will joe nacchio's new trial lead to new disclosures re surveillance?

as has been widely-reported, ex-qwest
CEO joe nacchio has been granted a "do-
over" on his criminal insider-trading (based
on so-called "soft information" -- he
put out, that then didn't pan out) convictions.

what interested EW, talkleft, and
now, me (late to the party, as ever!),
is the breadth of the new trial order.

it grants nacchio an entirely new court,
new judge and new jury -- thus, it portends
the possibility that some
of the "secret" information nacchio
wanted to use in his first defense
case-in-chief (that was barred,
first time around), will now be
ruled admissable. [though, to be
fair, the appelate panel specifically
rejected mr. nacchio's claims
of reversible error, and predjudice,
on that particular score.]

this may be even more likely, given the unusual
lengths to which the tenth circuit court appeals
panel went to criticize the implied lack of
impartiality of the original trial judge. see
that opinion (PDF) here.


so -- as we wondered, twice last fall,
will we finally find out that nacchio was,
in part, "punished" by the government (as
the first person ever both tried and convicted
of multiple crimes, based solely on soft
information mis-statements -- as opposed to past
financial "hard" mis-statements), for refusing to
aid in the government's wholesale warrantless
surveillance of our telecommunications activities
in the months after 9/11?

we shall see. i suspect nacchio will still
be found guilty of some crimes, but may be
able to establish that at least some of his
being singled-out for criminal -- as opposed
to civil -- enforcement action, was driven
by his "growing a back-bone" during the post-
9/11 period of government over-reaching. . .

here are two images from last fall's go
'round [as ever, click to enlarge]:



folks -- this is significant. why was
our government working on "groundbreaker"
a full seven months BEFORE 9/11?. . .

see this post, for the context,
on the below:




p e a c e