Investigator tailed WSJ reporter before doing H-P work

A private investigator tailed a Wall Street Journal reporter to find out about a leak to the reporter from a Big Five accounting firm, according to an e-mail that became public record as part of the congressional hearings Thursday into Hewlett-Packard’s investigation to discover leaks at the computer company, the Wall Street Journal reported Friday.

Reporter Peter Waldman wrote, Ronald “DeLia told lawyers interviewing him in August 2006, that he had informed Ms. Dunn that ‘he had undertaken a similar investigation involving leaks from a Big Five accounting firm to a Wall Street Journal reporter. Mr. DeLia was successful in finding the source of the leaks in that case,’ according to an email circulated at House Energy and Commerce hearings on the H-P scandal yesterday.”

Later, Waldman added, “The email reports that Mr. DeLia said he ‘had conducted visual — not electronic — surveillance of the reporter at issue while on vacation and had skip tracers call the hotel the reporter had been staying at to obtain his hotel call records via pretexting, which revealed a call to a senior executive with the company. Pretexting was also used to determine where the reporter was vacationing — somebody called the reporter’s office saying the reporter had requested certain information and asking someone in the office for the hotel number.'”

“The email doesn’t make clear who the Journal reporter was, or where or when the pretexting took place.”

Read more here. A spokesman for the paper said it was looking into the matter.