It appears Qwest Communications early on recognized that work for the Bush White House was illegal. This information is coming out through documents presented during the appeal of Joe Nacchio’s conviction for insider trading. Seems early in 2001, supposedly long before the War on Terror was a gleam in Darth Cheney’s eye, the Bush Administration asked QWest Communications, through CEO Joe Nacchio, to help them with a few things. Nacchio refused some contracts for reasons of illegality. Later on Nacchio was charged and prosecuted for insider trading. His case is on appeal.

That’s a nice chain of events supported by the recent release of secret and redacted documents from the time in question. Notice the chain of events, though. Qwest refuses to cooperate with secret surveillance programs, Government retaliates by cancelling conracts, Nacchio, who had banked on those contracts sells his stocks, Nacchio is charged and then convicted of insider trading, then the US Attorney’s office prosecutors are rewarded by the DoJ. Sweet, huh? I like this part from the Rocky Mountain News article today:

The partially redacted documents were filed under seal before, during and after Nacchio’s trial. They were released Wednesday.

Nacchio planned to demonstrate at trial that he had a meeting on Feb. 27, 2001, at NSA headquarters at Fort Meade, Md., to discuss a $100 million project. According to the documents, another topic also was discussed at that meeting, one with which Nacchio refused to comply.

The topic itself is redacted each time it appears in the hundreds of pages of documents, but there is mention of Nacchio believing the request was both inappropriate and illegal, and repeatedly refusing to go along with it.

The NSA contract was awarded in July 2001 to companies other than Qwest.

USA Today reported in May 2006 that Qwest, unlike AT&T and Verizon, balked at helping the NSA track phone calling patterns that may have indicated terrorist organizational activities. Nacchio’s attorney, Herbert Stern, confirmed that Nacchio refused to turn over customer telephone records because he didn’t think the NSA program had legal standing.

In the documents, Nacchio also asserts Qwest was in line to build a $2 billion private government network called GovNet and do other government business, including a network between the U.S. and South America.

The documents maintain that Nacchio met with top government officials, including President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and then-National Security Adviser Condoleeza Rice in 2000 and early 2001 to discuss how to protect the government’s communications network.

There’s the good stuff in there, that QWest famously refused to cooperate with NSA demands for phone records in the past, and that Nacchio himself refused to cooperate with NSA requests back in 2001 prior to 9/11. Nacchio’s refusal to cooperate precedes his being targeted by the US Attorney’s office for insider trading.

One question here is whether Nacchio was prosecuted by way of retaliation for not cooperating with an illegal spying program. Of course, there are other questions, many of them raised because of the lack of faith in the integrity of the US Attorney’s office. First among those questions for me is how big a role did Alberto Gonzales have in the prosecution of Joe Nacchio, and how often did Troy Eid, the Colorado US Attorney, report up the line on progress in the case, first to Gonzales, then to Rove, then to Cheney, then to Bush. . . . Of course, evidence of such politically directed prosecution, so that the Bushies can follow their illegal surveillance agendas, which started BEFORE 9/11, would be hard to prove if we have to depend on testimony from Mr. Gonzales.