Hewlett-Packard's board of directors is meeting Wednesday in the US amid widening controversy over the tactics used in a probe into media leaks, our sister site CNET News.com has discovered.
An HP representative declined to comment on the agenda for the board meeting or say when in the day it was scheduled to take place.
HP also plans to hold a press conference Friday afternoon, after the stock market's 1pm PDT closing. An HP spokesman confirmed the event, but would not comment further.
HP Chairman Patricia Dunn, who led the probe into the media leaks, agreed last week to step down from her post in January, though she said she would remain on the board as a director.
HP has admitted that its investigation led to the unauthorised access of personal phone records of more than a dozen people, including board members, two employees, nine journalists and an unspecified number of others.
CNET News.com reported on Tuesday that two of its reporters were told by investigators that their phone records were targeted the week of January 17, the week before a key article was published on an internal strategy session.
A spokesman for former director Tom Perkins said on Wednesday that that timeframe conflicted with what he was told by HP Chairman Patricia Dunn.
"It was Tom Perkins's understanding that the CNET article triggered the investigation," Perkins spokesman Mark Corallo told CNET News.com on Wednesday. "That clearly was his understanding."
The California attorney general has said he believed there was enough evidence to bring charges against people both inside and outside the company. The FBI and US Attorney's office have also launched criminal probes, while a congressional committee has scheduled hearings on the matter.
