His first
inkling that something was amiss came in summer 2002 when he opened
the door to admit a visitor from the National
Security Agency to an office of AT&T in San Francisco.
"What the heck is the NSA doing here?" Mark Klein, a former
AT&T technician, said he asked himself.
A year or so later, he stumbled upon documents that, he said,
nearly caused him to fall out of his chair. The documents, he said,
show that the NSA gained access to massive amounts of e-mail and
search and other Internet records of more than a dozen global and
regional telecommunications providers. AT&T allowed the agency to
hook into its network at a facility in San Francisco and, according to
Klein, many of the other telecom companies probably knew nothing about
it.
Klein is in Washington this week to share his story in the hope
that it will persuade lawmakers not to grant legal immunity to
telecommunications firms that helped the government in its
anti-terrorism efforts.
The plain-spoken, bespectacled Klein, 62, said he may be the only
person in the country in a position to discuss firsthand knowledge of
an important aspect of the Bush administration's domestic surveillance
program. He is retired, so he isn't worried about losing his job. He
did not have security clearance, and the documents in his possession
were not classified, he said. He has no qualms about "turning in," as
he put it, the company where he worked for 22 years until he retired
in 2004.
RSS Feed
