Doesn’t happen very often, but the unholy trinity of Bellsouth, Verizon and AT&T has managed to do it.

So now Verizon has followed in Bellsouth’s footsteps and denied providing customer calling data to the NSA. (C”N”N and CBS reported this evening that AT&T had also followed suit. But as best as I can make out, they just issued again the same kind of vague denial they had issued last week, so we’ll leave them out of it.)

So what do we make of this?

USA Today is standing by their story. I also stand by all previous statements I have made on the subject. In fact, I propose to add to them herein.

I will do this very analytically and scientifically. Let’s break it down into two questions, and address them serially. One: can we believe the denials? Two: if not, can we figure out what the hell is going on here?

For those who have cannot bear with me as I slowly develop my thesis – yes, Matt and Jason pay double for extra long posts – the answers will be “No!” and “You bet!” The “No” will be based on cold hard logic. Okay, maybe not so cold, and not so hard, but logic nevertheless. The “You bet” will involve spending some of the psychic capital I picked up when I was recently crowned 1115’s resident Miss Cleo.

Can we believe the denials?
I will argue that no, we can’t, not if our I.Q. exceeds our age. And I will present two arguments in support.

First, I give you the simple reason that there is no conceivable scenario under which the Evil Three were falsely accused by USA Today’s Leslie Cauley on Thursday morning, and they didn’t deny the accusations till Monday afternoon (for Bellsouth) and Tuesday afternoon (for Verizon).

What do these companies want us to believe? That they don’t remember whether they were approached by the NSA like Qwest? Or that they don’t remember whether they said yes or no?

But if you bend over backwards to give them the benefit of the doubt, and ignore the last two statements I just made, and try to come up with scenarios explaining why it took Bellsouth until Monday afternoon to issue the first denial, here’s what happens.

Scenario 1:
Bellsouth CEO Duane Ackerman storms into the office Thursday morning, going: “Whose bloody idea was this? The CEO’s always the last to know, huh?” His assembled underlings, with a mixture of quaking-slightly and relief: “None of us know anything about it, either.” CEO: “Oh, okay, then. Have someone look into it first thing Monday morning, why don’t you?”

Scenario 2:
Bellsouth CEO Duane Ackerman storms into the office Thursday morning, going: “What’s this bloody bolshevik nonsense? How come I wasn’t told?” His assembled underlings, with a mixture of quaking-slightly and relief: “None of us know anything about it, either.” CEO: “Where’s Leo? Have him look into it right away. I want a full bloody report by lunch.” Minion # 3: “Leo’s out sick.” CEO: “Oh! Okay, whenever he gets back then.”

Scenario 3:
Bellsouth CEO Duane Ackerman storms into the office Thursday morning, going: “Blistering barnacles! When was someone going to tell me?” His assembled underlings, with a mixture of quaking-slightly and relief: “None of us know anything about it, either.” CEO: “Put someone on it right away. A small army.”
[…] Two hours later. CEO, impatiently: “Well?” “Still looking into it, boss.” […] So it goes all of Thursday, all of Friday. Then late Friday afternoon: “No sign yet that we ever gave these calling records to the NSA. It’ll take half a day more to be sure. Authorize overtime?” CEO: “Are you effing crazy? Overtime for a small army? Send ‘em all home, and finish up Monday.”

(I guess I’m not really entertaining the possibility that they were looking into it all weekend too, that it took four and a half days to figure out.)

That about exhausts my scenarios that start by assuming they really didn’t provide any data to the NSA. I can also offer one that doesn’t make that assumption.

Scenario 4:
Bellsouth CEO Duane Ackerman storms into the office Thursday morning, going: “Blistering barnacles! What bloody bolshevik nonsense! How can we spin this? Isn’t there some kind of denial we can issue?” His assembled underlings, with a mixture of quaking-slightly and quaking-bigtime: “If we say anything which tends to mislead investors, the SEC will be on us like a ton of bricks. The immunity the government promised won’t cover that, either” CEO: “Have someone look into it right away. A small army. There must be some kind of plausible denial we can cobble together without getting into trouble with the SEC”. All good snow jobs take time. This one took four and a half days.

(Helpful hint: don’t get carried away by this scenario. I’ll have a much better one later, after I put on my Miss Cleo turban.)

Okay, so first was the simple reason that there’s simply no plausible scenario under which an honest denial would take four and a half days to cook up. Second, there’s the nature of the denials themselves. Both Bellsouth’s denial and Verizon’s are pretty strange denials, as denials go. Especially when you’ve been accused of shafting all your customers. Royally. And the accusations have been repeated by every media outlet in the country. Ad infinitum. For several days.

Bellsouth barely mustered up a soupçon of outrage:

(Bellsouth said) that it does not have a contract with the National Security Agency to supply customer calling information and that based on its review to date it has not provided bulk customer calling records to the NSA.

The company said its finding was based on an internal review to date.

As I posted before, USA Today’s Leslie Cauley has already deflated that “denial”:

In an interview Monday, BellSouth spokesman Jeff Battcher said the company was not asking for a correction from USA TODAY.

Asked to define “bulk customer calling records,” Battcher said: “We are not providing any information to the NSA, period.” He said he did not know whether BellSouth had a contract with the Department of Defense, which oversees the NSA.

Scenario 4 above starts to look pretty penetrating right about now. Bellsouth shows every signs of trying to spin, while making sure they say nothing that will get them in trouble with the SEC. The game plan seems to be, hide behind a quibble as long as you can, but abandon all quibbling before it gets you into serious trouble. (But like I said before, I promise to improve upon Scenario 4.)

And how about Verizon’s denial? Bloomberg has them producing a little more outrage:

“One of the most glaring repeated falsehoods in the media reporting is the assertion that, in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, Verizon was approached by NSA and entered into an arrangement to provide the NSA with data from its customers’ domestic calls,” spokesman Peter Thonis said in the statement. “This is false.”

“Contrary to the media reports, Verizon was not asked by NSA to provide, nor did Verizon provide, customer phone records,” the company said. It also cited an “error” in the reports which asserted that even local calling data had been collected, saying records generally are not kept on such calls.

USA Today adds:

In its statement today, Verizon said it “cannot and will not confirm or deny whether it has any relationship to the classified NSA program.” But it also said it is “simply false” to say that it had been “approached by NSA and entered into an arrangement to provide the NSA with data from its customers’ domestic calls.”

This is roughly the point where words start to fail me. But I take several deep breaths, and I manage to continue.

What lazy buggers! Couldn’t even cook up their own quibble? The best they can do is recycle Bellsouth’s already discredited quibble? I was never banged by that gang, NSA (because it was actually the good folks over at the Department of Defense).

And what kind of company puts out a denial which says “we will neither confirm nor deny”? And what kind of “news” organization calls that a denial?

But what absolutely takes the cake for me is when they say: the whole damn USA Today report is false, we never provided any damn data to the NSA, and by the way they also have one error, when they say local calling data was provided, because we don’t even generally keep data on local calls. What bloody effing amateurs! Especially when a perfectly good professional was presumably available for the asking. I refer, of course, to the redoubtable, ineffable Scott McClellan, the prince of prevarication, the grand duke of duplicity.

Did they, or did they not just say: “When we were approached in the aftermath of 9/11, we did of course provide customer phone records for long-distance calls to someone, it just wasn’ t the NSA , ha ha ha!”

(And why pray, “records generally are not kept on such calls”? Did they start keeping local calling records after the government asked them to?)

So, for all the aforesaid reasons, I believe that no, we cannot believe their denials. Which leads us smoothly into:

Why on earth are they issuing these denials then?
I now put on my Miss Cleo turban, and give you an improved Scenario 4. Among other things, it explains why Bellsouth didn’t pipe up till Monday afternoon, and why Verizon didn’t pipe up till Tuesday afternoon.

I think Bellsouth started working on this denial strategy only over the weekend. That’s when it became clear to CEO Duane Ackerman (or to someone else, who’s about to receive a big promotion) that the Bush administration was absolutely going to stonewall all questions, and resolutely refuse to confirm the existence of the program. The brainwave which accompanied that insight was: if they are never going to confirm the program, we can totally get away with something that sounds like a denial. Just as long as we are careful not to say anything that will get us in trouble with the SEC, and get us slapped with shareholder lawsuits for providing false information to prop up our stock price. No lies, just statements that are technically true but totally misleading.

It took a little while to cook up the statement. And a little while to run it by the lawyers. Which is why it got put out only on Monday afternoon.

Verizon’s initial reaction to Bellsouth’s ploy was exactly the same as mine: “I can’t believe they’re pulling this sh** with a straight face!” And as they watched it play out on Tuesday, their reaction was once again the same as mine: “Holy Sh**! Damned if they aren’t getting away with it.” This was probably around noon, when C”N”N had been replaying Bellsouth’s denial all morning with a straight face. Not for nothing do these CEO types get paid gazillions in salary, bonus, stock options and retirement packages. It didn’t take long for Verizon to figure out what the hell Bellsouth was up to. It didn’t take them long to decide: I likee! And, lo and behold, by Tuesday evening Verizon had put out their own Bellsouth-style denial.

(Surely there are some corporate headhunters among our readers. Surely they have noticed that my finely honed instincts are exactly identical to those of an extremely overpaid CEO. So I’ll keep my pitch short: let it be known that I can be persuaded to do what they do for one zero less.)

*** Update, 11:30 am ***

Think Progress:

Ordinarily, a company that conceals their transactions and activities from the public would violate securities law. But an presidential memorandum signed by the President on May 5 allows the Director of National Intelligence, John Negroponte, to authorize a company to conceal activities related to national security. (See 15 U.S.C. 78m(b)(3)(A))

There is no evidence that this executive order has been used by John Negroponte with respect to the telcos. Of course, if it was used, we wouldn’t know about it.

Don’t be tempted, even for a moment, to think “Well, he signed it on May 5, and the USA Today story broke on May 10, so at least his signing it had nothing to do with the story.

Here’s an interesting bit from Leslie Cauley‘s rebuttal piece Monday night:

USA TODAY first contacted BellSouth five weeks ago in reporting the story on the NSA’s program. The night before the story was published, USA TODAY described the story in detail to BellSouth, and the company did not challenge the newspaper’s account.

Presumably on May 5, NSA and the telcos knew perfectly well that the USA Today story was going to break very soon.