By Ellen Nakashima and Dan Eggen
A former Qwest Communications International executive, appealing a conviction for insider trading, has alleged that the government withdrew opportunities for contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars after Qwest refused to participate in an unidentified National Security Agency program that the company thought might be illegal.
Former chief executive Joseph P. Nacchio, convicted in April of 19 counts of insider trading, said the NSA approached Qwest more than six months before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, according to court documents unsealed in Denver this week.
Details about the alleged NSA program have been redacted from the documents, but Nacchio's lawyer said last year that the NSA had approached the company about participating in a warrantless surveillance program to gather information about Americans' phone records.
In the court filings disclosed this week, Nacchio suggests that Qwest's refusal to take part in that program led the government to cancel a separate, lucrative contract with the NSA in retribution. He is using the allegation to try to show why his stock sale should not have been considered improper.
Nacchio was convicted for selling shares of Qwest stock in early 2001, just before financial problems caused the company's share price to tumble. He has claimed in court papers that he had been optimistic that Qwest would overcome weak sales because of the expected top-secret contract with the government. Nacchio said he was forbidden to mention the specifics during the trial because of secrecy restrictions, but the judge ruled that the issue was irrelevant to the charges against him.
Nacchio's account, which places the NSA proposal at a meeting on Feb. 27, 2001, suggests that the Bush administration was seeking to enlist telecommunications firms in programs without court oversight before the terrorist attacks on New York and the Pentagon. The Sept. 11 attacks have been cited by the government as the main impetus for its warrantless surveillance efforts.
The allegations could affect the debate on Capitol Hill over whether telecoms sued for disclosing customers' phone records and other data to the government after the Sept. 11 attacks should be given legal immunity, even if they did not have court authorization to do so.
"Mr. Nacchio made inquiry as to whether a warrant or other legal process had been secured in support of that request," Stern said. "When he learned that no such authority had been granted and that there was a disinclination on the part of the authorities to use any legal process, including the Special Court which had been established to handle such matters, Mr. Nacchio concluded that these requests violated the privacy requirements of the Telecommunications Act."
Stern could not be reached for comment yesterday. Another lawyer for Nacchio, Jeffrey Speiser, declined to comment on whether the call-records program was the program discussed at the February 2001 meeting.
Spokesmen for the Justice Department, the NSA, the White House and the director of national intelligence declined to comment, citing the ongoing legal case against Nacchio and the classified nature of the NSA's activities. Federal filings in the appeal have not yet been disclosed.
In May 2006, USA Today reported that the NSA had been secretly collecting the phone-call records of tens of millions of Americans, using data provided by major telecom firms. Qwest, it reported, declined to participate because of fears that the program lacked legal standing.
In a statement released after the story was published, Nacchio attorney Herbert Stern said that in fall 2001, Qwest was approached to give the government access to the private phone records of Qwest customers. At the time, Nacchio was chairman of the president's National Security Telecommunications Advisory Committee.
By Keith B. Richburg
PLAINFIELD, N.J. -- If the country is facing a nationwide health-care crisis, then the condition in New Jersey can be described as gravely critical.
The state has an estimated 1.3 million people without health insurance who cannot pay a doctor or a hospital bill. New Jersey law requires that hospitals treat anyone who walks through their doors, and then get reimbursed later by the state. But the state's looming budget shortfall has forced it to cut back on the reimbursements, leaving hospitals to pick up the tab. And hospitals, in turn, are going broke: Six have closed in the past 18 months, and half of those remaining are operating in the red.
As the economy falters, the number of uninsured is likely to grow, and so will the burden on hospitals. And with more hospitals expected to shut their doors, New Jersey faces a nasty culmination of health-care crises.
The situation has come to a head in this city of 48,000 people -- majority black, largely poor and with many new immigrants moving in. The city's hospital of 130 years, Muhlenberg Regional Medical Center, is slated to become the latest casualty of this faltering system, closing its acute-care facility later this year. The obstetrics and pediatrics wards have already shut, and equipment is being packed up and wheeled out.
The hospital says it lost $16.8 million last year and will lose another $18 million in 2008, leaving its owners little choice but to close it down. But news of this latest closure has hit hard for those in Plainfield and surrounding towns who have come to rely on Muhlenberg. Many are elderly, some have chronic conditions, and they will now have to travel as far as 10 miles away for care.
"I don't think people know what will happen if Muhlenberg closes -- there will be a lot of deaths," said Jeanne Smith, whose husband, Thomas Smith, is paraplegic, needs dialysis and suffers from a variety of illnesses. Thomas Smith, 77, has been in and out of Muhlenberg a half-dozen times in the past year. "My husband probably would have died if Muhlenberg wasn't five minutes away," she said.
"What are people supposed to do?" asked Marion Trabelsi, a retired French and Spanish teacher who was treated at Muhlenberg for a heart attack and who relied on the hospital when she was unemployed and had no insurance. She suffers from high blood pressure and high cholesterol and says the hospital's closure "is definitely a death sentence for me," adding: "I could have a heart attack at any time."
Although everyone agrees New Jersey's health-care system is a mess, no one is quite certain where to place blame. But there is plenty of finger-pointing in all directions.
Muhlenberg, owned by Solaris Health System, blames the huge growth in uninsured patients, the underfunding of Medicaid and Medicare and the state's budget cuts for charity care. "The healthcare system in New Jersey is clearly broken," Muhlenberg says on its Web site. "And hospitals that serve a high percentage of poor and uninsured cannot survive under these pressures."
Some in the community have launched protests over the closure, blaming Solaris for wanting to close a hospital in a poor, heavily minority city while keeping open another hospital in a more affluent town, Edison, where there are fewer charity-care patients.
Others blame the state government for not fully reimbursing hospitals like Muhlenberg that provide care to the poor and the uninsured. Gov. Jon S. Corzine (D) on June 30 signed a $32.9 billion state budget for 2009 that includes $605 million for charity care, a cut of $111 million from last year. In speeches, Corzine has called the cuts to charity care "heartbreaking."
Some health-care professionals blame New Jersey's problems on the proliferation in recent years of ambulatory care centers -- outpatient facilities that have lured many insured patients away from hospitals that were once the main care providers. "They take away all of our paying patients," said Betsy Ryan, president and chief executive of the New Jersey Hospital Association.
No comments:
Post a Comment