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The Wall Street Journal March 9, 2005 BUSINESS By ALAN MURRAY Indiscreet E-Mail Claims a Fresh Casualty March 9, 2005; Page A2 Let's be clear. Harry Stonecipher wasn't fired simply because he had an extramarital affair with an employee. Plenty of chief executives have done that in the past, and plenty more will do it in the future. It's a bad idea, it often violates company "fraternization" policies, but for the most part, it isn't a firing offense -- yet. No, the Boeing CEO was fired because, among other things, he had the bad judgment to detail his actions and desires in a series of very explicit e-mails to the woman in question. To borrow from one of my favorite country-music songs: We know what you were feeling, Harry. But what were you thinking? Lest there are others like Mr. Stonecipher out there, a little history is in order. In Washington, the last vestige of personal privacy disappeared roughly a dozen years ago, when the Senate Ethics Committee subpoenaed the 8,200-page diary of Sen. Bob Packwood, who was being investigated for various acts of sexual harassment. Even correspondence with yourself, we learned, isn't protected. TALKING BUSINESS Should Boeing have fired CEO Harry Stonecipher? Write to Alan Murray at [EMAIL PROTECTED] If you want to share your thoughts, but don't want your letter published, please make that clear. Check here2 Monday to read selected letters and responses. RELATED ARTICLES * Snooping E-Mail by Software Is Now a Workplace Norm3 * Desk Surfers Abound, But Some People Find Ways to Outwit Them4 As for e-mail -- well, unlike love, it is forever. You may think you've destroyed every last vestige of it, but it lives on, in some forgotten corner of some far-off server, waiting like Sleeping Beauty to be brought back to life by a zealous prosecutor or an overcompensated trial lawyer. A CEO might be forgiven for overlooking these lessons from Washington. But has Mr. Stonecipher ever heard of Eliot Spitzer? In the past three years, the New York attorney general has built an awe-inspiring career on indiscreet e-mail, and now believes they are his e-ticket to the governor's mansion. Among his most prized discoveries were Henry Blodget's e-mail using the acronym POS (hint: the first two words are "piece" and "of") to refer to a tech stock that he was touting to the public on behalf of Merrill Lynch. Then there was Jack Grubman's e-mail boasting that Citigroup Chairman Sandy Weill had helped his children get into an exclusive Manhattan nursery school after he boosted his rating of AT&T stock. Meanwhile, former U.S. Attorney James Comey, now deputy attorney general, built his successful case against Frank Quattrone on an e-mail the investment banker sent to his staff at Credit Suisse First Boston "strongly" advising them to catch up on their file cleaning. Even if Mr. Stonecipher somehow ignored all this, he could hardly have missed the case of Michael Sears. Mr. Sears is the former Boeing chief financial officer who offered a job to high-ranking U.S. Air Force acquisition official Darleen Druyun, then wrote about the offer and his "nonmeeting" with Ms. Druyun in an e-mail to top Boeing executives. Without that e-mail, Mr. Stonecipher might never have become CEO. The lesson of all this couldn't be clearer. Don't ever put anything in an e-mail that you wouldn't want to read on the jumbotron at Times Square. Boeing Chairman Lewis Platt has refused to characterize the contents of the "correspondence" between Mr. Stonecipher and his lover, and he has refused to say that it was e-mail correspondence. But others have confirmed the existence of the e-mail and the board's fear it might become public -- bringing enormous embarrassment to both Mr. Stonecipher and the company. (Companies generally are free to monitor e-mail on company equipment or company e-mail accounts. See related article5.) At most big companies, document training has long been a standard part of good executive education. Corporate lawyers remind clients of the employee at Wyeth, the pharmaceutical company, who wrote an e-mail referring to "fat people who are a little afraid of some silly lung problem" -- a reference to the fact that some diet-drug users had contracted a fatal pulmonary disease. Wyeth has paid some $13 billion to settle its diet-drug problems. They may also mention the Chevron Corp. employees who touted "25 Reasons Why Beer Is Better Than Women" -- part of a case that led to a $2.2 million sexual-harassment settlement. Then there's the series of e-mail by Microsoft's Bill Gates, talking about how to undercut the competition, which became part of antitrust efforts against the company. If there's some good news in this sordid tale, it's that Boeing directors proved they are no patsies, and moved quickly to deal with a problem that could have hurt the company's reputation at a critical time. Corporate governance is changing, and for the better. But the demise of confidential communications, in government and in business, is more troubling. E-mail is one of the great management tools of recent decades, making it easier for top executives to manage a far-flung work force, communicate with multiple stakeholders and even correspond, on occasion, with journalists. Unfortunately, the Stonecipher case is one more prod for executives to follow the example of a former CEO who never wrote e-mail: WorldCom's Bernie Ebbers. -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED]> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire' --------------------------------------------------------------------- The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending "unsubscribe cryptography" to [EMAIL PROTECTED]