Leak Scandal Claims Chairwoman at HP
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By Damon Darlin  Moving to quell its boardroom upheaval, Hewlett-Packard said Tuesday that its chairwoman, Patricia Dunn, would step down in January and would be succeeded by Mark Hurd, the chief executive.
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(InfoWorld) - Embattled Hewlett-Packard chairman Patricia Dunn told an appreciative audience in San Francisco Wednesday night that she looks forward to the opportunity to "set the record straight" regarding allegations that she oversaw anÂ internal investigation of the companyÂ which may have broken the law. Dunn made the remarks during a previously scheduled event where she was inducted into the Hall of Fame of a group of San Francisco Bay Area government and business leaders. An audience of about 800 people at The Westin St. Francis hotel on San Francisco's famed Union Square, gave Dunn a standing ovation. "All I will say about the maelstrom ofÂ  recent unwelcome attention is that I look forward eagerly to the time in the near future when I will be permitted to set the record straight," she said. Dunn was honored by the Bay Area Council for her success in business and her philanthropic work. Besides being chairman of HP, she was vice chairman of Barclay's Global Investors. Dunn also is on the board of a nonprofit program helping troubled youth in San Francisco and a program for providing health care to the poor in Oakland, California. The audience was largely supportive. "I think she was courageous" to appear, said Lynette Busby after the speech while her husband, James, added, "she hasn't been convicted of anything and in America that's important. She is a very forthright person." But there was some criticism. "I think it's unbelievably arrogant of [the council] to select her when she is under anÂ egregious cloud of suspicion," said one local attorney who declined to be identified. Even though she was chosen for the Hall of Fame before the scandal broke, the honor should have been withdrawn, he said. She and others involved are accused of "doing things that are contrary to the best values of America." Dunn also tried to make light of her situation. While she said she wanted to set the record straight, she added, "and in the meantime it wouldn't hurt if the pope would continue to make controversy." Dunn is one of several people who have agreed to appear at aÂ Sept. 28 hearingÂ of a House Subcommittee probing allegations that HP hired private investigators to determine which of its board members were leaking news of board deliberations to the media. The investigators allegedlyÂ obtained private phone recordsÂ of board members, some HP employees, and reporters under false pretenses to determine the source of the leak, a tactic called pretexting. The House Energy and Commerce Committee is considering federal legislation to outlaw pretexting. California Attorney General Bill Lockyer is investigating the possibility ofÂ filing state chargesÂ against people implicated in the scandal. Dunn was forced to announce Sept. 12 that she will resign in January from the chairmanship of the HP board, although she will remain a director, amid news reports about her role in ordering an investigation of the board media leaks. She has stated she did not know outside investigators were using pretexting and that she kept a distance from the investigation, but a Wall Street Journal article Wednesday, based on an internal HP report, indicated she may have been more involved in the probe than she indicated earlier.
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An attorney hired by Hewlett-Packard to investigate the conduct of HP and outside investigators has provided new details of his firm's investigation ofÂ news leaks from the HP board.
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Hewlett-Packard Co. chairwoman Patricia Dunn, who authorized an investigation of directors to determine the source of news leaks, said yesterday she would step down if the board asks her to.
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By From news reports  Hewlett-Packard's chairwoman, Patricia Dunn, resigned Friday, effective immediately, following the company's ill-fated investigation into media leaks, the company said.
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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 Carly Fiorina, according to a person familiar with one of the investigations looming over the computer and printer company.
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Reporters followed, say leaks Officials at Hewlett-Packard have been asked to testify to the House of Representatives which is investigating the company's media leak investigations. Chairwoman Patricia Dunn and General Counsel Ann Baskins have been asked to testify.â¦
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(InfoWorld) - Hewlett-Packard Co. Chairman Patricia Dunn will answer questions on the spying scandal that has embroiled her company during a House committee hearing on Capitol Hill next week. HP's general counsel, Ann Baskins, will also appear at the hearing of the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, being held next Thursday, said HP spokesman Ryan Donovan. HP's lead outside counsel, Larry Sonsini of the Palo Alto law firm Wilson, Sonsini, Goodrich & Rosati, will also testify, according to Terry Lane, a committee spokesman. Sonsini advised HP on the legality of its investigation into media leaks of details from the company's board meetings between 2005 and 2006. Earlier this month, HP revealed it had hired outside investigators to find the leaker and that they had impersonated the subjects of their investigation in order to gain access to private telephone records. In the course of the search, HP board members and reporters were impersonated. The committee is looking into HP's methods and is considering new federal legislation that would make this practice, called 'pretexting,' illegal. HP is also being investigated by the Attorneys General of California and Massachusetts, the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation and the U.S. Attorney's office. Ronald DeLia of investigation firm Security Outsourcing Solutions is also set to appear, but Lane said it is possible he will invoke his Fifth Amendment right to not testify to protect against self-incrimination. Prosecutors reportedly are looking into DeLia's company and a Melbourne, Florida, investigation company, Action Research Group, in connection with the scandal. In a June 11 Congressional hearing on pretexting, several investigators invoked their Fifth Amendment rights and refused to answer questions on the practice, which is considered to be in a legal gray area. The committee has also asked HP Global Security Manager Anthony Gentilucci and Action Research Group owner Joe Depante to testify, but has not heard back from them, Lane said. HP has already provided the committee with "thousands of pages of documents" in connection with its investigation, Lane said. The pretexting scandal has been front page news for several weeks now and has forced Dunn to step down from her chairman's role, effective January. But it has not had much of an effect on the company's financial performance. HP's (HPQ) stock has hovered in the $36 range since news of the affair first broke three weeks ago. HP Executive Vice President Vyomesh Joshi, who runs the company's printing business, downplayed the effect that the scandal was having on HP's management. "I think our focus is business," he said in response to a question on the matter at the Bank of America's Annual Investment Conference in San Francisco Tuesday. "We have a very solid team who is focusing on the business, focusing on the execution. At the end of the day, that is what we want to do." Â
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Hewlett-Packard chief executive officer Mark Hurd blamedÂ the scandalÂ that has besieged his company on "a rogue investigation" that got out of hand, in an advance copy of his Congressional testimony released by a House Subcommittee on Wednesday.
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Hewlett-Packard Co.   Chairman Patricia Dunn on Friday defended her role in an  inquiry into a boardroom leak that has led to a California  state investigation, and said she has no plans to resign unless  asked by the board.
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Hewlett-Packard Co. Chairwoman Patricia Dunn said Friday that several of her fellow board members want her to remain on the job despite a criminal investigation into her efforts to plug a media leak.
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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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SAN JOSE, Calif. -- Hewlett-Packard Co. said Tuesday that Patricia Dunn will step down as chairwoman of the computer and printer maker in January amid a widening scandal involving a possibly illegal probe into media leaks. She will be succeeded by CEO Mark Hurd.
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Patricia Dunn agreed to resign as Hewlett-Packard Co. chairwoman yesterday as a scandal widened over potentially illegal tactics used by outside investigators she hired to uncover the source of news leaks.
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PALO ALTO, Calif.  -- Hewlett-Packard Co. Chairwoman Patricia Dunn resigned Friday, effective immediately, in the wake of the company's ill-fated investigation of media leaks.
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By Rachel Konrad  Hewlett-Packard Co. Chairwoman Patricia Dunn is under scrutiny from business and ethics experts after she oversaw an invasive and possibly illegal effort to snoop into the home phone calls of fellow HP board members.
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Hewlett-Packard CEO Mark Hurd announced Friday that Chairman Patricia Dunn has resigned from HP's board because of the fallout from the company's probe of leaks to the media. But Hurd also confirmed that he approved a misinformation campaign as part of the probe.