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Can we please confine paranoia to reasonable areas -- like AT&T's sales of secure phones to the government? The U.S. government has a very long record of pushing American products against foreign competitors, such as Boeing versus Airbus.
I have great respect for you, Steve, but in this case I must humbly disagree with you. The US government does have a very long record of promoting US products for foreign sales, but it is certainly rare for the President himself to get involved so publically. Do you really think that selling 50,000 secure phones would be _that_ attractive to AT&T? It would certainly be attractive to the particular business unit in charge of selling them, but not nearly as attractive as the promise of help in the future.
Of course, there is a quid pro quo here -- but it's Clinton reminding the Saudis about Desert Storm.
Considering that the Saudis paid for a large fraction of the monetary cost of Desert <foo>, and that they have made or attempted to make substantial FMS and civilian purchases from the US, they very well may feel that they have discharged their debt. I think it's reasonable to visualize a conversation in which the administration promised to "help AT&T in the future" in exchange for AT&T's adoption of Clipper. It certainly may not have been as blatant as my satirical letter, but that doesn't make it less plausible. - -Paul - -- Paul Robichaux, KD4JZG | Out the 10Base-T port, through the router, perobich@ingr.com | over the leased line, off the bridge, past Intergraph Federal Systems | the firewall... nothing but net. Of course I don't speak for Intergraph. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.3a iQCVAgUBLb/UACA78To+806NAQFltgP+ILjjQTG2EOlnj9+csJHC5q8v2cwXwaUo Y5MMShgVShUB4xe3knS6UPShEW2YemGGzvfWWIO+O1hgiXLWKbxclnRB/UCgne4G J+0TJzwZGu6WxD/IEoOMvFkFisJauqpeL4uP7DgaWtAcV5LeBg4mKoTgxGvZaE7i r4nNBLkJdI4= =IB4g -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----