HP's ethics chief cried foul on leaks

WASHINGTON — Hewlett-Packard's chief ethics officer in February pointed an outside investigator toward two board members he suspected of leaking information to journalists and made specific requests that the investigator obtain personal telephone records, a company document shows.

The Feb. 3 e-mail from Kevin Hunsaker, the technology giant's ethics gatekeeper, to hired investigator Ron DeLia contrasts with a Jan. 30 message in which Hunsaker expressed his concerns about the legality of the investigators' methods in pursuing the company's elaborate and intrusive leak probe — which targeted directors, their relatives and reporters.

"Thanks Ron. I now strongly believe it's Keyworth," Hunsaker wrote, referring to director George Keyworth, who later resigned after being outed as a leaker. "I also think Perkins is leaking info for personal reasons, but I think BOTH January 23rd articles by Kawamoto were leaked by Keyworth. Can you please see if we can find out Marion Keyworth's cell number and pull those records?"

The references in the e-mail, a copy of which was obtained by The Associated Press, were to Thomas Perkins, an HP director who quit in protest of the investigation tactics; Dawn Kawamoto, a reporter for online technology-news site CNet and one of nine journalists whose phone records were compromised in HP's investigation; and Marion Keyworth, the director's wife.

An e-mail a month later from DeLia to Hunsaker and Anthony Gentilucci, who manages HP's global investigations unit in Boston, indicates that detectives had located home and cellphone numbers for Marion Keyworth and were attempting to obtain a record of incoming and outgoing calls for them.

In addition, Hunsaker told DeLia on Feb. 3: "... Can we try to figure out where [George] Keyworth was the week before and the week after the board meeting? We should figure out who he could have been with and check their cellphone records, too."

Hunsaker, who was a senior attorney in HP's legal department, said that he wished to explain "my logic" for suspecting Keyworth in a phone conference with DeLia and Gentilucci.

HP spokesman Ryan Donovan, at the company's headquarters in Palo Alto, Calif., declined to comment Friday on the e-mails or the possible implications of Hunsaker's role.

Both Hunsaker and Gentilucci are likely to lose their jobs as part of a housecleaning planned by HP's chief executive, Mark Hurd, a source familiar with the situation said late Friday. The source asked not to be identified because the terms of their departure are still being negotiated.

The hired detectives masqueraded as HP board members and employees and as journalists to obtain their phone records. They used physical surveillance and concocted an e-mail sting to dupe Kawamoto, the CNet reporter.

In Hunsaker's Jan. 30 e-mail, he asked Gentilucci, "Is it all above board?"

Gentilucci responded by informing Hunsaker that DeLia had investigators "call operators under some ruse."

"I think it is on the edge, but above board," Gentilucci's e-mail continued. "We use pretext interviews on a number of investigations to extract information and/or make covert purchases of stolen property, in a sense, all undercover operations."

In his response, Hunsaker wrote, "I shouldn't have asked. ... "