Posted on 05/18/2006 1:54:59 PM PDT by abb
SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- BellSouth Corp. (BLS) has sent a letter to USA Today and the newspaper's parent company, Gannett Co. (GCI) , demanding the retraction of a story which said the phone company shared its customers calling records with a federal spy agency, according to a Thursday report in the online edition of the Wall Street Journal. The letter demanded that the newspaper retract the "faults and unsubstantiated statements" in the May 11 article, which said BellSouth and some of its rivals shared bulk calling data with the National Security Agency, the Journal said. The story ignited a firestorm about government intrusion into consumer privacy and led to lawsuits against BellSouth, Verizon Communications Inc. (VZ) and AT&T Inc. (T) . A phone call to BellSouth wasn't immediately returned
Excellent!!!!!!
I don't think USA today has permission from her Dem masters to retract that inaccurate story.
"faults and unsubstantiated statements" ?
Retraction will not advance the unsaid story line, which is that Bush should be impeached.
FYI...the statement the MSM has been making:It was never retracted and never corrected, it just sank in a hole.
On July 18, 2003, the administration, facing criticism for the intelligence used to justify the war, declassified an eight-page part of the NIE dubbed "key judgments" and conducted a lengthy background briefing with reporters to discuss it.“Key judgments" is the operative word here. They were declassified by Tenet in October of 2002, six days after the NIE was complete per the following information:
On October 7, 2002 DCI Tenet sent a letter to the Senate Intelligence Committee declassifying portions of its new National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq.Another article:
A 25-page version of the National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction was released in October 2002. It made clear-cut statements about Iraq's nuclear, biological and chemical weapons capabilities in two pages of "Key Judgments."A copy of the Key Judgments document can be found here. Warning: .pdf file.
As usual, the MSM gets it wrong. More info I just found:
The American people needed to know these reservations, and I requested that an unclassified, public version of the NIE be prepared. On Oct. 4, Tenet presented a 25-page document titled "Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction Programs." - Statement of Sen. Bob Graham (D-FL).
ping
I saw that too..it probably should be "false" instead of "faults".
Anyone know if the original USA Today story had a byline?
Don't mean to sound like I've been under a rock since the USA Today story broke, but is it true that we will never know if phone number records were ever shared. I heard something about the program, through some line in some legislation, was that the phone companies by law weren't even allowed to talk about the program. That they must deny invovlement in it? I've been too distracted by the immigration debacle to pay attention to this story.
Of course, we reserve the right to sell your name and number to solicitors but we will always stiff-arm the people trying to keep another 9/11 from occurring. We won't even give them the sanitized records with just the numbers.
The fake news writers need to write a big, fat check.
No telling how many customers BellSouth lost because of the story. Retraction, or lawsuit. Maybe both.
Sue them and everyone of the MSM that followed suit but don't let them off the hook that easy. $50 billion should put them under.
There is a lady in Nashville who already has a lawyer (a city councilman) and has filed a class action lawsuit against Bellsouth saying they violated the Federal Stored Communications Act. She is seeking monetary damages and any profits that Bellsouth made from its dealings with the NSA. I can't post or excerpt from a Gannett newspaper where the article is found. Here's the link. http://www.tennessean.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=200660516007
BellSouth Seeks Retraction Of USA Today's NSA Story
By DIONNE SEARCEY
May 18, 2006 4:30 p.m.
As lawsuits mount against BellSouth Corp., the phone company faxed a letter to USA Today demanding the newspaper retract "the faults and unsubstantiated statements" outlined in an article naming the company as having provided domestic calling records to the National Security Agency.
The letter sent Thursday to USA Today President and Publisher Craig Moon as well as the general counsel of the newspaper's parent company, Gannett Co., asks for an immediate correction of the article's characterization of BellSouth's relationship to the NSA.
According to BellSouth, the letter quotes phrasing from the May 11 article7 that describes a massive database of domestic calls that BellSouth as well as Verizon Communications Inc. and AT&T Inc. provided to the NSA.
Earlier this week, BellSouth denied turning over bulk calling records to the NSA, amid uproar over the alleged role of phone companies in U.S. surveillance efforts. The Atlanta-based company also said the agency had never contacted it to provide massive amounts of information about domestic calls.
President Bush has neither confirmed nor denied that such a program exists, but said the NSA's surveillance efforts were legal and focused on terrorist suspects. "We're not mining or trolling through the personal lives of millions of innocent Americans," he said in televised remarks.
The publicity fallout against phone companies stemming from the allegations has been harsh with lawmakers on Capitol Hill and at least one member of the Federal Communications Commission calling for answers from the companies and the filing of a handful of lawsuits claiming the companies violated customer privacy.
New York-based Verizon has also denied it was approached by the NSA or "entered into an arrangement to provide the NSA with data from its customers' domestic calls."
AT&T, the largest phone company in the U.S., said it doesn't allow wiretapping without a court order and hasn't given customer information to law-enforcement authorities or government agencies without legal authorization.
Joseph Nacchio, the former chief executive of Qwest Communications International Inc. who is now facing insider-trading charges, confirmed last week that he rejected a request for "access to the private telephone records of Qwest customers" from the National Security Agency in 2001.
... But its double sourced!! /sarc
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