HP spectacle becomes a farce
2pnet.net News:- The Hewlett-Packard spy spectacle turned into a farce, yesterday, as a the various parties were brought, “to a packed hearing room on Capitol Hill so that lawmakers could chastise them before the television cameras for the series of subterfuges used in the company operation that spied on its own directors, journalists and others,” says The New York Times.
“As I reviewed all of the documents for this hearing today,” it has Representative Diana DeGette of Colorado, the ranking Democrat on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, saying, “I felt like I was looking at a proposal for a made-for-TV movie, and maybe this will be a made-for-TV movie. But I think it’s awfully, awfully sad.”
Newly resigned HP boss Patricia Dunn is being tarred and feathered because she was in charge and, “While many of those brought before the committee declined to answer questions, invoking their Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination, those who did testify were at pains to distance themselves from the details of the internal investigation,” says the story, going on:
“Mark V. Hurd, the chief executive, apologized for what he termed a ‘rogue operation.’ And he accused the investigators of being ’so focused on finding the source of the leaks that they lost sight of the values of this company’.”
During the investigation, which eventually “fingered” George A. Keyworth II, who recently resigned as a member of the board, more than 10,000 articles about HP were studied to find the ones which held “secret information” and whether or not Keyworth had spoken to reporters around the time of sensitive articles, says the NYT. It continued that the scrutiny included “intricately parsing the language of a Jan. 23 CNet article” which quoted an anonymous source as saying, ‘By the time the lectures were done at 10 p.m., we were pooped and went to bed’.”
“Like Kremlinologists (or maybe Encyclopedia Brown), the investigators for Hewlett-Packard drilled in on the use of the word ‘pooped.’,” says the story and:
” ‘This is also an unusual term,’ the report reads. ‘A number of key witnesses interviewed indicated that contrary to a number of members of the board, Keyworth often uses casual, colloquial terms in conversation, so this is a term he may use’.”
But, “Above all, the corporate sleuths unearthed numerous personal and professional details about Mr. Keyworth, a former White House science adviser to Ronald Reagan who had worked earlier at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico,” says the NYT, adding:
“The report is ‘both childish and chilling,’ said Reginald J. Brown, Mr. Keyworth’s lawyer. The analysis ‘piles inference on innuendo to reach a predetermined and hopelessly flawed conclusion’.”
Stay tuned.
Also See:
spy spectacle - The HP Saga continues, September 28, 2006
The New York Times – Hewlett’s Hunt for Leak Became a Game of Clue, September 29, 2006
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