HP's newest board member a pretexting veteran
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Been there, seen that HP's freshest board member Ken Thompson won't need to take the company's Pretexting 101 course offering. As Wachovia's CEO, Thompson has become well acquainted with the legal concerns surrounding phone record fraud.â¦
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By Paul Elias Associated Press  SAN FRANCISCO -- The one winner in the Hewlett-Packard Co. boardroom spying scandal that has enthralled Silicon Valley appears to be Mark Hurd.
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By MICHAEL LIEDTKE  SAN FRANCISCO - Hewlett-Packard Co.'s early efforts to plug a boardroom leak targeted the phone records of then-Chief Executive Carleton Fiorina, according to a source familiar with one of the investigations looming over the computer and printer maker.
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New reports implicate HP chief more deeply than previously thought.
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A U.S. government panel has asked a corporate ethics lawyer from Hewlett-Packard (HP) to testify in its Sept. 28 hearing onÂ the company's use of "pretexting"Â to spy on journalists, board members and other employees.
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(InfoWorld) - Hewlett-PackardÂ Chief Executive Officer and President Mark Hurd Friday confirmed that he approved a probe of HP employees, board members and journalists in an effort to find out who on the HP board was leaking confidential information outside of the company. However, Hurd said he did not approve the placement of tracing technology in an e-mail to a journalist, and apologized for this and any other "inappropriate" tactics -- such as physical surveillance and obtaining phone records under false pretenses, known as "pretexting" -- that HP undertook in its investigation to find the source of information leaks. "I extend my sincere apology to those journalists who were investigated and to everyone who was impacted," Hurd said. "The inappropriate techniques that were applied do not reflect the value of HP. ... These are not indicative of how we conduct business at HP." Hurd also said he accepted the resignation of Patricia Dunn from her position as chairman of the HP board and a director, effective immediately, and thanked her for her eight years of service on HP's board. Previously, Dunn was to stay on as a director of the board, but would step down as chairman in January. Hurd now takes on the role of chairman of HP's board. HP also appointed Bart M. Schwartz, a former U.S. prosecutor, as board counsel. His role will be to perform an independent review of investigative methods and the company's Standards of Business Conduct processes, and to make future recommendations for implementing best practices. He will report to Hurd and HP Chief Financial Officer Bob Wayman. Hurd said that HP had the "best intentions" when it began the first of two phases of a probe into boardroom leaks, but said it "turned in a direction we could not have anticipated" and he takes full accountability for what transpired. "I take this very seriously and commit to getting to the bottom of this," he said. "Our job is to fix this and get back to the job of running the business." Hurd did not field reporter questions at the press conference, at which HP searched attendees' bags and did not allow video cameras. Hurd plans to appear at an U.S. House of Representatives Energy and Commerce Committee Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations hearing about HP's investigation on Thursday, Sept. 28., and said he did not want questions on Friday to interfere with that testimony. Mike Holston, a partner with law firm Morgan, Lewis & Bockius LLP, also spoke at the press conference on Friday. HP appointed the firm, which reports directly to Hurd, on Sept. 8 to investigate the tactics used by HP and third-party investigators in its probe. Holston said his firm has read more than 1 million pages of documents about two internal HP investigations -- called Kona 1 and Kona 2 -- and is still in the process of putting together the details of what took place. He declined to identify by name the people HP investigated. However, Holston did confirm that HP worked with two third-party organizations -- Security Outsourcing Services and Action Research Group -- to investigate employees, board members and/or former board members and their families, and journalists and their families. That investigation included physical surveillance, obtaining social security numbers of those being investigated to obtain phone records and the placement of e-mail tracing technology in an e-mail to one journalist, he said. Friday's news conference followed a steady stream of news reports over the last two weeks with revelations of actions HP and its outside investigators allegedly took to discover the source of company leaks to the media. Schemes allegedly considered included an attempt to plant spies inside the San Francisco newsrooms of The Wall Street Journal and CNET Networks Inc. posing as clerical workers or janitors, and a sting operation in which a fake anonymous source within HP would e-mail CNET reporter Dawn Kamamoto with a tip and track her e-mails to see if she contacted her other HP sources about the tip. Holston said Friday that while there was evidence that HP considered starting undercover operations in the newsrooms of the Journal and CNET, there is no evidence that such operations ever took place. He also confirmed that HP did try to track one reporterâs e-mail through tracing technology, but did not name the reporter involved and said there was no evidence at this time that the HP investigation team was aware that the tracer was activated.
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(InfoWorld) - Hewlett-Packard board members and journalists were under physical surveillance by investigators trying to find out who was providing information to reporters, and private investigators tried to put tracking software on a journalist's computer to keep tabs on e-mail, according to a New York Times report. Patricia Dunn, HP's chairman, the company's general counsel and a staff attorney oversaw the internalÂ investigation of news leaks, the Times reported, citing anonymous sources who have been briefed on HP's findings so far regarding the secret investigation. It isn't clear how much involvement in the investigation there was by Dunn and others at HP, the Times reported Monday. HP announced last week that Dunn willÂ step aside as chairmanÂ in January, although she will remain as a director. Two others also have resigned from the board in the wake of the scandal. Over the weekend, HP identified Michael Moeller, director of corporate media relations, as one of two HP employees who was targeted in the internal investigation. "Investigators' suspicions were misdirected and unfounded," Robert Sherbin, HP's vice president for external communications was quoted as telling the Times on Sunday. The internal investigation reportedly was conducted in two stages, with the first from January 2005 to August of that year, which came up with nothing to go on, and then a second phase beginning in January 2006 after the technology news site of CNET NetworksÂ posted an article about an HP senior management meeting held that month. The board first clamored for an investigation into leaks of information to journalists in January 2005 following an article in The Wall Street Journal that spoke of board discussions regarding management reorganization and changes in the responsibilities to be handled by Carly Fiorina, who was then chief executive officer and chairman. She was ousted by the board in February 2005. Within days of that board action, The New York Times published a detailed account of a directors' meeting that was crucial to her ouster. Reporters from the Times, the Journal, CNET and Business Week have been informed by the California attorney general's office that HP investigated them. California and federal authorities are investigating HP's conduct and the California attorney general has said that charges are likely. HP has admitted that its the private investigative firm it hired used "pretexting," with investigators pretending to be journalists in order to obtain their personal telephone records. Even after a summary of the internal investigation was presented to leaders at HP, in Palo Alto, California, those in charge were unaware that possibly illegal methods had been used to obtain information, the Times reported. In May, the investigation's findings were relayed to the board of directors, including the allegation that its longest-running member, George Keyworth, was the source of the leaks to journalists. He refused to resign, but Vice Chairman Thomas Perkins, an influential and important Silicon Valley venture capitalist, was incensed over the probe and quit the board. He then turned his attention to pressuring Dunn to resign. His surprising departure was announced in a mildly worded HP statement that offered no clue as to the fractious nature of what had transpired, details of which began to emerge in news accounts earlier this month.
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By Jordan Robertson  PALO ALTO, Calif.  --  Hewlett-Packard Co. shoved Chairwoman Patricia Dunn off its board Friday, severing its ties to the leader whose efforts to plug a media leak metamorphosed into a spying scandal that has spawned criminal and congressional investigations.
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New appointee had key role in company's pretexting scandal as an external counsel.
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Hewlett-Packard Co. said Chairman Patricia Dunn was unaware of tactics used in an investigation into boardroom leaks to reporters. Meanwhile, reports say the California attorney general is likely to bring criminal charges.
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(InfoWorld) - The attorney for ousted Hewlett-Packard chairman Patricia Dunn fired back Wednesday at public comments made by board rival Thomas Perkins about theÂ HP pretexting scandal. "Mr. Perkins...has made the biggest mistake of his career. He is a bully, and he is bullying the wrong people," said James Brosnahan, attorney for Dunn, in a statement in response to what Brosnahan called a "gratuitous attack" on his client in a speech Perkins gave Tuesday in San Francisco. In an appearance at the VentureOne Outlook Conference, a gathering of venture capitalists, Perkins said the HP dispute about how to control leaks of board deliberations to the media was really a fight for control of the board, which Dunn won, according to media reports of his speech. Perkins also lamented that many corporate boards, including HP's, have turned from being "guidance" boards into "compliance" boards. Rather than advising the company on how to run its business as a "guidance" style director, "compliance" directors are increasingly focused on maintaining compliance with U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission regulations governing publicly traded companies. He described Dunn as a compliance-style director, according to the reports. Dunn was indicted in October 2006 on four felony counts in California state court for authorizing an investigation into HP board member leaks to the media. Investigators hired by HP allegedly used false pretenses, or "pretexting," to get phone companies to divulge calling records for people they were investigating. A former legal counsel for HP and two private detectives hired by HP are also facing trial. The scandal broke in September 2006 because Perkins demanded the company publicly state, in an SEC filing, why he quit the board four months earlier. Because the state case is still awaiting trial, Dunn can't directly respond to Perkins' remarks, but her attorney had plenty to say. "Mr. Perkins generated an attack on Patricia Dunn, hired lawyers, hired a public relations firm, and all because his colleague on the Hewlett-Packard board [Jay Keyworth] was found to be leaking information. Now he is attempting to further prejudice the public against Patricia Dunn," Brosnahan wrote. Perkins quit the board when Keyworth was outed as the director who leaked information to the media. In his statement, Brosnahan said Perkins is likely to be called as a witness in Dunn's trial. He also accused Perkins of publicly criticizing Dunn to draw attention to Perkins' soon-to-be-published book, which is expected to touch on the pretexting scandal. A call to Perkins' office was not immediately returned.
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HP exec Mark Hurd reaches out to employees as the company decides how to react to this week's boardroom pretexting scandal.
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By Purva Patel and Anastasia Ustinova, Houston Chronicle  Sep. 19--It was all about business at Hewlett-Packard's technology forum in Houston on Monday, despite the continuing fallout over a company-ordered investigation of board members to find the source of leaks to reporters.
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(InfoWorld) - A U.S. House of Representatives Subcommittee probing theÂ Hewlett-Packard Co. (HP) pretexting case has issued more subpoenas to compel witness testimony at a Thursday hearing. The Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations of the Energy and Commerce Committee issued subpoenas Wednesday for five people identified as "pretexters," data brokers who sometimes obtain access to confidential records under false pretenses. HP has been embroiled in a scandal over its hiring of private investigators who engaged in possibly illegal pretexting to investigate news leaks from HP's board to reporters. Served with subpoenas, according to the Subcommittee, are: Bryan Wagner, a private investigator from Littleton, Colorado; Charles Kelly, of the CAS Agency in Villa Rica, Georgia; Cassandra Selvage of Eye in the Sky Investigations, of Dade City, Florida; Darren Brost, of Austin, Texas; and Valerie Preston from InSearchOf Inc., of Cooper City, Florida. Wagner was identified in a Wednesday Wall Street Journal article as a suspect in the pretexting of phone records of HP directors, employees and journalists who cover the Palo Alto, California technology company. The Journal reported that Wagner told an investigator that he smashed his computer to pieces with a hammer, destroying data that was saved on it. The article also said that the destruction of the computer may hamper an investigation by California Attorney General Bill Lockyer's office into possible illegal activity by people at HP or by the private investigators HP hired. The five who were subpoenaed Wednesday have been added to a list of witnesses that also includes HP's Chief Executive Officer and President Mark Hurd and former board chairman Patricia Dunn, who resigned last Friday because of the scandal. While Dunn and Hurd have volunteered to appear, two other HP executives involved in the investigation were subpoenaed: senior counsel Kevin Hunsaker and Global Security Manager Anthony Gentilucci. Hunsaker "left the company" and Gentilucci "resigned" effective Tuesday, said HP spokesman Ryan Donovan. Also subpoenaed are Ron DeLia, operator of Security Outsourcing Solutions Inc., a Needham, Massachusetts, private investigations firm, and Joe Depante, owner of Action Research Group, of Melbourne, Florida. HP has acknowledged hiring both those firms in its leak investigation and that they used pretexting to track down personal phone records. Â
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A small security company in suburban Boston has emerged as a subject in the investigation of Hewlett-Packard Co.'s boardroom spying scandal, according to a source familiar with the matter.
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(InfoWorld) - Patricia Dunn, Hewlett-Packard's embattled chairman, will be relieved of those duties after the board's Jan. 18, 2007, meeting, but will continue as a director. The announcement came Tuesday morning, followingÂ meetings of the boardÂ over the weekend and Monday. Mark Hurd, HP's chief executive officer and president will also take on the chairman's job. Richard Hackborn, who has been on the board since 1992, has been chosen as the lead independent director as of January. Dunn has been under intense pressure to step down as chairman after it came to light last week that the board of directorsÂ carried out an investigationÂ to determine who among the board leaked confidential information to journalists. The board admitted in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) that the internal probe involved "pretexting," where employees of an investigative firm hired by the company pretended to be reporters to gain access to their telephone records. Federal authorities, including the U.S. Department of Justice and a congressional committee,Â are questioning the board's conductÂ in the probe and the California attorney general has said thatÂ charges are likely to be filed. "The recent events that have taken place follow an important investigation that was required after the board sought to resolve the persistent disclosure of confidential information from within its ranks. These leaks had the potential to affect not only the stock price of HP but also that of other publicly traded companies," Dunn said in a written statement released by HP. "Unfortunately, the investigation, which was conducted by third parties, included certainÂ inappropriate techniques. These went beyond what we understood them to be, and I apologize that they were employed." Dunn pledged to take action to make sure that such "inappropriate investigative techniques" do not happen again. "They have no place in HP," she said in the statement.
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PALO ALTO, California  - Hewlett-Packard Co.   HPQ.N Chief Executive Officer Mark Hurd said he had approved   an e-mail ruse to track down boardroom leaks, admitting for the   first time his involvement in a scandal that also on Friday   forced out the company's chairman.