I am a regular reader of J. Orlin Grabbe's columns, so I am familiar with the stories about the PROMIS software, the death of Danny Casolaro, and Project Echelon.

The main differences between your version of events and the ones I had heard previously are your contentions that (a) Casolaro wanted at any point to go to Congress, rather than to go public directly with his book, and (b) that there is a "private echelon" project separate from the NSA/UKUSA government-run Project Echelon whose existence is now widely acknowledged.

In fact, I am not clear on just how separate you claim the projects to be. Are you saying that the private (ATT/IBM/Loral/LMT) project is an "Echelon-type" operation which is run completely by these firms and has no connection to the government Echelon project? Or are you saying that the two projects are interconnected and work together? And in the specific case, which project is it that gave AT&T access to the communications of its international competitor?

Either way, I belive (as Grabbe has repeatedly stated) that the best protection against these projects is the widespread use of strong encryption, based on open algorithms that are known to be effective and free of any "back doors".