Hewlett-Packard surprised no one when it announced that Patricia Dunn, its chairman, will step down in January. Dunn has been at the center of a growing controversy surrounding heavy-handed snooping techniques that the computer company used to plug news leaks from its board of directors. H-P’s gumshoes got their hands on phone records for the company’s directors and for business journalists who received the scoops, eventually fingering George Keyworth, a former science advisor to President Ronald Reagan. (I could have saved them a lot of trouble. Of course the guy who used to work in the White House was the leaker!) Keyworth, who fessed up but initially refused to resign, eventually did so on the same day that Dunn agreed to step down.
The ruckus began when H-P board member Thomas J. Perkins, a Silicon Valley venture capitalist and former general manager of H-P’s computer divisions, was outraged to discover that H-P had obtained his phone records. At the board meeting in which Keyworth was identified as the leaker, Perkins quit H-P’s board and stormed out. The following correspondence, below and on the next four pages, ensued.
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