Former H-P chair denies hiring investigators to snoop on reporters

Former Hewlett-Packard chairwoman Patricia Dunn, who resigned last week amid a scandal at the company about its spying on business journalists covering the company, is denying that she hired investigators to determine the leak to reporters, according to a Bloomberg News story.

Dunn’s remarks are part of her prepared testimony on Thursday to a congressional committee looking into potential wrongdoing at the company.

Reporters Christopher Stern and Karen Gullo wrote, “Dunn’s statements, less than a week after she was ousted for overseeing the probe that began as an investigation into leaks to the media, pits her against the company. As the scandal widened, it came under scrutiny by regulators and lawmakers and prompted the dismissal of two employees. Hewlett-Packard has painted Dunn as being responsible and complicit in the actions of the investigators.”

Later, they wrote, “In testimony submitted to the committee, Dunn said she initiated an investigation into boardroom leaks at the insistence of a majority of directors. She said she received assurances throughout two phases of the probe, dubbed Kona 1 and Kona 2, that the methods used to obtain phone records were legal.

“Kona 1 didn’t yield the source of the boardroom leaks. Dunn said she revived the probe as Kona 2 in January of this year after a report by online news service Cnet.com contained information discussed in a board strategy meeting. At that point, Dunn said she didn’t find it objectionable suspected leakers may be followed to see if they were meeting with reporters.

“‘I was fully convinced that HP would never engage in anything illegal, and the privacy issues related to our directors were balanced in my mind against their eagerness to get to the bottom of the problem,” Dunn said.

Read more here. Copies of Dunn’s prepared remarks, as well as the prepared remarks of CEO Mark Hurd, can be found here at the USA Today story.