* That he was simply very optimistic about the business he was running that that he believed there would be an uptick in the stock long term after the company weathered the downturn he knew to be coming.

* That he was "set up" by NSA: yes, he sold at a high price anticipating a sector-wide downturn, but he did so because he'd been assured that Qwest would be part of a multi-billion NSA modernization program called "Groundbreaker", led by CSC, which contract would surely rescue Qwest's stock and even out his sale.

* That his board had demanded that he sell his stock, and that such sales were routine at Qwest.

* That he was distraught over the suicide of his son and sold the stock as part of an effort to immediately disentangle himself from the CEO position which he hoped to leave.

Against that, you have the black-and-white record of his trades and the testimony of numerous high-level Qwest executives all saying they'd been urgently warning him to revise Qwest's targets downwards. He not only maintained the unrealistic targets, and participated in channel-stuffing-style schemes to fake up earnings numbers, but profited personally by trading against those bogus numbers.