Before she became the controversial CEO of HP, Senate candidate Carly Fiorina was a star at Lucent. What does her time at the telecom disaster say about her? In the spring of 1999, Lucent Technology’s star executive Carly Fiorina pulled off yet another coup—or so it appeared. A tiny start-up called PathNet agreed to buy huge amounts of fiber-optic gear from Lucent, a deal worth at least $440 million and potentially as much as $2.1 billion. The agreement Fiorina negotiated “potentially represents the single largest fiber supply agreement to a network operator in the U.S,” according to a triumphant press...