Because a truism in Information Technology, which goes all the way back to the ibm main frames and bell labs worked with the government in world war ii is the first user of Information Technology and most advanced user of Information Technology is going to be the defense establishment in the u. S. Government. And i use defense in the broadest term. Im talking about anything associated with defense. So theyre first guys in, and when we build qwest, or as we went public with what we were building, before we had laid more than a thousand miles of cable, we did 26,000 in the u. S. We were already engaged or approached to participate. So what was the you were asked to chair this committee called the Network Reliability and interoperability council. Explain what that really was trying to accomplish. There was really two federal advisory committees of substance for the Technology Industry. The Technology Industry included not just the telecoms, it included microsoft and ciscos the people you know there, and a lot of the defense players. So you had the lockheed martins, northrop grummans, all the systems interrelated to what we were building, depending who we were building it for. The long and short of it was there was a concern prior to 9 11, which was realized at 9 11, you remember, when southern manhattan went out of service, all of the country went out of service for your cell phones. There was a question that said, in case of disaster recovery, what are the scenarios that could knock out command and control, you knock out command and control, you knock out everything youre using as a collateral consequence. And how would we recover . And so because of antitrust concerns, i couldnt talk with at t or mci or sprint directly. Or the bells in certain regards. So advisory committees were formed under the National Security umbrella, and the fcc played on that. Thats the Network Reliability committee. What we were trying to figure out in those days, given the existing law, how could we quickly respond to back each other up, what could be Critical Infrastructure problems, at what layer in the hierarchy would you be attacked . I should point out, it is interesting, i was liz listening to some of the Technology People saying we have to be able to back each other up, we were worried about this in the late 90s. America has been in the cyberwar sense the birth of the internet. We got better and smarter and faster than everybody else. These were problems this 1996 and 1997 when you were still using bulky laptops if you had them, okay. So the intelligence community, defense department, appropriately, to defend the nation, was engaged in this stuff. And these committees were there to deal with those questions because the assets are owned in this country in private hands, not by the government. So for them to do their job, it is necessary for us to be engaged. So basically at the very beginning of all of this there had to be this very close nexus between government and the telecommunications industry. Absolutely. And we did a lot of what we call special construction for certain customers, because even the National Infrastructure by itself wasnt going to look at all of the disaster scenarios appropriately. So at some point, you were asked to come on to the National Security telecommunications advisory committee. Why dont you tell us how did that come about. How did you find out they wanted you for this. Well, you know, i had to tell you, it is interesting when you do a Startup Company and you come out of a big company like at t. Just as a joke, first time i walked into Newark Airport and had to get on a commercial flight after flying corporate jets, i couldnt figure out how to maneuver myself. You walk into a Small Company and you do all this stuff yourself, and, you know, you try to build the company and you try to build infrastructure, try to hire people, and then you have the government come in with overlays, it is a real challenge. And so you do it from the front end. I think somebody said it earlier, you try to design reliability and into the product at the front end and thats what we were trying to do. From the beginning, we didnt have more than, like i said, less than a thousand miles of cable wire was laying down on the ground when i got visited by a threestar general in my office in denver with an unannounced visit. That doesnt usually happen. I never met a threestar general, fortunately. I had a high number in vietnam war and beat the draft, that was the best thing that ever happened to me. The bottom line is when a general shows up unannounced and wants to meet you, you generally say yes. That is what i did. I had this meeting and then i got a top secret security clearance from that point in 1998 to the point in early 2000, we got deeply embedded and all im allowed to say, i should point out, 14 years later, i was reminded three months ago that i still am guided by the espionage act in terms of what i can say and even who holds my clearance back 14 years ago remains a classified act today. And which im going to talk about secrecy in a minute. I got involved youre not going to tell us who the general was. I can tell you the general. I would like to say because they would kill me, but they did worse than that, so the bottom line is you cant disclose and it puts you in a very tough position. For the skeptics out there, who were watching on the web or anywhere else, i think a lot of people would say, you know this guy is blowing smoke. He got convicted. Hes a felon. Dont believe anything he has to say. Thats the position of justice department. It just doesnt foot with the classified with the declassified transcripts of 17 months in the cpa court. But i was working we were working, and by 2000, we were deeply embedded in what im allowed to say is four clandestine security agencies and as a result of that, dick clark recommended that i jump ahead of the queue and become chairman of nstack. Which footed nicely with the Network Reliability. Thats that National Security telecommunications thats really the more Important Committee if i was to say it in retrospect. You dont want to say no. If the government approaches you, first of all, if youre going to make money for your company, fiduciary responsibility, look at the opportunity. But as a i hate to use the term patriotism, because i think it is a hollow term today, but, you know if the government comes and says we need you guys to work on something, want to clear you, want to tell you why, here is what we want to do and well give you money, what are you going to say . I dont want to be bothered . You say yes. Now today if you say no to them there is other consequences. Right. So at some point you i said yes. You said yes. I got appointed to the committee, became vice chairman, became the chair. Okay. So you want to tell us about this february 27, 2001 meeting . Well, you know, i think there say lot of serendipity in life that if had you just walked into the other room instead of this room, your life would have been totally different. Just to preface the february 27th meeting, at college, when i was interviewing, when i was going to graduate, i thought i was going to proctor and gamble interview and walked into the wrong interview it was at t long lines. Thats how i got into telecom. Fast forward 27 years, i get a phone call on february 26th from my guy that runs the washington classified stuff and said to me in code words, there is something interesting, i need your help. That means get on a plane, come to washington. I land at reagan national. We run over to the pentagon for a nonclassified meeting. And then we drive up to baltimore washington turnpike and walk into a qwest skiff. A skiff is one of those rooms that if you the cone of silence with maxwell smart, where they cant eavesdrop. We go into a skiff, get briefed, im supposed to meet with michael hayden, the head of the nsa at the time. Walk into the meeting, should have known immediately when he didnt show up that something bad was going to happen. We have the normal meeting. And we do the legitimate work and then there is a bunch of people down the end of the table, basically ask me a couple of questions and they say they need some help on this other project. And i not a lawyer. And but i had been in telecom for 28, 29 years by now. I knew the requirements of the telecom act on privacy, i knew there was an act in 86 that dealt with Data Communications and so i asked the obvious question, and the obvious question you ask you meet with intelligence people, particularly if theyre not fbi, meaning theyre supposed to be looking at foreign intelligence, is you ask if they want to do something to the united states, do you have a fisa warrant . Foreign Intelligence Service act. Talked about it this morning. Came out of the Church Committee in 78, the answer was no. Actually the answer wasnt no. If the answer was no, i would have felt better. The answer was, we dont believe we require it. Well, thats called in corporate speak thats called an idiot question. Theyre trying to determine how much of an idiot am i. To say they dont require it means you shouldnt have asked the question. Then i asked the second question and that is, if you dont need a fisa warrant, do you have executive authority, meaning did it come out of the staff from the president . The answer was no. I said well be happy to help, but you need to show me some authority because, you know, i cant participate. Thats all i can say. We got black balled after that. I learned six months later, it wasnt until june of the first contract we thought we had, we didnt get, 150 million bucks. Later that year, we lost 700 million in contracts. I get indicted five years later, and what im told is, youre being indicted because your forecast for 18 months in the future has too much risk in it. Okay. I had been in telecom for over 30 years at the time. I never had a forecast that on business that the people below me thought was reasonable. They would always want what we call sandbag, the lowest commitment, so they can beat it and get paid incentive compensation, i want the higher commitment to force the performance. This is literally what my case was about. With one caveat. Everybody who testified against me never had clearances and didnt know about the government work. And i was prevented from bringing any of it up. Were going to come to that in a moment. Thats the genesis of how i got it has been reported in the media that you were the only Telecommunications Executive at that time that didnt turn over customer records. Is that the is that what were talking about here . Are we talking about Something Else . What has been reported in the media, first in 2006, usa broke a story about the nsa Telephone Company for billing records and they reported and i had nothing to do with this story, nor my lawyers, that qwest was the only company that said no. Thats true. That is not what was happening prior to 9 11. So whatever this was was something other than that. Yeah. Even though that in fact was true. That is true. We also said no a second time. But for that. But there was a more serious question asked earlier. Now ill now we can talk a little bit about what was different about your case. They had this novel theory, but there was there was Something Different about how your case unfolded. Why dont you explain what it was that was different about it. To paraphrase, what is the boy from brooklyn in the middle of all of this stuff for . We learned very early that they opened an investigation on us. And, of course, like any good corporate board, first thing you do is blame the ceo and then you buy him out of his contract, which they did. I technically resigned, they paid me a lot of money to leave, i took it and left, thats always the deal. Four years later, theyre coming after me on an Insider Trading charge which i think is absurd because for those of you who know the s. E. C. , they have rules, rule 10b51, if you sell options, here is how you do it. I hired internal lawyers to design the plan. We got the board to approve it. We announced it four months in advance and they still said i did Insider Trading. But you cant once you fight the justice department, theyll come up with 100 reasons why that was all part of my conspiracy. What the interesting thing was, i learned when i was a target, early 05, i wanted to tell my wife, you know, i said, you know, theyre if the theory is theyre coming after me for Insider Trading and if the theory is securities fraud, that the projection is wrong, i need to tell you why i thought the projections were right. First thing my lawyer said was, dont tell me anything more. When he deals with classified information you dont have Attorney Client privilege. You dont have spousal privilege. And your attorneys can be held criminally liable if they learn classified information from the defendant. The first thing that has to happen is you have to be indicted, you have to be arraigned, and then you have to petition the court to grant you a lawyer, the same clearance you have so you can tell them what your defense is. Is that what happened in your case . Thats exactly what happened. And then after that after that why dont you explain how you go about communicating with your lawyers in the realm of this information that is protected. Let me just loop back for a minute. There is something i want to say to the audience. Ive been pretty pessimistic for the last 14 years. One of the bright spots, i said this to norm last night and said it to ted and some others was just the fact that you people are holding this conference, okay. Because i think you said it earlier. That you guys are not fighting a legal issue on the matter of overreach by the federal government, surveillance, and overcriminalization. I see it as all one pattern. You are fighting money and power. Okay. You are fighting about the way this country is going to go. And the only thing i feel optimistic about is i can look around this room and see young people, okay, because im not going to be my lifetime, this isnt getting solved, okay, and you people are passionate about it. And it is going to take a groundswell. I think you said it earlier. It is going to take a battle on many fronts. When youre up against the department of justice on a normal criminal 3 conviction, you have no chance of winning. If i was fighting a normal Insider Trading case. I spent 15 million and lost, okay, across the board. And even when i won, like on appeal, they managed to get an en banc court to hear it, which is rare, and extraordinarily three judges on the 12judge panel recused themselves and i get my conviction reinstated 54. And for those of you who have been in front of an appeals court, there is a dissenting opinion, all four judges in the tenth circuit wrote individual dissenting opinions. Thats how strongly they objected to what happened on getting the thing reversed. Well, i had to go through a 17month process in what is called cpa hearings under the classified information procedures act. If you think the problems youre dealing with here on illegal surveillance or oversurveillance is difficult, when the government gets to put an extra layer of secrecy on everything, okay, you cant imagine. I was with two nsa whistleblowers yesterday, while i was in washington, they were talking to me about some things, and one of them was telling me that telling me about the east germany, exstasi guy who said, you know, we wish we could do those things when back when they were around. When i saw the u. S. Government do in those cipa courts would have made orwell, stasi and even the nazi courts be envious, okay . Let me give you a couple of examples of what they can legally do. Under section 6 of cipa, and im going to come back to section 5, a key one, even when the court says yes, you can bring this evidence forward, the prosecutors have to agree what language you can use. In other words, they can intervene and say, like, for example, i cant tell you the four agencies i worked with. Even in trial i couldnt say it. I could say four clandestine security agencies. If i wanted to say i got a call from ill make up a name from that genre of time, im not suggesting it is true. But lets assume i was meeting with george tenet, the head of the cia at the time, i couldnt say, i had this assurance from george tenet, the head of cia. What i would be allowed to say is i met with the senior government official. Now, you guys know in front of a jury that specificity leads to credibility. And i would think that it is much more credible if i was going to make a claim that i met with george tenet than some unnamed bureaucrat in some unnamed intelligence agency. Thats what the government agreed. So anything that i could even say that i was involved was watered down. More importantly, this section 4 cipa says even if it is legitimate under the federal rules of evidence, we can keep it out if it deals with National Security issues. And they actually used that on me. For those youve who are criminal defense attorneys, one of the cardinal rules in a criminal case is nobody gets to have an exparte communication with the judge. The government had three with my judge. How do we know that . Matter of fact, this is really good, if you call the u. S. Attorney who prosecuted my case, he would say this is all baloney, nothing to do with it, except now you have redacted transcripts that were released after i was put in prison, thousands of pages of it, and everything im telling you is in those redacted transcripts. How did they get released . They got released because the denver post did a First Amendment challenge, all through the 17month process and they basically took the position that in federal court that said, look, whatever is going on in the courts, everything theyre saying cant be secret. So to broker a deal after my conviction and after my sentencing, i should point out, the same fede