Free Republic

SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) - A California court issued arrest warrants Wednesday for former Hewlett-Packard Co. Chairwoman Patricia Dunn, former senior counsel Kevin Hunsaker and three private investigators tied to the technology giant's pretexting scandal after they were charged with felonies in connection with the H-P boardroom leak scandal. The five are charged with fraudulent wire communications, wrongful use of computer data, identity theft and conspiracy. ~ snip ~

From the House Committee on Energy and Commerce website - Schedule - Hewlett-Packard’s Pretexting Scandal Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations Thursday, September 28, 2006 2123 Rayburn House Office Building 10:00 AM ET Webcast available Available now in PDF format - Testimony of Patricia C. Dunn Testimony of Mark Hurd

Hewlett-Packard CEO Mark Hurd announces he has accepted the resignation of former chairwoman Patricia Dunn from the board of directors as a result of the H-P leak investigation and spying scandal. MORE...

PALO ALTO, Calif. - Hewlett-Packard Co. shoved Chairwoman Patricia Dunn off its board Friday, severing its ties to a leader whose efforts to plug a media leak morphed into a spying scandal that has spawned criminal and congressional investigations. The Palo Alto, Calif.-based company will turn the chairmanship over to its chief executive, Mark Hurd, who was supposed to take over that job in January as part of changes announced two weeks ago. But things have changed since then amid a wave of leaked documents revealing how deeply HP's investigators intruded into the personal lives of seven directors, nine journalists,...

Excerpt - Don't blame Hewlett-Packard Chairman Patricia Dunn, her new lawyer said Wednesday, for the convulsions the company's board have suffered in the wake of its troubled investigation of boardroom leaks. "She's neither a lawyer nor is she an investigator," said James Brosnahan, the Morrison & Foerster litigator whom Dunn hired this week. "And she's not the kind of person, frankly, who would advise people to do something illegal." Dunn has come under scrutiny for her role in directing the troubled probe -- The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday that she closely supervised it -- and she's the latest figure...

Excerpt - Hewlett-Packard Co. may be the world's largest technology company, but the superlative that better suits it these days is Provider of the World's Strangest Corporate Drama. For two weeks, almost every day has brought revelations of questionable tactics that HP investigators used this year and last to root out who had been describing boardroom deliberations to the media. Corporate intelligence is an old and frequently practiced art, but HP's efforts feel more Watergate than Wall Street. Not only did investigators impersonate board members, employees and journalists to obtain their phone records, but according to multiple reports, they also...

SAN FRANCISCO Hewlett-Packard Co.'s beleaguered chairwoman Patricia Dunn was in decidedly friendly territory Wednesday night as she made her first public appearance since landing at the center of a corporate investigation gone awry. Dunn was inducted into the Hall of Fame of the Bay Area Council, a politically influential business group. "All I will say about the maelstrom is that I look forward eagerly, in the near future, to setting the record straight and going back to leading my life as discreetly as possible," Dunn said during her acceptance speech. "And in the meantime, it wouldn't hurt if the Pope...

Excerpt - Hewlett-Packard Co. chief executive Mark V. Hurd approved an elaborate "sting" operation on a reporter in February in an attempt to plug leaks to the media, according to an e-mail message sent by HP Chairman Patricia C. Dunn. The document, one of more than two dozen e-mails obtained by The Washington Post, for the first time links Hurd to an internal investigation of media leaks that has led to criminal probes and will be the subject of a congressional hearing next week. ~ snip ~

Hewlett-Packard Co. may be the world's largest technology company, but the superlative that better suits it these days is Provider of the World's Strangest Corporate Drama. For two weeks, almost every day has brought revelations of questionable tactics that HP investigators used this year and last to root out who had been describing boardroom deliberations to the media. Corporate intelligence is an old and frequently practiced art, but HP's efforts feel more Watergate than Wall Street. Not only did investigators impersonate board members, employees and journalists to obtain their phone records, but according to multiple reports, they also surveilled an...

SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) - A Congressional panel on Friday asked outgoing Hewlett-Packard Chairwoman Patricia Dunn, H-P general counsel Ann Baskins and two others tied to the company's controversial probe into media leaks to appear at a hearing on the matter later this month. The Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce sent letters to Dunn, Baskins, H-P's outside counsel Larry Sonsini and private investigator Ronald DeLia, seeking their testimony at a Sept. 28 hearing. The committee previously gave H-P until Sept. 18 to turn in requested documents related to the investigation. The requests came a...

SAN FRANCISCO Investigators plan to search the Boston-area offices of a private investigation firm involved in the Hewlett-Packard Co. spying scandal, California Attorney General Bill Lockyer said Thursday. Lockyer told The Associated Press that he is working with Massachusetts Attorney General Tom Reilly in the investigation of Security Outsourcing Solutions, a small firm believed to have aided HP in its possibly illegal probe to root out media leaks in its ranks. "He's assisting in getting our search warrants served on that firm so that we can fully examine their records," Lockyer said. He said the firm's Needham, Mass., offices will...

SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- California Attorney General Bill Lockyer said in a TV interview Tuesday that evidence exists for indictments in the Hewlett-Packard "pretexting" case, according to a published report. In an interview on The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, Lockyer said "we currently have sufficient evidence to indict people both within Hewlett-Packard as well as outside," the Wall Street Journal reported. H-P's chairwoman, Patricia Dunn, stepped down from the post Tuesday amid controversy over a probe she began into boardroom leaks.

Excerpts - With Hewlett-Packard Chairwoman Patricia Dunn's status in jeopardy for seeking phone records, possibly illegally, in search of leaks, the HP board is in an uproar ~ snip ~ On one side are Dunn and two staunch supporters: Verizon (VZ) Vice-Chairman Lawrence Babbio and former Medtronic (MDT) Chief Financial Officer Rob Ryan. Dunn and her supporters are focused on the need for rock-solid business processes and clear adherence to good governance policies—whether for financial reporting or complying with regulations such as Sarbanes Oxley. "I personally believe Patricia Dunn worked her butt off in the interest of HP," says one...

PALO ALTO, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sept. 10, 2006--The HP (NYSE:HPQ) (Nasdaq:HPQ) board of directors met for several hours Sunday morning. It has agreed to reconvene late Monday afternoon. No further statement will be forthcoming from the company before that time.

In an secret attack on reporters in an attempt to find their sources, Hewlett-Packard's private eyes tapped into personal telephone records of journalists who had exposed the company's boardroom bickering and business weak spots..... the Hewlett-Packard officer who hired the private eyes - Chairwoman Patricia Dunn - was herself a former journalist whose rising paranoia over leaks to the media about her company's woes became an obsession that has dragged H-P into a far-reaching criminal probe. California Attorney General Bill Lockyer yesterday said laws were broken in the spying scandal and that charges are likely to be bought.......main target of...

Excerpt - Newsweek is reporting that HP has called an emergency board meeting. [Link] Read the reports on this fiasco whereby Chairwoman Patricia “Patty” Dunn is at the center of a spy case whereby reporters phone records were illegally obtained resulting in all sorts of legal and SEC violations and the sudden resignation of Tom Perkins as well as other issues. There is no way — after a corporate witch hunt that results in spying that targets a New York Times reporter, Fortune Magazine reporter, CNET reporters and others — that this woman stays in office. ~ snip ~

Excerpt - ... According to an internal HP e-mail, [Hewlett-Packard Chairwoman Patricia] Dunn then took the extraordinary step of authorizing a team of independent electronic-security experts to spy on the January 2006 communications of the other 10 directors-not the records of calls (or e-mails) from HP itself, but the records of phone calls made from personal accounts. That meant calls from the directors’ home and their private cell phones. ...