Please allow this author to share one tid bit of information with you that should boil your blood, as related to the AT&T breakup. Would you believe that I was personally aware of this breakup plan 3 to 5 years before it was publically announced that the Federal Government even intended to investigate AT&T?

An undisclosed, high-ranking source with AT&T personally shared with me the detals of this plan in the mid to late 1970s!

According to her/him, the plan was for the federal government to investigate AT&T's business structure and that it would be deemed a monopoly and subject to federal monopolization laws. We all know what took place after that, right?

• How could someone inside of AT&T know about this plan 3 to 5 years in advance?
• Why did the Federal Government follow this plan as recited to this author right down to every final detail?

Let me guess:

• MONEY?
• Or, perhaps, AT&T wanted to be free of government regulation so they could enter a for-profit business, like computers.
• Or, perhaps AT&T was busy working with certain security agencies of the United States, engineering a computer-based surveillance system that was subsequently used on interstate, long distant telecomm circuits...
• Perhaps all of the above?

For all you lawyers out there, perhaps you can fill in the missiong pieces here. Wouldn't it be nigh to impossible for AT&T to have legally initiated such a breakup on their own without enormous problems because of all their stockholders? Would it or would it not have taken the Federal Government to initiate and cause such a breakup in order for AT&T to actually survive such an act?

If you don't mind, please send me an e-mail and educate me on the legal implications of such a self initiated breakup. Also, what are the implications in your mind concerning prior knowledge and the likelihood that the Federal Government acted in harmony with AT&T's private wishes? My e-mail, and thank you. --Al Colombo