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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.

07:11 PDT -- Embattled Hewlett-Packard Chairwoman Patricia Dunn will give up her post in January, and will be replaced by CEO Mark Hurd, the company said this morning. The announcement follows two days of board meetings as HP reeled from a corporate spying scandal that has rocked Silicon Valley. Dunn will remain as director. Another director, Richard Hackborn, who has served on the HP board since 1992, was named lead independent director effective January. Dunn continued to defended her decision to investigation the leaks of confidential board deliberations to the media. But she apologized for the use of false identities...

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. ...