Bush retaliates against Qwest because it failed to conspire with wiretap program

For all the rightism that just oozes from the whole industry, you'd think a telcom company would be safe from Bush's Nazism. But nooooo!

New documents reveal that the NSA and other government agencies have retaliated against Denver-based telcom giant Qwest because it failed to go along with Bush's illegal phone spying program. Apparently, at the insider trading trial of former Qwest CEO Joe Nacchio, this intimidation would have formed the basis of Nacchio's "classified information" defense, had the judge allowed him to use it. Nacchio planned to show that he had a meeting in February 2001 at the NSA headquarters to discuss a secret $100,000,000 project. At the same meeting, the NSA approached Nacchio about another project, but he refused to go along with it because he considered it illegal. However, the details of that project are censored from the documents.

Following Nacchio's refusal of the second project, the NSA retaliated against Qwest by refusing in July 2001 to award Qwest the first project.

The papers also show that Qwest was slated to build a multibillion-dollar government communications network and perform other government business, before it somehow lost this privilege.

Note that all of this happened before 9/11 - so now the child molesters who support Bush's wiretap program can't use 9/11 as an excuse as they're always so intent on doing.

One thing about all this is that the telcom companies that did collude with Bush now can't defend themselves by saying they didn't know it was illegal, considering Qwest knew it was illegal.

(Source: http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/tech/article/0,2777,DRMN_23910_5719566,00.html)