HP CEO to testify to House panel on leak scandal
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Hewlett-Packard Co.  Chief  Executive Mark Hurd will testify to a House subcommittee on the  company's leak probe, HP said on Thursday, hours after the  panel's top Democrat said he should appear at a hearing.
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(InfoWorld) - Hewlett-Packard Co.'s (HP's) board of directors has approved a severance package including $3.7 million in stock options for its general counsel, who resigned Thursday amid a growing scandal into HP's conduct during an investigation into board leaks. Ann BaskinsÂ resigned Thursday just before a U.S. Congress subcommittee hearing on HP's investigation methods, including investigators pretending to be reporters or board members to gain access to their personal telephone records and other data. That practice is often called pretexting. During the hearing, former HP Chairwoman Patricia DunnÂ told lawmakers that Baskins had repeatedly told her the year-long investigation was done legally. HP filed a form with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Thursday saying it would provide Baskins with a compensation package, including the option to sell her outstanding stock options, worth nearly $3.7 million, by Nov. 22. Baskins will also have access to the vested portion of her retirement account at HP and to other benefits. If she accepts the package, she will give up any claims against HP and its employees, according to the SEC document. Baskins declined to testify before the subcommittee, citing her right to not testify against herself. Members of the Oversight and Investigations subcommittee of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce hammered HP officials Thursday for investigators who allegedly lied to gain access to others' personal records, for attempting to trace the e-mail of a reporter and for following reporters and board members. Representative Ed Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat, also questioned why HP was giving Baskins a "golden parachute" after Dunn identified her being one of the internal leaders of the leak investigation. "Do you think that's appropriate?" he asked Dunn. Dunn,Â who resigned from the HP board Sept. 21, said she was not a part of the board discussion to approve Baskins' severance package. She would have to hear the discussion before deciding if it was appropriate, she said. Baskins worked for HP for 24 years and served the company well before the recent questions, Dunn said. "She bled HP blue," Dunn said. "She made some mistakes."
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By JORDAN ROBERTSON  SAN JOSE, Calif. - With Hewlett-Packard Co.'s stock tumbling, CEO Mark Hurd continued to face questions about what he knew of HP's efforts to ferret out a boardroom 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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(InfoWorld) - Ousted Hewlett-Packard chairwoman Patricia Dunn is expected to be indicted Wednesday in California on charges related toÂ the spying scandal that has hit the company, the New York Times reports. To be indicted along with Dunn are Kevin Hunsaker, a former senior lawyer at HP; Ronald L. DeLia, a Boston-area private detective; Joseph DePante, owner of Action Research Group, a Melbourne, Florida, information broker; and Bryan Wagner, a Littleton, Colorado, man who is said to have obtained private phone records while working for DePante, the Times reported. The charges are expected to come from California Attorney General Bill Lockeyer,Â whose office has been investigating reportsÂ that HP hired private detectives and may have used illegal methods to track the source of news leaks from the board of directors. The charges are expected to include using false or fraudulent pretenses to obtain confidential information from a public utility, unauthorized access to computer data, identity theft, and conspiracy to commit each of those crimes, the Times reported. All of the charges are felonies. The private investigators hired by HP allegedly used "pretexting," pretending to be journalists from a number of various publications to obtain their telephone records in an attempt to find out who from the board provided information to the reporters.
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Several people connected to the Hewlett-Packard Co. (HP) board scandal have been invited to testify at a U.S. House subcommittee hearing Sept. 28 on the issue ofÂ pretexting to get confidential phone records.
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JUST IN At a press conference in Palo Alto, Calif. Friday, Hewlett-Packard CEO Mark Hurd addressed the issues surrounding the investigation into a boardroom leak, saying former chairwoman Patricia Dunn is fully resigning her post from the board. More coverage of this latest development coming shortly.
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(InfoWorld) - The U.S. House of Representatives Subcommittee looking into theÂ Hewlett-Packard Co. boardroom spying scandalÂ has added a second day of hearings and issued subpoenas for some witnesses. The Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee of the Energy and Commerce Committee is holding hearings on Thursday, Sept. 28, and now Friday the 29th on pretexting, the practice of obtaining private phone records under false pretenses from phone companies. On the second day of hearings, the subcommittee has invited executives of the major wireless phone carriers to testify as well as the chairmen of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), according to a subcommittee news release Monday. Several people connected with the HP scandal have already accepted invitations to testify before the subcommittee on Thursday. HP has admitted that outside investigators it hired earlier this year to find the source of news leaks from the HP board engaged in pretexting to access their phone records. It is a decision HP now regrets, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Mark Hurd said at a news conference Friday at the technology company's headquarters in Palo Alto, California. The committee issued subpoeanas compelling three witnesses to testify in regards to the HP scandal: HP senior counsel Kevin Hunsaker; HP Global Security Manager Anthony Gentilucci; and Ron DeLia, operator of Security Outsourcing Solutions Inc. (SOS), a Boston-based private investigations firm hired by HP. Hunsaker and Gentillucci worked closely with SOS to investigate the leaks, including use of pretexting, according to a report released Friday by an attorney hired by Hurd to investigate HP's investigation of the leaks. Congress has before it legislation to make pretexting a federal crime. California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has a bill on his desk to make pretexting a state crime, but Attorney General Bill Lockyer says state criminal charges could still be filed against those involved in the HP scandal under existing state law. The CEOs of U.S. Cellular Corp., Alltel Communications Inc., Cingular Wireless LLC, Sprint Nextel Corp., Verizon Wireless Inc. and T-Mobile USA Inc. have been asked to appear at the second day of hearings. The subcommittee said in a news release that the hearings are part of a seven-month inquiry it's been conducting into data brokers and the questionable practice of pretexting.
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By AP Wire Services  SAN JOSE, Calif.  -- Congress and federal investigators on Monday entered the fray surrounding Hewlett-Packard Co.'s possibly illegal probe of media leaks, as the company's board met to discuss the fate of its embattled chairwoman.    With the FBI, the U.S.
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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.
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Hewlett-Packard Co. HPQ.N Chief   Executive Mark Hurd told lawmakers on Thursday there were no   excuses for a probe of boardroom leaks that led investigators   to deceptively obtain private telephone records.
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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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By Pete Carey, San Jose Mercury News, Calif.  Sep. 18--Hewlett-Packard faces a deadline today to provide Congress with  documents about its boardroom-leak probe, which is under criminal  investigation by the California attorney general.
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The congressional panel investigating Hewlett-Packard Co.'s internal probe of its boardroom spying has demanded that chief executive Mark Hurd explain $1.37 million worth of options he exercised just before the scandal became public, two congressmen said yesterday.
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Members of Congress plan to grill current and former executives of Hewlett-Packard Co. today about their roles in a surveillance scandal and to determine whether broader ethics or privacy laws are needed to safeguard consumers.
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A U.S. House of Representatives   panel on Wednesday extended its probe into Hewlett-Packard   Co.'s use of private telephone records by subpoenaing five   private investigators to testify at a Thursday hearing.
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Not Dunn arguing Patricia Dunn, the recently ex-chairman of HP, is to appear before a Congressional committee later today to defend her actions in spying on board members and journalists.â¦