Fiorina could attract interest in HP leak probe
291525
Former Hewlett-Packard Co. Chief Executive Carly Fiorina's account of how she tried to plug boardroom leaks in 2005 is likely to attract the interest of prosecutors in view of HP's current scandal, but the tactics she outlined appear legal, lawyers say.
349994
Carly Fiorina, who was ousted  last week as chairman and CEO of Hewlett-Packard Co. HPQ.N,  will have received $45 million worth in stock options and  severance pay on top of her regular salary and cash bonuses  after five years at the company, a spokeswoman said on Monday.
737026
(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
589871
The memoir of fallen Hewlett-Packard Co. leader Carly Fiorina, once America's most powerful woman chief executive, paints an unsparing picture of the internal power struggles and gender politics that prefigured America's most public corporate boardroom scandal.
471460
(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.
139182
SAN JOSE, Calif. -- A c ongressional committee yesterday asked Hewlett-Packard Co. to turn over records related to the firm's possibly illegal investigation of media leaks, as the company's board planned to meet again to discuss the fate of chairwoman Patricia Dunn.
650249
Hewlett-Packard Co.  is  under investigation by U.S. federal prosecutors over its  inquiry into boardroom leaks to the press, authorities said on  Monday, adding to the computer maker's legal woes.
754330
Department of Justice launches query into methods Hewlett-Packard used to nab the source of media leaks.
38234
A former Hewlett-Packard Co.   board member has asked U.S. prosecutors, as well as  U.S. trade and communications regulators, to review an HP  investigation in which directors' and journalists' private  phone records were accessed.
470935
Former Hewlett-Packard chief Carleton S. Fiorina ordered the first of a series of leak investigations in January 2005, she says in an long-anticipated memoir.
78107
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.
382536
(InfoWorld) - 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. Patricia Dunn, chairman of HP's board, and Ann Baskins, HP's general counsel, have been invited to testify at a hearing of the Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee of the House Energy and Commerce Committee in Washington, D.C. Also invited to testify is Larry Sonsini, lead outside counsel for HP, and Ronald DeLia, managing director of Security Outsourcing Solutions Inc., a Needham, Massachusetts, corporate security company identified as having been hired by HP to investigate who on the board leaked news of a confidential strategy session to the media. HP and outside firms it hired to conduct the investigation are facingÂ possible criminal charges in California for using pretexting to surreptitiously gain access to the personal phone records of HP directors and nine journalists. Dunn has agreed to resign as chairman come January as a result of her role in the investigation, but will remain on the board. Sonsini, chairman of the law firm Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, advised HP on the legality of its investigation of the leaks. The committee is considering federal legislation to outlaw pretexting in the U.S. and put other limits on the work of so-called data brokers who gather information for clients. Sometimes their means are duplicitous, such as impersonating an individual to gain unauthorized access to confidential records. HP is being investigated by the Attorneys General of California and Massachusetts, the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation and the U.S. Attorney's office for actions it took to investigate the board leaks that may have violated the law. Terry Lane, a spokesman for the House committee, said the witnesses have not been subpoenaed to testify but could not say what the committee might do if they declined the invitation. Although HP has said it is willing to cooperate on investigations into the pretexting case, spokesman Mike Moeller said the company would not comment specifically on whether Dunn and Baskins would accept the invitation to testify. Neither of the others responded to a request for comment. Â
670855
(InfoWorld) - The U.S. Department of Justice is asking questions about conduct by Hewlett-Packard Co. that has embroiled the technology company in controversy. HP acknowledged in a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filing Monday that it isÂ cooperating with an inquiryÂ by the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of California intoÂ possibly illegal tactics used by investigators hired by HP to investigate news leaks from the company's board members. HP described the U.S. Attorney's inquiry as "informal" and said the questions are similar to those asked by the attorney general of California. HP is based in Palo Alto, California. "We are cooperating fully with these inquiries," HP said in its SEC filing. The probes are looking into the use of "pretexting" to search phone records to determine which board members may have been talking to reporters. The phone records of nine reporters from various news organizations were also obtained to determine who their sources from within HP might have been on stories about the company. Pretexting refers to posing as a phone company customer to get access to personal records. California Attorney General Bill Lockyer says a crime was committed in connection with the pretexting, but his office is still investigating what crime and by whom. The scandal has brought pressure on HP Chairman Patricia Dunn, who ordered the investigation, but claims she didn't know the outside investigative firm hired to trace the leaks would engage in pretexting. HP's board is meeting Monday for the second straight day to discuss its response to the controversy. Former HP director Thomas Perkins, who quit in protest in May because of the way the investigation was conducted, called on Dunn to resign. His statement, released Saturday by his attorney, was prompted by Dunn's comments in media interviews last week in which she alleged that it was Perkins who wanted "more aggressive measures" used to investigate the leaks, including use of lie detectors on board members. "I am saddened, but not surprised, that Patricia Dunn has attacked me personally for doing my job. I acted not from any ill will toward Ms. Dunn but to protect the best interests of HP. I think the past months and days have shown that those interests are best served if Ms. Dunn would resign from the board," said Jenkins in his statement. The U.S. Federal Communications Commission also is investigating HP. The FCC reportedly sent a "letter of inquiry" to AT&T Inc. asking how its customer phone records may have been accessed, according to an Associated Press report. An FCC spokesman could not confirm that. HP's internal probe identified director George Keyworth as the source for a CNet Networks Inc. story about HP's strategy, which the technology news Web site posted in January. He refused to resign when asked to doÂ so by Dunn in May, but theÂ board has since voted not to renominate him to his seat. Â
386904
HP says it will cooperate with a request from a U.S. House subcommittee questioning  why CEO Mark Hurd sold HP stock just before a boardroom spying scandal broke in September.
162534
NEW YORK -- Investigators for Hewlett-Packard Co. sought private telephone records of board members while hunting for leaks to the media of confidential company information, the computer maker said in a regulatory filing Wednesday.
584107
The memoir of fallen   Hewlett-Packard Co. leader Carly Fiorina, once America's most   powerful woman chief executive, paints an unsparing picture of   the internal power struggles and gender politics that   prefigured America's most public corporate boardroom scandal.
421601
By James S. Granelli and Charles Piller  The boardroom intrigue at Hewlett Packard Co. intensified Tuesday as California Attorney General Bill Lockyer said he has "enough evidence to indict" people inside the Silicon Valley icon for snooping confidential phone records.