Indignant board member's lawyer writes WSJ editorial
When Hewlett-Packard admitted that the company tried to spy on and misinform journalists at CNET, the New York Times, and other papers, the media was, well, not amused. The upshot is that we all get to see the opposition writing guest editorials in major papers. The lawyer for ex-HP board member Tom Perkins (who resigned when he discovered HP's investigators spied on him) tells the Wall Street Journal:
H-P is now charting the right course, with Mark Hurd firmly at the helm. There is no better indication of his commitment to doing the right thing than the appointment of Bart Schwartz as counsel to review and revamp H-P's security processes. "Bart is an outstanding lawyer and investigator with excellent judgment and immense integrity," former FBI director Louie Freeh told me. "He will act independently and provide to H-P a 'best practices' architecture for investigations and procedures which is thorough, fair and sensitive to privacy requirements."
The lawyer, Viet D. Dinh, says Hurd's role in the scandal was mitigated, HP lawyer Larry Sonsini acted ethically in the protection of his client (though others accuse him of knowingly green-lighting an illegal investigation), and reveals that Perkins sent Hurd an e-mail blaming now-ex-chairwoman Patricia Dunn for the whole thing and fearing that she'd pack the board with supporters when he left. Looks like Dinh agrees with everyone else's take: Dunn's the bad guy, and as her replacement, Hurd can save HP.
