May 2004: AT&T Technician Familiar with NSA Wiretapping Operation Retires

Senior AT&T technician Mark Klein (see July 7, 2009) accepts a buyout package from his firm and retires. Klein, disheartened by the illegal AT&T/NSA wiretapping operation he has documented (see January 16, 2004), decides to keep the documents he has collected over the years (see Fall 2003 and Late 2003), the “hard proof” of the operation, he will later write, “in case there was some change in the political winds that would enable me to come forward and expose… the crimes which I knew were being committed.” [Klein, 2009, pp. 44]