HP CEO approved ‘sting’ on reporter

WASHINGTON – Hewlett-Packard Co. chief executive Mark V. Hurd approved an elaborate “sting” operation on a reporter in February in an attempt to plug leaks to the media, according to an e-mail message sent by HP Chairman Patricia C. Dunn.

The document, one of more than two dozen e-mails obtained by the Washington Post, for the first time links Hurd to an internal investigation of media leaks that has led to criminal probes and will be the subject of a congressional hearing next week.

Internal e-mails show senior HP employees who were given the task of identifying anonymous news sources concocted a fictitious, high-level HP tipster who sent bogus information to a San Francisco reporter in an attempt to trick her into revealing her sources.

The e-mail sting operation, which was part of a wide-ranging two-part HP investigation that began in March 2005 and ended in May 2006, is the latest in a series of deceptive and possibly illegal tactics that reveal the lengths to which HP went to spy on people inside and outside the company to protect its image and secrets.

HP’s leak investigation involved planting false documents, following HP board members and journalists, watching their homes, and obtaining calling records for hundreds of phone numbers belonging to HP directors, journalists and their spouses, according to a consultant’s report and the e-mails.

The e-mail operation demonstrated an intense degree of attention by Dunn, who often sent messages via a Blackberry device, and by senior HP executives attempting to cultivate and trick a news reporter to find the identity of her source. A Hewlett-Packard spokesman declined to comment on the revelations or make Hurd or Dunn available for an interview.

None of the e-mails reviewed by the Post were to or from Hurd, nor do they detail what information Hurd had when he approved the sting operation.

A corporate spying effort this broad and orchestrated has never before been exposed, experts said.

“If you’d laid this out as a science fiction story, it’d be hard to believe it’s true,” said Ari Schwartz, deputy director of the Center for Democracy & Technology, a Washington D.C.-based privacy watchdog group.

It was unclear whether the e-mail sting operation involved illegal tactics, experts said, but federal and state authorities have launched probes into the legality of HP’s methods.

California Attorney General Bill Lockyer said last week that he had enough evidence to issue indictments against people inside and outside HP.

The Hewlett-Packard board of directors is scheduled to meet today and Hurd is to brief board members about developments in the internal review.

After an emergency board meeting last week, Dunn agreed to resign as the board’s chairman in January but she is to remain on the board, handing the top job to Hurd. George “Jay” Keyworth, a board member who said he talked to a reporter, resigned last week.

Though nine journalists were apparently targeted in HP’s leak investigation, one in particular drew the scrutiny of Dunn and Hurd, according to a series of internal e-mails. Dawn Kawamoto, a reporter for Cnet.com, wrote a fairly straightforward article on Jan. 23 outlining the firm’s long-term strategy after a board retreat.

Determined to ferret out the source’s identity, HP senior counsel Kevin Hunsaker, who led the HP investigation ordered by Dunn, and an HP colleague in Boston created a fictitious persona, “Jacob,” who would pose as a disgruntled HP “senior level executive” and cultivate Kawamoto by saying he was “an avid reader of your columns.”

The idea, evidently, was to induce Kawamoto to open an e-mail attachment with a “tracer” in it that would allow them to see who she forwarded it to. They hoped it would pinpoint board member Keyworth as her source, according to the documents.

HP investigators designed a plan to give Kawamoto a tip about a new handheld product that would be sent in an e-mail that would include the tracking software.

On Feb. 22, Hunsaker updated Dunn on the plan in an e-mail that included a copy of a slide showing a bogus handheld product to be launched.

Dunn replied: “Kevin, I think this is very clever. As a matter of course anything that is going to potentially be seen outside HP should have Mark’s approval as well.”

On Feb. 23, Hunsaker sent an e-mail to Dunn. “FYI, I spoke to Mark a few minutes ago and he is fine with both the concept and the content.”