Before you nominate him for sainthood...

CEO of Qwest is under indictment:

Yesterday, Mr. Nacchio's image took another turn. His lawyer, Herbert J. Stern, said that Mr. Nacchio refused to provide the National Security Agency with access to private telephone records of Qwest customers, apparently the lone holdout among the major phone companies.

With that statement, Mr. Nacchio, who is under indictment for insider trading, has been instantly recast as a champion of the Fourth Amendment and a friend of the man on the street.

[snip...]

Prosecutors have asserted that he failed to tell investors about warnings from his managers that the company's financial forecasts were too upbeat, yet he sold 2.5 million shares of Qwest stock in early 2001 that netted $100 million.

Mr. Nacchio, however, is expected to argue that he was optimistic about Qwest's prospects because the company was bidding for secret government contracts and stood a good chance of winning them.

So why would the next in a long line of Kenny Boys suddenly stick his head up?

"You have to wonder why he wants to be in the limelight," said John Hemann, a partner at Morgan Lewis & Bockius and a member of the Justice Department's Enron Task Force. "You take an issue where the wind is blowing the right way and you put yourself on the right side of it by saying 'I was looking out for the little guy.' This is going to play huge in Denver."

Fair enough. Then I guess we have you DOJ guys to thank for our finding out which telecoms told the government to take a flying leap:

A spokesman for Qwest, Robert Toevs, declined to discuss anything to do with security issues or the statement by Mr. Nacchio's lawyer.

Get used to the following phrase: "declined to discuss anything to do with security issues," because we are gonna hear it a lot in the next few years.