[Moonliner]

Originally Posted by Alex

Independent of Fiorina's competency as a business executive, she is not the one who left HP disgraced by the pretexting scandal. However, the events surrounding her firing in 2005 did lead to the scandal but Fiorina had nothing to do with it.

HP was underperforming, the Board of Directors made a proposal to Fiorina that would have reorganized her responsibilies and been a big blow to her position with the company. She resisted it. The plan proposed to her was somehow leaked to Newsweek (I think, maybe WSJ) which published it. Fiorina was fired.

The board of directors gave Fiorino's replacement, Pat Dunn, the task of discovering how their private internal communications had been leaked to the press. It was in this period that the illegal pretexting and other investigative abuses happened. All charges against Dunn were eventually dropped.


Really, the obvious lesson to take from the sequential failure of Fiorina and Dunn is that women should not be allowed to run big companies (just twisting the tiger's tail).

There seem to be a number of sources saying the "leak investigation" started on her watch.

Originally Posted by Democrates.org (but there are others....)

Leak Investigation At H-P Began With Fiorina’s Tenure, And Later Erupted Into A Spying Scandal. After details of the board of directors’ intentions to fire Carly Fiorina became public in the Wall Street Journal, Ms. Fiorina “demanded a confession” from the directors. Following these demands from Fiorina, an aggressive leak investigation that resulted in a “spying scandal” commenced. The San Francisco Chronicle wrote, “The spying scandal dates to early 2005, when then-CEO Carly Fiorina and other directors began looking into leaks of board deliberations to journalists. After Fiorina was fired, her successor as chairwoman, Dunn, pursued the investigation, which eventually pointed to director George Keyworth

Still you are technically correct, the pretexting scandal broke after she was fired.