefully: “We can’t ignore that Nacchio has been the only one to refuse to participate in the program, and that he was then indicted.” Afran explains that, because chief executives are paid in shares or options, they’re always selling shares. “Whenever you want to take revenge on an uncooperative CEO, all you need to do is charge him with insider trading,” says Afran.

The author highlights DOJ's cavalier disregard of the Tunney Act of 1974, passed in response to Nixon's deal with ITT, which requires independent judicial review of such mergers.

A former employee of the American Antitrust Institute explains, “The DoJ was so sure that the judge would rubberstamp the deals that they gave the parties license to close the transaction before Tunney review was complete.” In a November hearing, a testy federal judge named Emmet Sullivan challenged a confident Verizon lawyer, who claimed that the Verizon merger was already closed and pleasing customers. “If the merger is closed,” said Sullivan, “why are we here then?”

The DoJ learned from its mistakes in heeding even the semblance of law, and when the proposed BellSouth/AT&T merger was announced, instead of a formal consent decree that requires Tunney review, the DoJ simply released a press statement claiming that it found no competitive issues in the largest merger in American history.

http://www.truthdig.com/dig/item/20070809_inside_the_data_mine/

[leveymg]

EW - Thanks for excerpting this for us. The timeline is very useful because it shows that the problematic element cropped up sometime between the September and February meetings. Some bright light destined for OLC or the OVP saw the potential in Groundbreaker for an added build-out that might not have occurred to the previous management team.

A piece of history here that might explain why a secure GovNet system might have been thought essential by Clarke and others. In the mid-1990s, the head of the London al Qaeda office arranged for a piggyback on an old MCI 800 line leftover from the Gulf War running through Denver for calls from Europe to Saudi Arabia. That same central switching center served both MCI and what was then NORAD.

Of course, that made it mighty easy for NSA to tap those calls. But, as someone pointed out, a tap in can also be used as a tap out -- and that would seem to illustrate a potential vulnerability of dual-use systems. No?

Also, there should be no legal problem for any company nstalling diverters at the switching nodes. The 1994 CALEA law makes them manadatory. It's what's done with the data acquired that's a potential nightmare from a telco general counsel's due diligence perspective. Obviously, what was being suggested as part of the $100 million add-out wasn't just intercepting domestic calls - they're all intercepted and either diverted through Trusted Third Party (TTP) NSA contractors or else stored by some companies that have an alternative type of CALEA-complaint system. So, my money's on Nacchio turning down a White House-inspired offer to develop or install some sort of analytical enhancement of the existing CALEA diverter/recorders.

[emptywheel]

Thanks for the comments here folks--it is helpful.

leveymg: One of the things I've been thinking about, looking at this, is teh Telecom Act of 1996 (and I have a query into Hillary's campaign for comment on some of these issues). How much of this cooperation was payback for the Telecom Act?

[leveymg]

EW - CALEA was a major unfunded mandate, a forced investment in law enforcement which the telcos got back in spades with the '96 Act. Groundbreaker was an enormous 10 year cashcow, but more for the defense contractors than for the telcos, as the former outnumber the latter in the contract.

Could you or someone else find out how the original Groundbreaker and follow-on NSA transformation contracts were split up among the consortium members? That would tell us a lot about qui bono, at least in terms of revenue streams.

There are other benefits to a Total Surveillance Society that may be more intangible, but very real to some parties.

I can tell you, having worked for a couple of the major DC law firms most directly involved with big telco clients during this period, that there was little dispute that the '96 Act, and Pioneer/Groundbreaker, were seens as part of the natural order of things. But, that's par for the course given the organizational culture and mission.

If there were self-perceived sinister motives, it was among the politicos, not the professionals who carried this out. That's why it's so difficult to convince people here that accountability is necessary.

[readerOfTeaLeaves]

Elliot - no clue about Sandburg. (I'm familiar with the poet's name, but not his work; apologies. BTW: If you want to read some *splendid* literary analysis, swing by Scott Horton's NO COMMENT blog at harpers.org and treat yourself to his two commentaries on Don Quixote).

smoke, wow, that is some article you reference. Between you and leveymg and JGabriel, this is becoming creepy to the 1,000,000th degree.

Any commenters who might be interested in 'mapping' of earlier phases of the Internet may want to click here: http://www.cheswick.com/ches/map/gallery/index.html
The maps are not current, but they're beautiful (and look remarkably similar to brain scans).

[orionATL]

if you want info

try getting it from congressman rick boucher, democrat from sw virginia.

he's the house of reps very bright guru on telecommunications,

and, unless i'm much mistaken, had a big hand in the 1996 law.

but he's old-time, though not all that old, and very circumspect.

[pdaly]

I checked Qwest's filings in Edgar online (www.sec.gov) thinking there might be something going on in the company during EW's timeline above.

Found this nugget, (Qwest Communications's FORM 10-Q FOR QUARTER ENDED JUNE 30, 2001). Would the WH have used such information as a bargaining chip to get Nacchio onboard?:

"At the time of the Merger [note by me: Qwest merged with US West in 2000], pre-Merger Qwest had net tangible assets with a
book value of approximately $3.0 billion. To properly record the fiber optic
network at fair value, we obtained an independent appraisal that was completed
in June 2001. The appraisal resulted in a reduction of property, plant and
equipment of approximately $1.1 billion. "

This Form-10 goes on at length about a sale of private shares (?)--sorry, I cannot follow the legalese, but makes a point to say that it does not have to name the purchasers. Looks like it was some sort of deal with parties in the United Kingdom.

[orionATL]

reading smoke (19:28),

as well as commenters on the nacchio hanging,

it occurs to me that what happened to naccio

and oppositely, what happened to sbc/verizon and sbc/at&t,

is similar to what happened in alabama to former governor don siegelman vs what happened to current governor bob riley,

to whit,

"if you are in our way, and will not cooperate (nacchio) we will destroy you - not just ignore you, not just criticize you, destroy you!"

"if you compliantly co-operate with us, the keys of the kingdom are yours, specifically the 1970's breakup of at&t will be undone, to your company's benefit."

while i attribute the siegelman manipulations of law to karl rove,

my sense is that the only person in government who would crush an american ceo as punishment (and re-create a national monopoly as reward) is dick chaney.

there is no one else in our national government who operates with that special degree of remorseless ruthlessness that cheney does -

a living, breathing, operating american reincarnation of the russian paranoid and dictator, joseph stalin.

[pdaly]

Another part of the business plan Qwest was boasting about was the fact that it had land rights of way along the transcontinental railroad. I wondered if anyone tried to interfere with those rights of way.
This is what I found so far.

Excerpt from the NYTimes

Supreme Court Refuses Review of Railroad Rights-of-Way Case
By DOW JONES/THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: June 21, 2005
WASHINGTON, June 20 (Dow Jones/AP) - The Supreme Court on Monday refused to review whether a lower court [my note: i.e., the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, in Chicago] properly overturned a $140 million class-action settlement [my note: a Federal District Court approved in July 2003 a revision of the original 2002 settlement between the telecommunications companies listed below. Guess who is on the list? Hint: Not AT&T!] involving several telecommunications companies and owners of land adjacent to railroad rights of way purchased by the companies.
The telecommunications companies bought railroad rights of way across the country beginning in the 1980's to expand their fiber optic networks. Adjacent landowners brought lawsuits to be compensated by the telecommunications companies.
In this case, the companies settling include a unit of the Sprint Corporation; a unit of Level 3 Communications; a unit of the Leucadia National Corporation; and a unit of Qwest Communications International.”
[snip]

The above article was written in such a convoluted way (on purpose I believe) that I summarized it below:

Qwest et al reached a settlement in 2002 with the adjacent landowners to the Railroad rights of way that the companies bought for their fiber optic cables. Qwest et al agreed to pay the landowners a fair price. However, some affected landowners fought the 2002 settlement in court. In 2003, the Federal District Court worked out a revision to the settlement between Qwest et al and the affected landowners. However, some landowners (their identities would make a nice post) appealed this revised settlement and won their appeal in Chicago’s US Court of Appeals. Then (I assume Qwest and the other companies appealed this ruling), but the US Supreme Court refused to hear the case.

Does this leave Qwest et al in the lurch? Did it prevent or merely delay them from continuing to build their west to east fiber optic backbone? Was any WH operative involved in the legal maneuverings?

[Waiting in Texas]

EW,
Have you ever come across anything to do with PROMIS Software? A book about the capabilities of PROMIS that I highly recommend is Crossing the Rubicon, by Michael Ruppert. It talks extensively about the PROMIS software and its back door computer capabilities. He also has a website that covered the whole PROMIS issue (www.fromthewildnerness.com). Not trying to give a plug for the guy, but reading some of the telecom stuff, made me think about PROMIS.