谷歌和雅虎真的参与了“棱镜项目”吗？

    谷歌（Google）和雅虎（Yahoo）以及其它近期因为参与了政府监视项目陷入舆论风波的科技巨头们正在发起一场公关保卫战，以挽救突然间急转直下的名声。

    它们纷纷做出令人同情的表态，坚称自己和许多美国人一样，对传闻中联邦政府如此大范围的监视感到困惑和担忧。《纽约时报》（New York Times）等不少媒体报道称，这些公司至少数次拒绝了政府查看用户信息的要求。

    谷歌和雅虎自称对“911”恐怖袭击后大幅扩展的监视体系感到失望，但至少在这个体系刚推出的时候，它们就已经先人一步知道内情了。2001年，“911”恐怖袭击刚过去两个月，谷歌联合创始人拉里•佩奇和谢尔盖•布林，以及雅虎联合创始人大卫•费罗——以及风投家马克•安德森和一帮硅谷大佬——就集体飞往华盛顿，在当时遭到袭击后还露着窟窿的五角大楼里召开会议。

    这个会议开了整整一天，其中专门用一段时间讨论了政府参与网络监控的问题，技术巨头们对此发表了自己的看法。丹•法默是当时与会的网络安全先驱。他在业内颇有名气是因为发明了首台用于评估网络安全隐患的扫描仪——“网络分析安全管理工具”（Security Administrator Tool for Analyzing Networks），简称为SATAN。他表示，会上有一个演示提供了五角大楼的网络遭到黑客攻击的具体次数，他当时就坦诚地表达了观点。他说：“这个演示很荒唐。不可能这么确定，尤其对国防部来说。认为国防部能够做到如此精确的监控是很可笑的。”

    法默说，为了解决这个难题，谷歌的两位联合创始人“开始兜售自己的新设备。那是一台能放在特定网络中的服务器，已内置了谷歌的应用。他们认为，如果政府更了解最新网络动态，以及了解哪些信息更容易获取，就能更好地把握外界情况。”

    五角大楼的这次“盛会”是约翰•凯西克和马克•科瓦姆联袂推动的。前者曾是共和党众议员，当时效力于雷曼兄弟公司（Lehman Brothers），后者是一位风险投资家，当时是红杉资本（Sequoia Capital）的合伙人【《财富》杂志（Fortune）去年夏天在一份关于科瓦姆的简介中首次提到了这次会议。科瓦姆曾到俄亥俄州帮助现任该州州长的凯西克成功地振兴了该州经济】。为了确保这次会议顺利召开，科瓦姆负责召集科技公司的领军人物，而凯西克则负责向军方高层推广其理念。

    科瓦姆是硅谷传奇人物弗洛伊德•科瓦姆的儿子。据他回忆，会议当天他正好坐在时任国防部部长唐纳德•拉姆斯菲尔德对面。他向拉姆斯菲尔德解释说：“我父亲是国家半导体公司（National Semiconductor）的创始人，我永远忘不了孩提时代，硅谷与政府及美国航空航天局（NASA）通力合作，把人类送上月球的历史。然而今天，我们却想方设法避开政府，不愿意与政府合作，因为这种合作没什么好果子吃。”拉姆斯菲尔德回应道：“那我们现在开始改变这种局面吧。”

    Google and Yahoo -- and the other tech giants stung by the recent news of their participation in government surveillance programs -- are in the midst of a public-relations offensive to steady suddenly wobbly reputations.

    They're sounding a commiserating note, insisting they're just as confounded and concerned as many Americans by the reported extent of the feds' reach. And indeed, the New York Times, among others, has reported that the companies resisted government requests for information on their users on at least a few occasions.

    But if Google (GOOG) and Yahoo (YHOO) are as frustrated as they sound with the sprawl of the post-9/11 surveillance regime, at least they can say they got front-row seats to its launch. Two months after the 2001 attacks, Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Yahoo co-founder David Filo -- along with venture capitalist Marc Andreessen and a handful of other Silicon Valley heavyweights -- jetted to Washington for a meeting at the still-gaping Pentagon.

    The all-day session focused partly on the government's own exposure to cyber-snoops, with the tech luminaries offering their assessments. Dan Farmer, a cyber-security pioneer in attendance, says he was frank after hearing a presentation that put hard numbers to detected breaches of the Pentagon's network. "It was an absurd presentation," says Farmer, whose claim to fame at the time was having created one of the first scanners to assess a network's vulnerability -- called the Security Administrator Tool for Analyzing Networks, or SATAN. "You can't have that much certainty, particularly with the Defense Department. The idea that they had these precise metrics was laughable."

    To meet that challenge, Farmer says, the Google cofounders were "flogging their new appliance. It was a little server you could put in your network and Google inside it. They thought if the government knew more about what was out there, and what was more easily accessible, they could get a better sense of what was going on."

    The Pentagon huddle was a collaborative effort by John Kasich, a former Republican congressman then working for Lehman Brothers, and venture capitalist Mark Kvamme, then a partner at Sequoia Capital. (Fortune first mentioned the meeting last summer in a profile of Kvamme, who moved to Ohio to help Kasich, now governor of that state, engineer an economic turnaround.) To make the meeting happen, Kvamme recruited the tech leaders, and Kasich pitched the idea to top military brass.

    Kvamme, the son of Silicon Valley icon Floyd Kvamme, recalled sitting across from then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and explaining, "My father was a founder of National Semiconductor, and I'll never forget when I was a kid how Silicon Valley and the government, NASA, worked together to put a man on the moon. In today's world, we do everything possible to stay away from the government. We don't want to work with you guys, because it's terrible." Rumsfeld responded, "Let's go change that."