From WNYC in New York, this is NPR's On the Media. I'm Bob Garfield.

And I'm Brooke Gladstone. This week, as Congress wrangles over bills to extend the administration's secret wiretapping program, some lawmakers grow increasingly frustrated by government stonewalling.

The White House wants Congress to grant

immunity to the phone companies that violated privacy laws by handing phone records over to the

government, but the secrecy over the spying program has placed a roadblock in front of immunity

legislation because, as Pennsylvania Republican Arlen Specter, minority head of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said this week on CNN,

I'm not going to buy a pig in a post and commit to retroactive immunity when I don't know what went on.

The one telephone company that isn't being sued by citizens or citizen groups for complying with wiretapping programs is Quest Communications.

But their former CEO, Joseph Nachio, does have other legal problems.

He's appealing his conviction for overstating the value of Quest's earnings.

Documents from Nacho's appeal suggest that Quest refused to comply with an NSA wiretapping program almost seven months before

September 11, 2001. George Washington Law School Professor Jonathan Turley says we should take

these allegations with a grain of salt because they are part of his criminal defense. But his

allegations are supported by other sources. We know,

for example, that this administration had an interest in data mining before 9-11. So in that sense,

he has some cooperation. It's also true that Quest seems to be the only company that vigorously

opposed the government's demands. His entire

defense was that the reason numbers were low is because when the company refused to do something

that they considered to be unlawful, that the NSA and the U.S. government yanked a major contract that they were relying on.

The court would not allow the jury to hear that defense.

Obviously, the phone companies continued to pretty much stonewall about the details of what they did and didn't do.

And AT&T and Verizon have told Congress that the White House is preventing them from talking, citing the state secrets privilege.

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