Kondracke denounced Qwest as "basically helping terrorists" for not
giving customers' phone records to NSA.
On Fox News' Special Report, Roll Call executive editor Morton
Kondracke said the telecommunications company Qwest was "basically
helping terrorists" because "to its discredit, [it] said it was not
cooperating with the NSA [National Security Agency] and specifically
decided not to cooperate" by providing the NSA with the phone call
records of its customers.
According to The New York Times, a lawyer representing Qwest's former
CEO has said that the company "[[Qwest]] turned down requests by the
National Security Agency for private telephone records because it
concluded that doing so would violate federal privacy laws." During
the "All-Star panel" on the May 17 edition of Fox News' Special Report
with Brit Hume, Roll Call executive editor Morton M. Kondracke said
the telecommunications company Qwest was "basically helping
terrorists" because "to its discredit, [it] said it was not
cooperating with the NSA [National Security Agency] and specifically
decided not to cooperate" by providing the NSA with the phone call
records of its customers. "Now, you know, if we're fighting a war on
terrorism," Kondracke said, "you'd think the telephone companies would
want to cooperate, and I would hope that they would be
cooperating. And for a company to opt out and say, 'No, no, no, we're
too privacy-minded for this,' you know, it's basically helping
terrorists."
A May 11 USA Today report that NSA has been collecting and analyzing
records of phone calls made by millions of Americans since 2001 stated
that, according to its sources, "[a]mong the big telecommunications
companies, only Qwest has refused to help the NSA." According to a May
12 New York Times article, former Qwest CEO Joseph N. Nacchio has
stated that "Qwest turned down requests by the National Security
Agency for private telephone records because it concluded that doing
so would violate federal privacy laws," although the company itself
has not commented on the USA Today article. The Times article noted
that Nacchio left Qwest in 2002 and that he was indicted in December
2005 on 42 counts of "insider selling."
From the May 17 edition of Fox News' Special Report with Brit Hume:
KONDRACKE: Well, these statements are very carefully worded, and it
took six days for them to come out. And in the beginning, Qwest, this
other company, to its discredit, said that it wasn't cooperating with
the NSA, and it, you know, it specifically decided not to
cooperate. Now, you know, if we're fighting a war on terrorism, you'd
think the telephone companies would want to cooperate, and I would
hope that they would be cooperating. And for a company to opt out and
say, "No, no, no, we're too privacy minded for this," you know, it's
basically helping terrorists. I think Senator [Pat] Roberts [R-KS] is
absolutely right. I mean, what's going on now is shocking. People are
treating the Constitution of the United States as a suicide pact.
Here we have Al Qaeda -- I mean, everybody has been watching [the
film] United 93, and everybody should watch United 93 just to remind
us of what we're dealing with. They would slam a plane into the
Capitol, they would blow up an atomic bomb if they possibly could, and
we're acting as though people who are trying to protect us are
criminals.
[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Does any person with half a brain, or
an IQ higher than the outside temperature on a fall day give any
attention at all to what Fox News has to say? PAT]
Media Matters (mediamatters@telecom-digest.org)