[Welcome Mark Klein, Hosted by Marcy Wheeler - bev]mark-klein-wiring-up-the-big-brother-machine-cropped.thumbnail.jpg

Imagine you’re working roughly the same job you’ve had for almost twenty years, trying–like so many other Americans–to stay just two steps ahead of you company’s technologically-driven down-sizing. Then, all of a sudden, you get an email informing you the NSA would be arriving–as you subsequently learn, to interview your colleague for a "special job."

That’s the perspective Mark Klein, the whistleblower who exposed the "splitter" the NSA uses to directly access AT&T’s telecom lines to illegal wiretap Americans, tells in his new book, Wiring Up the Big Brother Machine… And Fighting It. The book describes Klein’s efforts to figure out what the NSA was doing in the secret room in AT&Ts Folsom Street (San Francisco) facility, his struggle to publicize what he learned, and his role in trying to hold those who illegally wiretapped Americans accountable. 

Klein’s book provides a valuable new perspective onto a fight FDL’s readers know well. 

Two aspects of the book, in particular, are bound to interest folks here. First, Klein reveals the NSA’s access to AT&T’s data expanded after he retired from AT&T in 2004.

Congress has ensured that the extensive infrastructure for illegal NSA spying remains in place and in operation.

And there may have been indications that it has expanded since my retirement. In December 2004 I was told by a reliable source that more Lucent patch panels were being installed at Folsom St. so that the splitter cabinet on the 7th floor could accommodate more data circuits to be copied into the secret room on the 6th floor.

Now in 2009 I have heard from another trusted source that the 7th floor itself has become a "secret floor": The floor is "secured at the elevator" and "You can’t get on that floor unless you got a special key."

Even as Congress and two Presidents have struggled to claim this program was legal, it has continued to expand.

The book also provides a damning account of the traditional media’s willingness to spike Klein’s story. Klein describes the NYT slow-walking the story and 60 Minutes demanding an "exclusive" but then doing nothing for six months. Most troubling, Klein tells of spending two months trying to get the LAT to cover the story.

Meanwhile, in February 2006 I was anxiously waiting for that big story from the Los Angeles Times. Week after week went by, every so often the reporter called back to ask some more technical questions, tell me there was just a little more work to be done, and it would be out this Thursday, then next Monday, and so on. I was beginning to worry that they were getting cold feet. I was not wrong.

On Feb. 11 I got a call from Joe Menn, the Los Angeles Times reporter, who told me that their "top guy" was going to have a meeting with the Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte himself about this story over the weekend. I nearly fell down in shock–they were actually negotiating with the government on whether to publish! This merited a separate story itself, revealing the direct hand of the government in the editorial process of a major newspaper. More importantly, this meant that Negroponte knew about my documents–and me.

[snip]

Menn’s gloom suddenly turned to optimism on Feb. 13, as I e-mailed Risen and Lichtblau afterwards:

The LA Times reporter called just now. He says he thinks he’s "pulled the rabbit out of a hat." He says he’s got verification of the story from a "high-ranking source" and is now working it into the story. He feels that now even the "top guy" at his paper will let it be published.

I felt badly for him: He was obviously an honest reporter who was diligently working on a great story, but the political forces against him were too immense. Finally on March 29 he told me the story was officially killed, and he hadn’t "emotionally recovered yet."

Klein even describes DiFi–whom he describes as "no friend of civil liberties, though she plays one on TV"–getting looped into the LAT discussions.

As you read the book, you not only see a familiar story from the perspective of someone who took courageous steps to expose the government’s wrong-doing, but you see how much we owe Klein and others–like the Electronic Frontier Foundation–who persisted to make sure this information was made public. Ironically, the book itself was an exercise in persistence; Klein self-published it to ensure he could tell this story without sacrificing content.

Let’s welcome Mark Klein to FireDogLake.