In the continuing sage of what is now being termed HP-Gate, the New York Times broke the story last week that those in authority at Hewlett-Packard studied ways to insert a spy into the offices of C|Net and the Wall Street Journal. This, as a way of finding out who was leaking information to the two organizations and thus plug the hole. However, it is unclear whether an effort was ever launched to implement such a plan.
If this sounds eerily like President Nixon's administration and some of his "black bag" tactics during the Watergate scandal you could be right. And as in Watergate, this plan may be just the tip of the iceberg. The Times article goes on to quote HP's manager of global investigations as saying "We use pretext interviews on a number of investigations to extract information...” In other words, this is not the first time that they have used what may be illegal and certainly unethical tactics to get information.
As these revelations trickle out, day-by-day, it really becomes a question of why the HP board of directors are still around. It appears many, if not all of them, should have voluntarily stepped down when the now growing scandal first broke. Instead, all except one (who apparently resigned as a protest against the actions of the others), have done their best to cling to power, rather than to put the continued health of the company before themselves.
