HP Witch Hunt Also Targeted Reporter's Father 149
theodp writes "Patriciagate gets even stranger. In a twist that indicates the extent of HP's investigation, the CA Attorney General's office said HP's investigators also targeted the personal phone records of CNET reporter Stephen Shankland's father, Thomas, a semi-retired physicist in New Mexico. The scandal prompts CNNMoney to ask Chairwoman Patricia Dunn: Are you lying or incompetent? An emergency HP Board meeting is scheduled for Sunday."
Re:Patricia & the Moral High Grounds (Score:5, Informative)
The director that resigned (Perkins), didn't resign because of pretexting, but because the chairman unilaterally ordered an investigation of the board of directors, and only informed the directors when the "leak" was found. As head of the Nominating and Governance committee, he was, or felt he was, the one responsible for the Governance of the board.
That the other directors didn't resign doesn't say anything about their position on the matter, especially since they did not have Perkins' unique position.
The "pretexting" allegation came after Perkins resigned, and hired counsel to investigate the investigation. Perkins informed HP counsel, and they didn't act.
Dunn's now made the dumb-ass mistake of calling this a personal issue, a power struggle between Perkins and herself. Undoubtedly it is, but that doesn't make the matter any less severe. In a power struggle, when one side strikes publicly, you have to respond to the public, not to the person.
Did the other directors let Dunn take the "High Ground"? No -- they didn't follow her advice and remove the leak. So what does that give us? One alleged leaker, Dunn with an investigation on it, and now the Directors find they've been the victims of fraud, along with a bunch of reporters and a geophysicist.
She still has a job until tomorrow. Directors are directors because they're insulated from management. Management spied on the directors, without their consent, at the unilateral behest of Patricia Dunn. Patricia Dunn tried to use the results of this espionage to alter the composition of the board of directors. Nobody contests these facts. During the investigation, someone may have "exceeded the bounds of legality" without their superiors' knowledge or authorization, but their results were used, and were used unquestionably.
You can't tolerate that in a boardroom.
Re:Nature of Big Business Today? (Score:5, Informative)
And you'd guess correctly. I worked at HP for over 21 years. When I started Bill and Dave were running the show. I even got to meet them because they made it a point to travel to each division annually to keep tabs on things. Things began to sour in the early 90s as Bill and Dave retired. However, I do take issue with your statement "the investors took over everything turned into crap". I think it would be better stated "the MBAs took over everything turned into crap". They started all those silly "quality" process improvements, one after another, that were so in vogue at the time. This turned the focus away from employees (which was demonstrated by their annoying habit of refering to us as "resources"), and towards process. They had the false belief that with great processes you can create great products, irrespective of the people doing the work. In the end, they systematically dismantled the HP Way http://www.amazon.com/HP-Way-Hewlett-Built-Compan
Re:Nature of Big Business Today? (Score:5, Informative)
I speak not as an HP employee, but as a long-time customer. I've worked in the calibration business for 22 years, using and servicing mostly HP test equipment.
As a customer I saw a sharp decline around 2000 when the company split. Web services that I depended on disappeared completely, not to return for years. All my Agilent website bookmarks get broken on a regular basis as they constantly re-arrange their website. Broken linkes on their site, too. Complaints to the webmaster go unanswered and unresolved, I don't even know why they bother to provide the webmaster email link. Telephone support has been largely outsourced to people who can barely speak English. (Maybe my complaints to the webmaster went unanswered because they don't speak Englinsh either?)
The test equipment products used to be designed for reliability and servicability, back in the HP Way days. Solid, best-of-class test equipment made by engineers for engineers. Availability of complete manual sets with full schematics and decent service documentation. No more. We have HP equipment more than twenty years old that is still useful in a calibration lab. Already Agilent equipment less than five years old is failing and parts and service are no longer available. I'm starting to see numbers of Agilent ESA series spectrum analyzers with worn-out internal relays (they chatter constantly during everyday use as the instrument self-calibrates between each sweep by default, and few users know how to turn that feature off), and you can't even get replacement relays for these any more, and Agilent won't fix them either. As Agilent has focused on low-cost rather than high-reliability, I've had to tell my customers to consider Agilent products good for four to eight years of daily use which must be completely replaced the first time they fail, and budget accordingly. In the meantime, Agilent obsoletes the model they originally bought and the customer ends up having to accomodate a different replacement model, whether that means re-writing some ATE code or allowing for wasted employee time as they learn to navigate the new user interface, with it's nested menus. And I tell my customers NEVER EVER buy used Agilent equipment - it's probably not got much useful life left in it.
Every single aspect of Agilent products and services is far, far inferior to the HP of the past, from the view of this customer and third-party support provider.
A different, more detailed account (Score:2, Informative)
From Leak, inquiry and resignation rock a boardroom [iht.com]
By Damon Darlin [Miguel Helft contributing] The New York Times / September 7, 2006
Reprinted in the International Herald Tribune
>>
[....]
After Hurd succeeded Fiorina, the leaks stopped.
But in January, an article appeared on the technology news Web site CNET about a management meeting. The report described the company's strategy in dealing with the chip makers Intel and Advanced Micro Devices, as well as possible acquisitions. It struck a nerve among the top executives not only because strategy was revealed but because leaks could open the company up to charges of securities violations because of selective disclosure of information.
Dunn, who had been named chairwoman after Fiorina's ouster, wanted to restore the trust among the board members - a trust that had been tested as the company went through three years of infighting, beginning with a proxy fight over its acquisition of Compaq Computer. Perkins, according to a top company executive, was as enthusiastic as Dunn was to catch the leaker.
[....]
Dunn, the former head of Barclay Global Investors, ordered a further investigation in January. But this time, it was turned over to the company's office of general counsel, which turned to a consulting firm with "substantial experience in conducting internal investigations," as the company described it. Hewlett-Packard has refused to name the firm, but said it had used it before.
According to a Hewlett-Packard filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Wednesday, the consulting firm then subcontracted the work to another group of investigators to obtain information about phone calls between Hewlett-Packard directors and outsiders.
When the investigators were done, the results were presented to the full board, which includes Hurd. The evidence pointed to George A. Keyworth II, the board's longest-serving member, with 20 years' service. H.P. said that Keyworth admitted being the source of the leak and that the board, after discussion, asked him to resign. He refused.
At that point, Perkins announced his own resignation. Both Perkins's representatives and company officials say Perkins accused Dunn of betraying him. According to Perkins's spokesman, it was because Dunn had agreed to handle the matter privately and quietly. But Viet D. Dinh, Perkins's lawyer on this matter, also said that Perkins was upset with the extent of the investigation. He was the sole member to object.
[....]
Perkins's resignation was reported by Hewlett-Packard, which gave no cause. Perkins took nearly a month off, spending most of the time on his yacht.
[From an earlier section of the article: " Perkins, who was briefly married to the best-selling author Danielle Steel and recently wrote a racy novel titled "Sex and the Single Zillionaire," did not respond to requests for comment. A representative said Perkins was in the Mediterranean on his new $100 million 287-foot yacht, the Maltese Falcon, and did not want to be disturbed." 8~D]
When he returned to Silicon Valley in June, he pressed the company to amend its filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission to reflect the reason for his resignation - a request it rebuffed until Wednesday - and agitated for H.P. to investigate its methods. The Wilson Sonsini firm was asked by a board committee to do the job.
What Perkins did not know at the time - indeed, H.P. said no one on the board did - was that the leak investigators had used a form of subterfuge known as "pretexting," or false pretenses, to obtain the directors' official phone records. That was revealed in an e-mail response when Perkins directly asked Larry W. Sonsini, the chairman of Wilson Sonsini, about the investigative methods.
The Wilson Sonsini investigation concluded that the use of pr
Re:"Pretexting" (Score:3, Informative)