As ICANN moves to break its by laws one more time by nominating and then placing ex congressman Rick White on its board lets look one more time at its origins. They begin with Larry Landweber's October 1, 1995 memo to the ISOC board detailing an ISOC master plan successfully carried out over the past 4 years to place ISOC at the center and control of DNS and the IANA functions. I published this memo in my report http://cookreport.com/isoccontrol.shtml Who was at the table? Nick Trio of IBM and ISOC. Mike Nelson, long time aide to Al Gore and about to be moved to the FCC for "safekeeping" until the beginning of a Gore Administration. I can pesonnally attest to Nelson's loyalty to IBM from my 1990-1992 experience with him at OTA. And how shocking when he finally went to work for Cochetti and Patrick as part of the Global Internet project earlier this year. Among his early duties fund raising for ICANN. Who else? Ira Magaziner who, in early 1995, was assigned by future ICANN fund raiser Tom Kalil to study the impact technology developments on economic issues that could be leveraged by American business and help ensure Clinton's re-election. What did Magaziner focus on almost at the very beginning? The Internet. On a 15 city tour of private meetings in late 95 early 96 he went in front of businessmen to hear their concerns and get some sense of the policy issues that would make electronic commerce take off. One key was rejigering the telecom laws in a way that could be sold as allowing more competition but would, in essence, allow unprecedented concentration of the nation's telecommunications into a handful of oligopolies that could use entities like the Global Internet project as means for coordination of a world wide strategy. Al Gore and Rick White gave us the 1996 telecom reform act and told us how proud of themselves they were. With Clinton elected again in November of 1996, Magaziner told me in September of 1998, that representatives of two large American companies (IBM and ATT I'll bet) came to him in in November or December of 1996 and warned him that internet commerce would never get of the ground if the problem of misuse of corporate trademarks in the DNS was not settled. This led to Lynn Beresford at PTO getting ready to bring PTO and WIPO into the fray in january 1997. Magaziner would give the large corporations whatever they needed to get the job done. One of these was an attorney from Wilmer Cutler - DC's consumate political law firm. These folk get their credentials as corporate lobbyists on the conveyor belt that moves back and forth between firms like Wilmer Cutler and federal agencies. Becky Burr,a Wilmer Cutler lawyer, who was at the FTC, was choosen and was moved in January 97 into OMB under Sally Katzen where she was groomed to head the nascent federal working group on DNS. Later in the Spring Burr was quietly moved to NTIA in the Commerce Department where she would use agency cover to carry out the Clinton administration's part of the bargain of extra legally asserting her right to hand over control of internet names, numbers and protocols to an industry group that would take on Jon Postel's functions and provide him legal protection that he had long sought and never received from ISOC. (At some point - a year later? David Johnson, another Wilmer Cutler attorney would move to the growing legal staff at NSI and, having established independent credentials via his attack by George Conrades in Berlin, would become responsible during the summer of 99 for bringing NSI into the ICANN fold - a mission acheived only a week ago.) The brilliance of the Gore, Nelson, IBM strategy has been to create, by stealth, an industry led group that could step in and exert control over the net while keeping dissent bottled up and Congress under control. One of the issues that had to have occupied a percentage of the time of the IANA transition advisory group put together in a private mail list by Jon Postel in February 98 was the selection of an attorney to, as Dave Farber has told me, give Postel legal protection and plan for the creation of what became ICANN. The makeup of ITAG was interesting. Not surprising -- all were close friends Jon Postel. Jon Klensin was a member. Jon's other tie was to Vint Cerf who had hired him as a consultant shortly after movng to MCI from CNRI in 1994. And Vint's loyalties were to ISOC and the IBM - MCI joint effort known as the GIP. Vint was also a firm advocate of an early failed ISOC effort known as the gTLD-MOU to declare Domain Name space a public resource that need to be managed by a group like ISOC (see landweber's master plan) or by ICANN. Geoff Huston of Telstra (the Australian PTT) was another ITAG member. I suspect that he was the link to giving one of the two "Asian" board seats to an Australian. Brian Carpenter was a key ITAG member. Brian worked at CERN before, in 1995 or 96, he joined IBM and became chair o the Internet architecture board. Brian moved to IBM's research center in England and now has been brought to a new IBM funded internet technology center in Chicago where he reports to the GIP's John Patrick. R andy Bush one of Postel's closest followers and key technology person at Verio was a member. Randy has now turned up as the key member of the Non commercial domain name constituency within the domain names supporting organization of ICANN. Steve Wolf ex director of DNCRI at NSF and now employee of Cisco was a member. On December 10 1997, at the last minute I invited Steve to join me in a meeting with Magaziner at the white house. Steve accepted. Dave Farber Jon Postel's dissertation supervisor was also a member. Farber a UPENN professor occupies a position in the telecommunications world similar to that of Esther Dyson. He runs a private one way mail list called "Interesting people" which by his own admission goes to 25,000 subscribers globally. You can not auto join this list but have to apply to him personally. One or 2 years ago Farber was named by Network World as one of the 25 most influential people in the world in networking. The only academic to make the list. Farber has been critical of ICANN, but his critcism has strict limits. One of those directly involved told me last year that a "group of Jon's friends got together and found him an attorney." As everyone knows by now the attorney was Joe Sims formerly of the US justice department and for the last 18 years with Jones, Day another power house corporate law firm. Sims started off pro bono but has now played the key role in creating ICANN as a legally protected entity that can operate largely outside of civil law. Try finding someone with standing to sue ICANN. You won't be able to. So where are we? One of the most perplexing things about the ICANN coup d'etat against the Internet is the veiled warnings that ICANN has a task and it must be allowed to finish it or the internet and electronic commerce will fail. Patrick and Cerf have said it privately in the strongest terms in their fund raising correspondence in June but they have steadfastly refused to stand up in public and say what they meant. This despite Patick Townson's tongue lashing of them in front of 65,000 subscribers to telecom digest. In early November of last year I was told: the DNS problem is a predictor of future public sector not for profit organizations it raises the issue of the existence of a community and it's stability it will decide whether "adult" supervision is needed On August 22, 1999 Dave Farber sent the following to his IP list: Farber: After I sent out the two notes re the extension of the Board, I am moved to explain my position on this extension. . I wish the Board had moved more rapidly to do the job they assumed when they agreed to take office. What ever the reasons for the delay, it would be unconscionable for the Board to stop doing its task. Therefore I personally support the extension with two provisoes. They are: 1. Effective immediately all Board meetings be open . The only closed meetings should be those dealing with personnel issues. 2. The Board agrees to step down as soon as the properly appointed/elcted board can take its seats. I would also personally feel that all current Board members should terminate (with great thanks from the community (I mean that) ) at that time. Dave [end of Farber quote.] When I asked on a private list (BWG) what Dave considered to be the board's task that it would be unconsionable for them to stop doing and what was the job they assumed when they agreed to take office, I got no direct answer. When a couple of weeks later, I asked for a specific scenario that cold be examined and tested as to what might happen should ICANN fail, I receive a response that ave was busy with classes and when he had his scenario ready he'd publish it but not before. I responded that you would think that he and Vint and john Patrick would have their arguments done by now. I suggest that in view of the inability of these men to defend their assertions one may look for the real reason as being too dangerous to discuss in public. I wrote the following in my december newsletter: The Answer to Why ICANN Must not Fail But now the other part of this picture also begins to come into focus. This is the curious insistence of folk like Vint Cerf, John Patrick and Dave Farber to say that if ICANN does not succeed, the Internet and electronic commerce will fail. When asked for a thorough and reasoned explanation of why, none of these men have an answer. I suspect that I know why. The answer is that the authority for DNS, IP number allocation and port assignment rested not in law but in the consensual agreement of the Internet community with Jon Postel. Now Postel is gone. The Department of Commerce, without a shred of legal authority to do so, has stepped up to and asserted, like General Haig, that it is in control now. It will hold the reigns of power until it can turn them over to ICANN. This is why ICANN must not fail because it would then be revealed to the world and especially to investors in the high flying Internet stocks that no single legal authority existed over the operation of the Internet's address system. Network Solutions had the financial and legal muscle to bring a court case challenging DoC's authority. Therefore, ICANN and DoC had no choice but to give in and guarantee Network Solution's future. Behind the scenes in Washington a frenzied search for anything that could be used to grant DoC authority over the DNS and the other IANA functions has been carried out duing the months o July and August. It has been a failure. There is no authority to be found. Consequently, Cerf, Farber, and Patrick plead that ICANN must finish the task, but are silent when asked why. They simply cannot afford to call attention to the fact that the king at Commerce has no clothes. With a naked king, they are desperate to clothe the ICANN crown prince until it can transfer power. (I have recently published to several lists Glenn Manishen's draft of a brief on why commerce has no legal authority to do what it is doing. I won't repeat that here.) The Geatest Danger Facing ICANN At this point only a serious examination by the United States Congress could derail ICANN. In June NSI used its influence on the Hill and got the commerce committee to issue a series of nasty requests to ICANN. On July 22 NSI's new CEO Jim Rutt got his head handed to him by behaving in front of the committee as he had been coached to behave. I have primary evidence that the attorney's who prepared past NSI CEO's for their congressional appearances did not prep Rutt. Rutt had handlers and the handlers betrayed him. I suspect but cannot prove at this point that Wilmer Cutler's David Johnson was the chief handler. From two separate sources I know that he was critical (once Rutt blew his congressional opportunity) in crafting the agreement with Commerce that put NSI and ICANN in bed with each other on October 1. I also have known and complained about since September of 1997 of the extraordinary access to Becky Burr that Marilyn Cade on behalf of ATT and Roger Cochetti on behalf of IBM (both of the GIP) enjoyed. People in both companies told folk outside their corporations about the inside track their firms had gained in access to ms. Burr. Those folk confided in me two years ago and their stories now check out totally. If the republicans had the basic intelligence to add two and two and get four, they could issue a raft of subpoenas for future hearings that would bear eloquent testimony to the clinton administrations use of Burr in an alliance with ISOC to give away control of internet to an extralegal inter-governmental entity whose masters are more comfortable with OSI and the ITU than with the technology responsible for the success of the Stupid Network. Cade came out of Woody Kerkeslager's office at ATT. Kerkeslager (since retired) was ATT Vice president of governmental affairs and as such was responsible for seeing that things went the regulatory way that benefitted AT&T.. He also was well known in 1990-1992 for deriding this rediculous Interrnet as a technology that was dead end, would never go anywhere and should be put out of its misery. But CADE and Cochetti on the outside, with Burr as their mole at NTIA, have now found through Rick White's cultivation of the GIP in 97 and 98 their perfect shill to silence republican members of commerce. You will remember that Jon Cohen touted White's Icann board candidacy ten days ago as Marilyn Cades "secret candidate." Cade meanwhile pulled out all the stops to propel White into office despite the fact that White has no legal standing for the position for which he is being promoted. In the Friday teleconference where candidates presented their views white having been obviously coached White said that ICANN should try to succeed in the long term by recognizing the boundaries of its mandate. It must not fail because, if successful, the ICANN model could be used**** for "another" private body *****that might do more and address other issues. But he was quite clear that ICANN has and should respect a limited focus. He did, however, have difficulty drawing the line. White, as a grade-a shill whom his critics believe says what ever keeps his constituents happy, will be put on the ICANN board to shut congress up. ICANN will spawn successor groups as White predicted. Content control of the internet will be next on the ICANNite agenda. Web site licensing anyone? **************************************************************** The COOK Report on Internet Index to seven years of the COOK Report 431 Greenway Ave, Ewing, NJ 08618 USA http://cookreport.com (609) 882-2572 (phone & fax) ICANN: The Internet's Oversight Board - [EMAIL PROTECTED] NEW - Incompetence or Duplicity? ICANN and it Allies' Stealth Agenda http://cookreport.com/isoccontrol.shtml ****************************************************************
