the government's first UNSEALED answer to nacchio's claims -- october 22, 2007

today, the washington post is carrying
a "down-the-middle" story on these
newly-unsealed trial court documents,
from the nacchio criminal appeal, in denver.

the wa po story is neither fish, nor fowl.

that is -- while the story makes mention
of the broader implications of the nacchio
documents [putative evidence of a PRE-9/11
program -- or effort to create a program -- to
engage in wholesale, systemic, warrantless sur-
veillance of innocent american citizens], it does
nothing to analyze the unsealed documents
from that point of view. . .

the story, instead, concentrates (perhaps msm-
appropriately) on whether these government
documents undercut nacchio's claims of govern-
ment retaliations, ostensibly for refusing
to go along with wholesale
warrantless spying.

i think the documents do undercut
the claim of retaliation made
by nacchio -- but that is, in
itself -- scarcely a surprise.
in fact, the idea that a con-
victed felon might allege the
existence of a wide-ranging
"g-man" vendetta against him,
personally, is rather yawn-inducing
in many white-collar criminal
defense circles.

it should scarcely be the lede of a wa po
story, in fact. now, the reason i've spent
so many electrons above, casting aspersions
on the credibility of nacchio's retaliation
claim is that it is not the news-story, at all.

the news-story here is that the government's
own documents -- from early 2001 -- corroborate
that substantial meetings on a project called
"groundbreaker" actually took place.

forget whether it offers a "soft-
information is non-actionable"
defense to the nacchio insider-trading
charges, and subsequent conviction. . .

focus on the fact that the below
excerpts of an interview with james payne,
the government-contracting v.p. at
qwest, confirm that a wide-ranging,
clandestine contracting-process was
underway in february of 2001. the below
is from page 24 of last night's unsealed
government filing -- it is part of the
second appendix of that filing.

click to enlarge:



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

to be clear, i am implying only that
cheney and bush wanted to thwart the
constitution's warrant requirement prior
to their immensely tragic, yet-
entirely-fortuitous excuse -- the
excuse of global terror attacks [i
don't subscribe, in any fashion, to the
tin-foil-hatted-notions that our
government concocted 9/11, at all].

w h e w. . .

but seriously -- if it can be shown
that cheney and bush were actively
seeking warrantless surveillance of
u.s. citizens before 9/11, that would
be the sort of "high crime and mis-
demeanor" we have been waiting on proof
for -- and this proof comes from the
governmnet's own documents, no less.

forget for a moment, that joe nacchio,
as a convicted felon, is trying to
escape jail for insider-trading, by
dint of unsealing these documents. . .
and read them with your better eyes -- the
eyes that freshly-acknowledge these are
genuine government admissions. notice
that the blackened portions refer to
classified agencies and classified projects.

then apply occam's razor.

"mmMMMmm-peach-mint", anyone?

[i'll raise my hand!]

p e a c e