rh@well.uucp (Robert Horvitz) (04/02/89)
rh: The following article (slightly abridged) appears in the April 1st edition of the "W5YI Report," a radio-electronics newsletter for ham radio operators ($23/year for 24 issues to US addresses from: The W5YI Report, P.O. Box 565101, Dallas, Texas 75356-5101). This was NOT an April Fool's issue: ========================= Bob Draise/WB8QCF was an employee of Cincinnati Bell Telephone between 1966 and 1979. He, and others, are involved in a wiretapping scandal of monumental proportions. They say they have installed more than 1,000 wiretaps on the phones of judges, law enforcement officers, lawyers, television personalities, newspaper columnists, labor unions, defense contractors, major corporations (such as Proctor & Gamble and General Electric), politicians (even ex-President Gerald Ford) at the request of Cincinnati police and Cincinnati Bell security supervisors who said the taps were for the police. They were told that many of the taps were for the FBI. Another [radio] amateur, Vincent Clark/KB4MIT, a technician for South-Central Bell from 1972 to 1981, said he placed illegal wiretaps similar to those done by Bob Draise on orders from his supervisors - and on request from local policemen in Louisville, Kentucky... I asked Bob how he got started in the illegal wiretap business. He said a friend called and asked him to come down to meet with the Cincinnati police. An intelligence sergeant asked Bob about wiretapping some Black Muslims. He also told Bob that Cincinnati Bell security had approved the wiretap - and that it was for the FBI. The sergeant pointed to his Masonic ring which Bob also wore - in other words, he was telling the truth under the Masonic oath - something that Bob put a lot of stock in. Most of the people first wiretapped were drug or criminal related. Later on, however, it go out of hand - and the FBI wanted taps on prominent citizens. "We started doing people who had money. How this information was used, I couldn't tell you." The January 29th "Newsday" said Draise had told investigators that among the taps he rigged from 1972 to 1979 were several on lines used by Wren Business Communications, a Bell competitor. It seems that when Wren had arranged an appointment with a potential customer, they found that Bell had just been there without being called. Wren's president is a ham [radio operator], David Stoner/K8LMB. I telephoned Dave... "As far as I am concerned, the initial focus for all of this began with the FBI. The FBI apparently set up a structure throughout the United States using apparently the security chiefs of the different Bell companies... They say that there have been other cases in the United States like ours in Cincinnati but they have been localized without the realization of an overall pattern being implicated." "The things that ties this all together is if you go way back in history to the Hoover period at the FBI, he apparently got together with the AT&T security people. There is an organization that I guess exists to this day with regular meetings of the security people of the different Bell companies. This meant that the FBI would be able to target a group of 20 or 30 people that represented the security points for all of the Bell and AT&T connections in the United States. I believe the key to all of this goes back to Hoover. The FBI worked through that group who then created the activity at the local level as a result of central planning." "I believe that in spite of the fact that many people have indicated that this is an early 70's problem - that there is no disruption to that work to this day. I am pretty much convinced that it is continuing... It looks like a large surveillance effort that Cincinnati was just a part of." "The federal prosecutor Kathleen Brinkman is in a no-win situation... If she successfully prosecutes this case she is going to bring trouble down upon her own Justice Department. She can't successfully prosecute the case." About $200 million in lawsuits have already been filed against Cincinnati Bell and the Police Department. Several members of the police department have taken the Fifth Amendment before the grand jury rather than answer questions about their roles in the wiretapping scheme. Bob Draise/WB8QCF has filed a suit against Cincinnati Bell for $78 for malicious prosecution and slander in response to a suit filed by Cincinnati Bell against Bob for defamation... Right after they filed the suit, several policemen came forward and admitted to doing illegal wireptaps with them. The Cincinnati police said they stopped this is 1974 - although another policeman reportedly said they actually stopped the wiretapping in 1986. Now the CBS-TV program "60 Minutes" is interested in the Cincinnati goings-on and has sent in a team of investigative reporters. Ed Bradley from "60 Minutes" has already interviewed Bob Draise/WB8QCF and it is expected that sometime during April, you will see a "60 Minutes" report on spying by the FBI. We also understand that CNN, Ted Turner's Cable News Network, is also working up a "Bugging of America" expose.