Keyworth says HP approved leaks
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Hewlett-Packard Co. HPQ.N   director George Keyworth resigned from the board on Tuesday as   the No. 2 PC maker tries to move beyond a brewing controversy   over its investigation into media leaks.
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California Attorney General Bill   Lockyer said he has enough evidence to indict people at   Hewlett-Packard Co. HPQ.N in an investigation into whether   the computer maker had illegally obtained the private phone   records of directors and reporters.
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SAN JOSE, Calif. -- A private investigator hired to get to the bottom of boardroom leaks at the Hewlett-Packard Co. got tips from a former news reporter about how to dupe a journalist into revealing the source of a damaging story about the company.
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(InfoWorld) - Hewlett-Packard has entered into mutual agreements with two former directors caught up in theÂ board spying scandalÂ not to file lawsuits over the dispute. The company disclosed the agreement in a filing to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Thursday. In the same filing, HP said it has agreed to pay some of the directors' legal expenses in connection with the investigations. The SEC has asked for more information on the circumstances surroundingÂ Thomas Perkins' resignationÂ from HP's board of directors over the spying scandal, HP said in the filing. HP also revealed the terms under which Perkins and directorÂ George Keyworth left the board. They resigned after it was revealed that private investigators hired by HP may haveÂ used illegal methodsÂ to identify Keyworth as the source of leaks of board deliberations to the news media. Separately on Thursday, HP said chief executive officer Mark Hurd "has offered to appear" before a House subcommittee probing the scandal. Other HP executives, Chairman Patricia Dunn and others implicated in the scandal haveÂ accepted invitations to appearÂ at a Sept. 28 hearing. HP said in the SEC filing that it has entered into a "Mutual Release and Indemnification Agreement" with Perkins and Keyworth in which the two former directors agreed not to file claims against other directors, officers or employees of HP. In turn, the company agreed not file claims against them. HP will also pay legal fees Perkins and Keyworth may incur in cooperating with government investigations of the scandal. Besides the House inquiry, the California Attorney General and the U.S. Attorney for Northern California are conducting probes. The SEC filing also said Perkins and Keyworth reserve the right to take legal action against private investigation companies that HP allegedly hired to probe the source of board leaks. HP told the SEC on Sept. 6 that it had discovered those outside firms engaged in a possibly illegal practice called "pretexting" while digging into the personal phone records of directors, HP employees and journalists. The investigators' probe identified Keyworth as the confidential source. He initially refused to resign when confronted by the board in May, but he quit on Sept. 12. HP also said in the filing that it is cooperating with an SEC request for additional information about the circumstances of Perkins' resignation in May. HP's SEC filing at that time noted Perkins' resignation without elaborating. Perkins, who said he resigned in protest of the way HP was conducting its investigation, later lobbied the company to amend its notice with more detail. Hurd is set to lead a news conference Friday at HP headquarters in Palo Alto, California, to reveal the results of a separate investigation of HP's leak probe. After the scandal broke and reports surfaced about how involved HP executives may have been in overseeing the private investigators' activities, HP brought in the law firm of Morgan, Lewis & Bockius to investigate. A representative of the firm will present its findings at the news conference. News reports in recent days have revealed Hurd, Dunn and other HP executives were moreÂ involved in the leak probeÂ than they had earlier indicated. Â
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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.
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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 obtain private telephone records deceptively.
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WASHINGTON -- A Needham private investigator told Hewlett-Packard Co. representatives that he kept former chairwoman Patricia Dunn briefed about the questionable methods he used to find boardroom leaks, according to testimony at congressional hearings yesterday and documents filed in connection with the hearings.
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Hewlett-Packard Co. HPQ.N on   Thursday admitted that private investigators hired by its board   had acquired the phone records of several journalists in an   attempt to find a suspected boardroom leaker, the Financial   Times reported on Friday.
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The man could be a link between Hewlett-Packard and detective agencies in Boston and Florida hired to ferret out a leaker of company information.
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Here's a rundown of the agencies investigating HP's methods of tracking down a "leaker" on its board.
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Revelations that HP supervised an extensive investigation of some of its directors, journalists and a few employees have blemished its reputation. The New York Times
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Two Hewlett-Packard Co. HPQ.N   officials were subpoenaed to testify at a House Energy and   Commerce subcommittee hearing Thursday on the company's probe   into boardroom leaks, a source familiar with the investigation   said on Monday.
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California Attorney General Bill  Lockyer said his office has enough evidence to obtain  indictments of people within Hewlett-Packard Co.  and of  hired contractors, after the company disclosed questionable  tactics in a boardroom leak investigation.
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State says it has made a deal with PC maker over civil charges related to methods used in an HP leak investigation.
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(InfoWorld) - All's still not well in the higher echelons of Hewlett-PackardÂ as revealed in a filing the company made to the U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC). The brouhaha relates to the sudden andÂ unexpected resignationÂ of Silicon Valley venture capitalist Thomas Perkins from HP's board of directors in May. The co-founder of leading IT investment firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers, Perkins has strong ties to HP dating back to the 1960s when he ran the company's research department and including a previous stint on HP's board of directors from 2002 to 2004. Back in May, HP provided no reason for Perkins' resignation, but according to an 8-K filing HP made to the SEC Wednesday, he quit over concerns with the HP board's handling of investigations into leaks of confidential information. In the filing, HP confirms that the company has suffered "multiple leaks of confidential HP information," including information relating to the closed-door deliberations of its board, dating back to at least 2005. To try and stem the leaks and identify the culprit, HP turned to an external legal counsel who interviewed the board's directors in early 2005 and got each of them to recommit to their duty of confidentiality. The interviews didn't turn up the party responsible and the leaks continued. So, HP brought in an external specialized investigations firm which revealed that George Keyworth, an HP director since 1986, has been disclosing board deliberations and other confidential information to the media without authorization. Keyworth acknowledged he had leaked information at a board meeting on May 18 and the board asked him to resign. Keyworth refused to do so and at that point Perkins announced his own resignation, citing "personal frustration" with the chairman of the board in how the whole leaks investigation had been handled, the filing said. Perkins didn't like the matter being aired before the entire board and had believed he and HP Nonexecutive Chairman Patricia Dunn would handle the matter privately. On June 19, Perkins sought information from HP about the methods used to conduct the investigations into the leaks. According to the filing, he "asserted that phone and e-mail communications had been improperly recorded as part of the investigation." HP responded that there had been no recording or eavesdropping, but admitted "that some form of 'pretexting' for phone record information, a technique used by investigators to obtain information by disguising their identity, had been used." In pretexting, investigators call a phone company and use personal information to pretend to be someone else so as to gain access to that individual's phone records. After receiving the HP response, Perkins asked HP's nominating and governance committee to carry out an inquiry into whether the techniques used to conduct the investigation were appropriate. The vendor went ahead and engaged outside counsel, not previously involved in the earlier inquiries, to conduct such an investigation. The counsel discovered that a third party retained by the external consulting firm HP brought in to investigate the leaks "had in some cases employed pretexting." Such a practice, at that time, was not generally illegal, the counsel reported, but added that it "could not confirm that the techniques employed by the outside consulting firm and the party retained by that firm complied in all respects with applicable law." As a result, the HP committee recommended that controls relating to investigations be strengthened and that HP management ensure that all aspects of HP's investigations do comply with both applicable laws and HP's code of ethics. HP's board and Chief Executive Officer Mark Hurd have accepted the committee's conclusions. The U.S. Attorney General of the State of California has asked HP to supply information about the processes used in the leak investigation. "HP intends to cooperate fully with that inquiry," the vendor said in the filing. The SEC has also been in touch over the 8-K filing HP made when Perkins resigned, but the vendor has responded that it believes its disclosures back in May were "accurate and complete." In an Aug. 31 meeting, HP's board of directors determined that Keyworth shouldn't be nominated for another term on the board. According to a Wall Street Journal report, former HP Chief Executive Officer Carly Fiorina was deeply angered by the leaks since they revealed a gulf between her position and that of some of the company's board. She was laterÂ ousted from HPÂ in early 2005 and isÂ due to tell her side of the story in a bookÂ titled "Tough Choices" out in October.
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WASHINGTON -- Five private investigators who allegedly served as the foot soldiers in Hewlett-Packard Co.'s efforts to identify the source of a boardroom leak have been ordered to testify at Thursday's congressional hearing on the affair.
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Hewlett-Packard has turned over thousands of documents to a U.S. House subcommittee investigating methods the company used to find out who was leaking company information to the media, a subcommittee spokesman said Monday.