CNNMoney.com September 15 2006: 3:27 PM EDT
The peculiar logic of Patricia Dunn
By David Kirkpatrick, Fortune senior editor
Commentary: HP Chairman Patricia Dunn's supporters say her behavior was neither stupid nor weak. Accept it or not - here's another view of the HP mess.
NEW YORK (Fortune) -- For the first time, some of Chairman Patricia Dunn's partisans are starting to tell what they say is the accurate story of how this most bizarre of corporate governance fiascos unfolded. Believe it or not, as you will.
I did not speak with Dunn, and nobody at HP is willing to go on the record. But to hear these supporters tell it, there is a logic to how she behaved and why the story unfolded so peculiarly.
Dunn wanted Tom Perkins and George Keyworth off the HP board, the supporters say. Leaking details about board deliberations to the press, she believed, was only one of several ways their presence was a major factor in making the HP board dysfunctional. Since Perkins and Keyworth were the board's strongest connections to company founders Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard, what they said carried weight, complicating Dunn's challenges.
Dunn is not just any board chairman. She is deeply involved with the Conference Board's Global Corporate Governance Research Center, and her photograph and a quote from her are featured on the center's home page,.
As a governance perfectionist, Dunn was especially upset about the ongoing obstreperousness of HP's (Charts) board. And she was determined to remedy it, her supporters say. She also didn't want CEO Mark Hurd to have the burden of dealing with the board as he was simultaneously wrangling the company's operations back into shape, so she kept the chairman's job when she and her colleagues hired him.
But people who know her well believe that her goal has been to give Hurd the second title once she succeeded in streamlining the board and eliminating much of its discord.
* * *
But the other explanation is more awkward for anyone to discuss, and as a result has been missed in almost all the coverage of this affair - even most of her supporters won't address it. It seems that Dunn is very sick. As David Kaplan in Newsweek revealed in his story Monday, even after having had breast cancer in 2000 and melanoma in 2002, Dunn was diagnosed with ovarian cancer in 2004 and underwent extensive surgery last month after doctors discovered a malignant tumor in her liver.
http://money.cnn.com/2006/09/15/technology/FastForward_HP.fortune/?postversion=2006091515
Mercury News Friday 15th September 2006
HP execs summoned before Congress
By Pete Carey
Four key people in the Hewlett Packard boardroom leak investigation scandal have been asked to testify before a Congressional committee probing the questionable use of phone records by investigators working for HP.
Asked to testify Sept. 28 before the investigative subcommittee of House Energy and Commerce are Board Chairwoman Patricia Dunn; HP legal counsel Ann Baskins; Larry Sonsini, a prominent Silicon Valley lawyer who is HP's external lawyer, and Ronald R. DeLia, a Needham, Mass., private investigator and operator of Security Outsourcing Solutions.
``Given the circumstances surrounding this particular case of pretexting involving the highest levels of corporate governance within Hewlett-Packard Co., the company's general counsel, and the Board of Directors' outside counsel, I ask that HP carefully consider this hearing an opportunity to be fully open and transparent with the testimony that its officers and counsel provide,'' said oversight and investigations subcommittee chairman Ed Whitfield, R-KY, in letters to the four.
http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/15528890.htm
---------- Forwarded Message ----------
Subject: Re Your "The peculiar logic of Patricia Dunn"
Date: Saturday 16 September 2006 16:34
From: Gary D Chance
To: David Kirkpatrick
Dear Mr Kirkpatrick
Thanks for writing your excellent article providing some answers to questions I had. We'll have to wait a bit to get more answers, but I am a supporter of Pattie Dunn whatever that might mean since my professional dealings with her and her husband were from their days at Wells Fargo Investment Advisers. There have been no further dealings since.
At that time I was able to assess character in extraordinary circumstances. I am of the belief that character does not change and is a predictor of behaviour that is if you get the character analysis right.
You also brought out the elephant in the room that no one is talking about which I believe is critically important again as regards to character and behaviour: her cancer treatments. I wrote the following Email this morning shortly before I discovered your article courtesy of Google Alerts. It saves me a bit of writing to include it here.
Dig into this one a lot deeper. The implications of "The Pattie Dunn Story" are far greater than most grasp at the moment.
Gary
enclosure
---------- Forwarded Message ----------
Subject: Hewlett-Packard Four Summoned to Congressional Hearing
Date: Saturday 16 September 2006 12:06
From: Gary D Chance
To: news24@bbc.co.uk
I'm wondering if you might consider broadcasting live these hearings coming up in 12 days:
"Asked to testify Sept. 28 before the investigative subcommittee of House Energy and Commerce are Board Chairwoman Patricia Dunn; HP legal counsel Ann Baskins; Larry Sonsini, a prominent Silicon Valley lawyer who is HP's external lawyer, and Ronald R. DeLia, a Needham, Mass., private investigator and operator of Security Outsourcing Solutions." http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/15528890.htm
I believe that these hearings are critically important in their implications for corporate governance involving serval issues:
1. Insider confidential information leaked by a Board Director to the media (and others?)
2. The responsibility of an outside (nonexecutive) Chairwoman of the Board to manage the Board on behalf of the owners (shareholders) in the overall interest of investors and the investing public
3. The delegation of an investigation to the corporate legal department to find the source of the leaked information from the Board
4. The reliance upon a presumption of legality with regard to the such delegation of this task to the corporate legal department
5. Many other issues which arise in this situation with respect to who knew what and when and possible manipulation by senior executives and other nonexecutive Board members to do what they wanted regardless of legal requirements with the intent of making the Chairwoman of the Board a "patsy" (no pun intended)
6. The circumstances in which all of this has occurred during the past couple years which might very well result in corporate manslaughter of the Chairwoman of the Board who has been treated for multiple cancers including most recently Stage IV ovarian cancer [here you corrected my error which is the liver cancer surgery last month which makes this all the more devastating and insidious]
7. The issues that are raised include the possibility of exploitation and various discriminations against a Chairwoman of the Board who is dealing with life threatening health issues by those who thought they might get away with such unlawful and criminal activities in light of the fact that the Chairwoman of the Board was vulnerable to manipulation and would likely die in the near future making a convenient scapegoat and/or "fall guy" for the activities carried out to discover the source of the leak when that source might very well have already been know by several people.
8. The issue of a cover up arises in the resignation of Tom Perkins from the Board when he thought he would be provided with the information so that it could be handled "quietly" if the person leaking was identified. When this was not done, he stormed out making other verbal noises which appear to be intended to protect himself. The Chairwoman of the Board had refused to participate in a cover up. [His letter of 28th July coincident with Pattie Dunn's fourth surgical procedure for cancer that has occurred every two years since 2000 which you reveal in terms of "timing" is quite extraordinary indeed]
I believe that these hearings are going to be fascinating in what they reveal with respect to the implications of corporate governance and investigative spying which you should make available to the public in the UK. It is also important to recognise that Hewlett-Packard's Chairwoman of the Board was formerly Chairwoman and CEO of Barclays Global Investment Management making this relevant to UK corporate management. It has been reported that she stepped down from that position in 2002 for health reasons (breast and melanoma cancers).
The acceptance of the invasion of privacy as a standard by those carrying out the work has become universal under a false morality and illegality that it is OK if everyone does it and/or one does not get caught. It might come as a shock to those on top who find themselves responsible for what those on the ground are doing when unlawful and criminal activity were never intended. Then there are situations like mine where those from the top to the bottom are knowingly engaging in a total invasion of privacy to destroy human activity and life.
You might also find that the Hewlett-Packard situation is homologous with this Labour Government and the issues involved with Dr David Kelly, BBC's Andrew Gilligan, Lord Hutton enquiry and Greg Dyke resignation.
I also declare an interest: I was acquainted with Pattie Dunn and her husband, Bill Jahnke, when they were employees at Wells Fargo Investment Advisors (WFIA) with whom I had an extensive professional relationship as a client some 25 years ago. Bill Jahnke was the Senior Vice President in charge of WFIA.
I found that the integrity of both these people was beyond reproach when a corporate power grab occurred toward the end of 1982 and into 1983 from the top of Wells Fargo Bank. They scrupulously adhered to legal and ethical standards at that time as I directly witnessed. This situation was reported extensively by Julie Rohrer in Institutional Investor magazine c 1983.
There might be many similarities between what happened then at WFIA and what is happening now at Hewlett-Packard. I find myself believing implicitly in the integrity of Pattie Dunn not only from knowing about her past actions but also in light of her currently dealing with life threatening cancer which to my mind means that she has no other motive than maintaining fundamental standards which need to be sustained in the overall interest of everyone. Other factors point in this direction as well which makes this a most worthwhile set of events to track closely and broadcast to the public while they are unfolding.
*****End of the Email*****
CNET News.com
September 16, 2006, 4:59 AM PDTAn upbeat Fiorina stays mum on Dunn
By Jonathan Skillings
WELLESLEY, Mass.--As a boardroom scandal casts a cloud over Hewlett-Packard, former CEO Carly Fiorina is resolutely sticking to the sunny side of the street.
http://news.com.com/An+upbeat+Fiorina+stays+mum+on+Dunn/2100-1001_3-6116455.html
Enterprise OpenSource Magazine Sep. 16, 2006 11:30 AM
HP Admits to "Pretexting," Non-Executive Chairman Patricia Dunn Falls on Her Sword
By: i-Technology News Desk
In a series of whipsaw revelations over the last 10 days - on which more ink seems to have been spent than Enron got - it has come to light that HP's non-executive chairman Patricia Dunn . . . , who is supposedly one of the most powerful women in America and was instrumental in removing HP CEO Carly Fiorina, set in train a search for a boardroom leak that involved getting the home and cell phone records of the HP board, nine journalists and two unidentified HP employees to see who was leaking to the press.
http://opensource.sys-con.com/read/272825.htm
The above provides an excellent snapshot overview complete with contradictions and is well worth reading.