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Hewlett-Packard's former chairwoman, now indicted by California's Attorney General for starting an allegedly illegal investigation into boardroom leaks, tells her story in a 1500-word piece in today's Wall Street Journal.

Summary and analysis:
 Patricia Dunn explains that four articles appeared in early January in the Wall Street Journal, revealing confidential information leaked from the board. These leaks violated an official board member agreement. As Dunn says, this was a legitimate reason to open an investigation of the board, and several HP executives encouraged her to do so.

From here on, Dunn says, she delegated work. Unbeknownst to her, the company she contracted to investigate the leaks hired a subcontractor. Dunn's major problem here is not willful criminality but negligence over the investigation.

Her second problem is believing that investigators could legally obtain people's phone records. That's the statement that bewildered Congressman Greg Walden at Dunn's Congressional hearing.

Takeaway: Dunn shows she's refined her "play dumb, point fingers" strategy into a believable (though unfortunate) story of a heroic chairwoman who trusted too much. Her routine should be polished up by the time she needs to tell it to a jury.

The money paragraph:

Despite reports to the contrary, I did not unilaterally decide to initiate a leak investigation. I did not run, supervise or direct the investigations. I did not select or hire the investigators or direct who should be investigated. Nor was I aware of exactly who was being investigated. The company's legal and security departments were in charge of the work. In fact, I was a full subject of the investigations and was "pretexted" along with the others. While I did (appropriately) receive periodic reports on the progress of the investigation, I was not aware until after the investigation was complete and the results were presented to the full board of some of the tactics used. I am still learning about some of the techniques that were used or contemplated.

Word counts:
 Total: 1500
"Carly Fiorina": 1
"Mark Hurd": 1
"Larry Sonsini": 0
"I": 38
"H-P way": 2
"Legal": 10
"Illegal": 0
"Confidential": 5
"Apology/ies/ize": 1

Earlier: SV Confidential: Pat Dunn thought she could pull up anyone's phone records [Valleywag]