Verizon Follows BellSouth, Says It Gave No Records To The NSA

• May 17, 2006

Interesting…

NEW YORK — Verizon Communications Inc. denied Tuesday that it had received a request for customer phone records from the National Security Agency, bringing into question key points of a USA Today story.
“Contrary to the media reports, Verizon was not asked by NSA to provide, nor did Verizon provide, customer phone records,” the New York-based phone company said in an e-mailed statement.
The statement came a day after BellSouth Corp. also said the NSA had never requested customer call data, nor had the company provided any.
A story in USA Today last Thursday said Verizon, AT&T Inc. and BellSouth had complied with an NSA request for tens of millions of customer phone records after the 2001 terror attacks. The report sparked a national debate on federal surveillance tactics.
The newspaper story cited anonymous sources “with direct knowledge of the arrangement.”
“Sources told us that BellSouth and Verizon records are included in the database,” USA Today spokesman Steve Anderson said Tuesday.

Well, I guess one of two things is true here:

USA Today‘s source either doesn’t know the truth or is lying.
Both Verizon and BellSouth are lying.

Remember that the federal government still will not confirm or deny the existence of this NSA program. The only source we have indicating its existence is this anonymous person informing reporters.
I guess this boils down to “who are you going to believe?”, and it is an interesting conflict. The left isn’t likely to believe the hated Bush administration and a couple of “evil” corporations. The right isn’t likely to believe the liberal media and yet another one of their nameless, scandal-mongering sources.

Tags: Dennis Walaker, Domestic Issues, John Hoeven, Red River Flood

http://Array TwoHotel9

So, exactly who gave them all these millions of people’s phone conversation transcripts? Helen Thomas and Teddie Kenedy and Billary all said it did happen so obviously it did happen. They would not lie to us!
Bat One

I know this is highly speculative… and then some… but,

If I was investigating a leak of NSA operational information, such as the highly mis-characterized surveillance program published by the NYT, what better way to confirm the source of the leak than to “plant” a story about another highly classified, seemingly controversial program, perhaps varying the details among the several suspects, and then wait and see what gets printed and in which newspaper.

And if the leak came from the office of a senior Democrat member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, well so much the better.
Bat One

Seth,

Some of us have been asking those very same questions for nearly 5 years now.

I will allow that there is much we do not… and should not know about what is being done as legitimate aspects of the GWOT. But in my mind at least, the vaunted 9-11 Commission was a joke, compromised from the very beginning by the likes of Gorelick and Ben Veniste. Gorelick went on to make $ millions at FNMA, instead of going to jail as she should, the CIA is clearly, perhaps permanently broken. Clinton and Kerry National Security advisor Berger gets off with a slap on the wrist while George Tennet gets a medal. While a cabal of oblivious radical leftists at State, CIA, and the Media try to bring down the President, in the midst of a war, instead of worrying about those people who are sworn to kill as many of us as possible, by whatever means possible.

Like you so eloquently put it, Sir, WTF?
MnZ

I wonder if Joe Nacchio the USA Today’s source in the story. He would have the incentive to lie.
robert108

Bat: What makes you think this hasn’t already been done? The other shoe hasn’t dropped yet.
http://sayanythingblog.com/ Seth Yantiss

I’m not a lawyer, so let me ask:

Does the federal government have access to records used in a public trial for another party? Can these records be used to gather the kind of data that were alleged to have come directly to the NSA?

I still don’t care that the Fed datamines call data for patterns for use against terrorists. I don’t mind if they nab some law breakers as well. This WAS a non-story for me… Wow!!, do I have some interest in this now!

How is it that Rockefeller is not under investigation? Why are the people not up in arms over Sandy Berger? Why are more people interested in having Congress investigate baseball than investigate SERIOUS LEAKS form members of our own congress. We allowed a Senator to give advance warning to a PENDING MILITARY ATTACK 6 months in advance… WTF!!!!!!!!

Jamie Garellic, who penned the barrier to dot connections, gets assigned to the commission investigating the failure to connect the dots. No one seems to care. And they keep doing more of it. WTF!
Bat One

Robert108,

Much as I would like to enjoy the notion of Jay Rockefeller caught in a web of his own partisan lack of prudence, there is another, more likely explanation here.

Last week I posted the very same selection from Title 18, United States Code, Paragraph 121, Section 2709, as was posted yesterday by Rodney. If you read through it carefully, you will understand the likely, more prosaic reason for the apparent disconnect between USA’s purported blockbuster scoop and the subsequent announcements by Verizon and Bellsouth.

The records were not turned over to NSA, all as the companies have stated. They were instead turned over to the FBI, which in turn forwarded them to NSA… all as prescribed by statute. The “denials” much like those of the White House this afternoon, are designed to avoid any sort of confirmation of both on-going intelligence operations and ongoing criminal investigations as well.

Furthermore, if you read sub-paragraph (e), you’ll see that the law requires specific Congressional notifications. If those have in fact been done per the law, it would explain who has, and who has not made all the noise about this in public.

Of course, I’m quite a bit more fond of my previous, more speculative explanation, particularly the ending, however…
robert108

Bat: All of which proves, once again, that the President is doing the right thing to stop and kill the terrorists. Thanks for the info.

SayAnythingBlog.com

Verizon Follows BellSouth, Says It Gave No Records To The NSA

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