Hurd to hold briefing on HP analysis of spying scandal
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(InfoWorld) - In one of his first public acts to address the burgeoning Hewlett-Packard Co. (HP) spy scandal, Chief Executive Officer Mark Hurd plans to brief reporters Friday about the findings of an analysis conducted by the company's law firm. HP retained Morgan, Lewis & Bockius for the outside analysis of the company's actions in trying to find the source of a boardroom news leak. The scandal led toÂ the resignation of company Chairman Patricia Dunn, who will turn over that job to Hurd in January. Dunn and Hurd have said they knew about the operation, but insist they never approved of the possible illegal methods used by third-party investigators to obtain communications records of reporters and some HP employees and directors. "What began as an effort to prevent the leaks of confidential information from HP's board room ended up heading in directions that were never anticipated," Hurd said in a written statement. However, company e-mail records seem to indicate that both executives knew about the investigators' "pretexting" practices while they were going on, according toÂ recent stories in the Wall Street Journal and The New York Times. Pretexting involves pretending to be someone to obtain their telephone records. In Friday's meeting, a representative from the law firm will share its findings, describing "exactly what took place and when," Hurd said. Dunn has also saidÂ she will share more information about the episode, promising to "set the record straight" about allegations that she oversaw the illegal operation. Morgan Lewis will also represent the company in government inquiries such as criminal investigations by the California and Massachusetts attorneys general, and by the U.S. House of Representatives. California Attorney General Bill Lockyer has said that he has enough evidence to indict certain people at HP and its contractors with crimes related to their methods in obtaining private phone records of reporters, board members and other employees. Â
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A photo featuring Mark Hurd, HP chairman, chief executive officer and president, as he updates media today on the actions HP (NYSE:HPQ)(Nasdaq:HPQ) is taking to address issues regarding the investigation of leaks from HP's boardroom, is available on Business Wire's web site and AP PhotoExpress.
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By Damon Darlin and Matt Richtel  John Markoff contributed reporting.  *  Pressure is mounting on the Hewlett-Packard chief executive, Mark Hurd, to explain what appears to have been a greater role in the company's spying operation than was initially indicated.
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Shares of Hewlett-Packard Co.   fell as much as 5 percent on Thursday after a newspaper report  indicated that Chief Executive Mark Hurd may be linked to a  controversial internal investigation of boardroom media leaks.
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The top Republican in the U.S. House of Representatives, Dennis Hastert, will meet reporters at 1 p.m. (1700 GMT) as he faces calls for his resignation over the handling of a sex scandal involving a fellow Republican Congressman who resigned.
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(InfoWorld) - Two U.S. Congressmen have asked Hewlett-Packard Co. (HP) Chief Executive Officer Mark Hurd to explain why he sold US$1.37 million worth of HP stock just before theÂ company's spying scandal became public. Congressmen John Dingell and Mark Stupak, both Michigan Democrats, sent a letter to Hurd Wednesday requesting an explanation and asking for a response by Dec. 21. "We look forward to responding to the committee's inquiry," said HP spokeswoman Emma Wischhusen. Both congressmen are ranking members of the investigations subcommittee of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which in September held hearings on the HP pretexting scandal. In his testimony, Hurd apologized for the investigation HP undertook in which private investigators used false pretenses, called pretexting, to gain access to the phone records of people being investigated to trace leaks of board deliberations to the media. In their letter, Dingell and Stupak note that Hurd sold $1.37 million in stock options on Aug. 25, the same day Hurd was briefed by attorneys for Wilson Sonsini, one of HP's outside law firms, about the pretexting investigation and possible legal liability for the company over it. The scandal became public Sept. 6 when HP filed a notice with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission acknowledging that director Thomas Perkins resigned over the way the leak investigation was conducted. "The August 25 transaction does not appear to be part of any prescheduled program," the congressmen wrote in their letter to Hurd. "Please explain the reason for this transaction." Questions about the timing of HP executives' stock trades around the same time are also the subject of aÂ shareholder lawsuit against the technology company. The suit, filed Nov. 29 in Santa Clara County Superior Court in California, accuses Hurd and seven other HP executives of selling a total $41.3 million worth of shares between Aug. 21 and Sept. 6 based on insider information that the pretexting scandal was about to become publicly known. HP issued a statement at the time the lawsuit was filed calling it "baseless." As it is, HP's stock price wasn't adversely affected by the scandal as investors regarded it as unrelated to the company's operations. Â
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Disclosures by Hewlett-Packard Co. chief executive Mark V. Hurd that he failed to read a report addressed to him about the company's spying investigation are prompting governance experts to ask why the company board yesterday handed Hurd more responsibility.
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The top Republican in the U.S. House of  Representatives, Dennis Hastert, will meet reporters at 1 p.m.  (1700 GMT) as he faces calls for his resignation over the  handling of a sex scandal involving a fellow Republican  Congressman who resigned.
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(InfoWorld) - Two key figures in theÂ Hewlett-Packard spying scandalÂ will give their sides of the story in interviews on the CBS News program "60 Minutes" on Sunday. Patricia Dunn, former chairman of the technology company who was charged with four felonies in California, and Carly Fiorina, the former chief executive officer, president and chairman, gave separate interviews on the subject, according to information released by CBS Friday. In her interview, Dunn says companies conduct such investigations often. "Every company has investigations. Investigations, by their nature, are intrusive," Dunn tells "60 Minutes" correspondent Lesley Stahl. "If you think that Hewlett-Packard is the only company that has an investigations force -- which by the way, is peopled mostly with former law enforcement officers that do all kinds of private detective work, monitoring, posing as other people in order to solve problems to protect shareholder value -- you're being naÃ¯ve." Dunn tells Stahl she is innocent of the charges she and four others connected to the case are facing: using false pretenses to obtain confidential information from a public utility, unauthorized access of computer data, identity theft and conspiracy. Four other people face the same charges. Dunn made a brief court appearance Thursday in Santa Clara County Superior Court in San Jose and will return to court Nov. 17 for an arraignment. HP is based in Palo Alto, which is also in Santa Clara County. Fiorina was also interviewed by Stahl to promote her book about her HP days, "Tough Choices: A Memoir," which is to be released next week. Fiorina says she was "shocked" to discover the lengths to which investigators allegedly went to probe the source of HP leaks to the media, including the use of pretexting -- using false pretenses -- to gain access to phone records of people who were targets of the investigation. "Well, I mean, I was shocked to hear about the depth and the range of some of those tactics and -- and shocked to hear that I might have been the subject of some of them," Fiorina said. Documents released Wednesday by the California Attorney General's Office show that Fiorina's phone records were among those accessed by private investigators via pretexting. Dunn, who succeeded Fiorina as chairman after Fiorina's firing in March 2005, launched an investigation to find the source of leaks of board deliberations prior to Fiorina's firing. Dunn authorized a second probe in 2006 after a news report in January that quoted an anonymous source on HP's board. Fiorina says in the "60 Minutes" interview that she sought to find the source of news leaks when she was chairman, but that was limited compared to what has been alleged under Dunn's chairmanship. "I wouldn't call what I did when I was faced with a leak -- I wouldn't even call it an investigation. I would call it a series of conversations with people. The reality is I knew very well who had talked outside the boardroom. Only one of the people who talked outside of the boardroom confessed. But, I knew who had done it. They knew who -- they had done it and so did everyone else on the board," Fiorina says, according to a release from CBS News.
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U.S. lawmakers on Thursday plan to   shine a spotlight on Hewlett-Packard Co.'s HPQ.N snooping   into the telephone records of some board members and   journalists, a practice that Congress may soon ban.
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HP CEO Mark Hurd knew of plans for a disinformation campaign designed to find the source of leaks from boardroom talks, The Washington Post reported today.
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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) - Like a good friend who has just gotten out of a terrible relationship, Hewlett-Packard seemed to be on the rebound and all the happier for it in recent months. After the departure of controversial CEO Carly Fiorina, the company has as of late shown newfound confidence and focus under new CEO Mark Hurd. But allâs still not well in the higher echelons of HP, as revealed in a filing the company made to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The sudden and unexpected resignation of Silicon Valley venture capitalist Thomas Perkins from HPâs board of directors in May turned into a full-blown scandal last week, spawning law enforcement and SEC investigations and a PR nightmare for HP. At the center of the controversy is a legally and ethically questionable internal investigation of leaks of confidential company information to the media dating back to 2005. According to a copy of a letter from Perkins to the HP board explaining his sudden resignation, and republished on thesmokinggun.comâs Web site (a sure sign, if ever there was one, that youâre in the PR doghouse), HP hired outside companies to obtain personal phone records of board members using âpretextingâ (thatâs âsocial engineeringâ to you and me), in which a private investigator impersonated board members to obtain details of private phone company billing statements. In his letter, Perkins says he has proof that his own phone records were âhackedâ in the investigation. Those investigations ultimately fingered George Keyworth, an HP director since 1986, as the source of information about board deliberations and other confidential information, which were leaked to the media without authorization. Keyworth acknowledged he had leaked information at a board meeting on May 18 but refused the boardâs request to step down. Perkins announced his own resignation at that meeting, citing âpersonal frustrationâ with board Chairwoman Patricia Dunn over the handling of the leak investigation. In the meantime, the dispute has spilled over into the public domain. The attorney general of California asked HP to supply information about the leak investigation. The SEC has also been in touch over the 8-K filing HP made when Perkins resigned. HP believes its disclosures in May were âaccurate and complete.â In an Aug. 31 meeting, HPâs board of directors determined that Keyworth shouldnât be nominated for another term on the board.
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HP CEO Mark Hurd is scheduled to speak at the company's large user and partner event, the HP Technology Forum, Sept. 17 as the company confronts a scandal over boardroom press leaks.
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Hewlett-Packard 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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(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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Hewlett-Packard Co.'s stock price dropped by nearly 5 percent Thursday as investors reacted to reports that Chief Executive Officer Mark Hurd knew more about the computer and printer maker's elaborate spying program than previously thought.