Yes, the telecoms are named defendants in the suits, AT&T above all.

But if you buy Tim Shorrock’s argument (that I’ve extrapolatd from) that one of the big points of immunity is to prevent people from knowing how big this is, how much contractors and the govt are cooperating, then you have to leave open the possibility that the vacuuming up is just the known front end of this.

If you buy the Main Core idea, for example, then you go back to Betac as the contractor with the COG contract going back to Reagan. Well, Betac is now owned by Lockheed Martin.

Also, the bidders for Groundbreaker–a parallel kind of NSA contract, albeit not covert, was usually a DOD contractor with the telecoms as subs.

You may well be right, since it looks like LM has already surpassed 2004 campaign donations. Wonder what their lobbying expenses look like…and is it possible that this is an example of a firm to which AT&T may have outsourced both work and risks?

At least in February, the nearest correlation between donations and Democratic votes in favor of the SSCI bill was donations from Lockheed Martin. All those Dems like Mikulski and Inouye who are otherwise sane who voted for it got LM donations.

Habakkuk on BAE, the Saudis and the Slush Fund

How to honor the fallen men, women, & children on all sides of this senseless conflict, to help the thousands wounded in body & mind, their devastated families? The only answer occurring to me this morning is to install leadership in DC dedicated to a thorough cleansing of the Fed Gov, solid Dem majorities in both House & Senate, & a subsequent reckoning w/consequences for all to see for those in BushCo who have brought our country such dishonor, & caused such misery these past eight yrs through their corruption, greed, & inhumanity.

End of rant. For now.
A Memorial Day vid link- music is Joe Strummer’s version of The Minstrel Boy, clips are from Baghdad ER, Life & Death in the War Zone, & Desert Sky:

The Minstrel Boy

– Note the pattern of election expenditures by the Communications industry sector; you can drill down to the key telecoms by looking at subsets “Telephone Utilities” and “Telecom Services & Equipment”, then selecting the Contributors tab. Note the difference in campaign donations between 2000, 2004 and 2008; there’s clearly something going on.

– Is pressure being exerted on Congress only in the form of on-the-books transactions? I’m not referring this time to money being recorded in other functions within the corporate accounts, but to off-the-book entities and extortion. Enron wasn’t the only company with off-the-book, offshore structures – they were the best example of extravagant use of such resources. If covert activities using telecoms have been ordered and funded by off-the-book, covert entities and funds, how do we know that these same resources haven’t brought to bear? Or that extortion, plain and simple, using the data gathered by the telecoms, hasn’t been applied? It can be pretty efficient; costs a lot less to send one guy into a key meeting and make a soft-spoken, veiled threat, than to pony up money for lots of lobbying staff and campaign donations.

And now I’ve thought of a third rationale for all the money not being laid out where we can see it: perhaps the telecoms are simply hording cash against the claims they expect, resistance being seen as futile? Explains the trend in campaign donations; why give as much money as in the past to people you expect to indict you.

Maybe Denny’s has a small room in the back…

Whereas there is probable cause to believe George W. Bush is guilty of murder in the third degree through his wanton disregard of human life in his pursuit of profits for his family’s business, thereby ending the lives of Hennepin County residents David Day, Robert Dixon and Scott Modeen, and

Whereas there is probable cause to believe that George W. Bush and the Saudi royal family have entered into a conspiracy to withhold oil supplies and raise the price of crude oil causing gasoline prices to dramatically increase in Hennepin County, and

Whereas there is probable cause to believe that George W. Bush has acted in collusion with the opium warlords of Afghanistan and elements within the CIA to distribute heroin in Europe,the United States and Hennepin County,

Therefore, the petitioner asks this court to order Hennepin County Attorney Michael Freeman to bring charges of Murder in the Third Degree, Section 609.195; Conspiracy to fix prices,Section 325D.51; and Conspiracy to distribute drugs, Section 609.228 against George W. Bush
and present them to a Grand Jury so that a Grand Jury may return a Bill of Indictment and George W. Bush may be arrested and made to stand trial when his plane lands in Hennepin County at the end of August.

Respectfully submitted,

Ed Felien

Minneapolis, MN 55407

The petition, in addition to listing the above, takes a running stroll through the history of the OSS/CIA, Skull & Bones, Bush family ties to war profiteering with Nazis among other misadventures. Perhaps not the most helpful to the case at hand but nice of him to collect these things in one place to provide citizens some context.