FCC Chairman Bill Kennard had an excellent opportunity last Tuesday to set the record straight on the side deal his top legal officer cut with the Justice Department and Nextel Communications Inc. last month. But he let it get away.
Why?
The trio agreed to let non-designated entity Nextel buy NextWave Telecom Inc.’s personal communications services licenses for $2.1 billion, opening up a Pandora’s box of legal and ethical questions.
Kennard chose not to address this curious gambit or other major telecom issues that Congress may tackle when it returns this week. Instead, reporters were limited to asking questions about the FCC chairman’s recent trip to southern Africa-important in its own right but not to the exclusion of everything else.
A couple of weeks ago, it looked like Kennard would indeed field general queries at a scheduled Aug. 24 press briefing after returning from Botswana and South Africa. We had hoped to get more clarity on the FCC-Nextel-Justice compact at that time. But the briefing was postponed at the last minute.
The FCC promptly changed the press briefing into an “industry debriefing” last Tuesday.
What’s an industry debriefing? It’s a horseshoe arrangement of tables and chairs in the FCC meeting room in which telecom lobbyists, the chairman and FCC staff trade pleasantries and genteel conversation about global telecom, while disgruntled reporters sit muzzled in the background. A quintessential feel-good session for policy wonks.
FCC spokesman David Fiske explained there was a disconnect between the International Bureau and the Office of Public Affairs on the structure of the Kennard-southern Africa event at the Portals.
That’s fine. But the FCC has yet to officially explain the back-channel deal that blew up in the government’s face several weeks ago. At one point, the FCC said it was under a gag order, a phantom one it seems, and it claimed other silly excuses that add up to stonewalling. By late last week, the FCC signaled it might be ready to talk. We’ll see.
One way or the other, there are many questions that beg answers, including whether General Counsel Chris Wright acted on his own or with Kennard’s permission and whether any securities, bankruptcy and administrative procedure laws were broken.
Answers, anyone?
