Move over, CIA: here comes HP

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Kevin T. Hunsaker, Ethics, CIA, Neukom

Organizations run by legals suffer with ethical values that are inconsistent from year to year. One theory is that lawyers are on the line for their criminal clients and after stepping over the line with them, rather than face disbarment, jail or harsh judgement by polite society, seek instead to modify ethical standards for their profession, companies, and for the nation.

We can come up with many examples but the ones most important to this article involve Hunsaker, the CIA, and Neukom.

The article points out that Hunsaker was in charge of ethics at HP. The immediate conclusion we can make, given my opening paragraph, is that lawyers are running HP, there were lines crossed, and that Hunsaker's primary role involving the setting of ethical guidelines at HP was to change those guidelines to protect the line crossers. His secondary roll likely involved the selection of the patsy that would take the heat if such protection was not feasible.

This morning the SITBO show out of Seattle pointed out that the CIA itself is headed by a lawyer. Congressional interest in the Dunn Hurd PatsyGate appears focused on the firms Dunn hired and was advised to hire by internal and external counsel and the ethics of the CIA, as much as on HP governance problems. The CIA, likely suffers as all organizations controlled by lawyers with inconsistent ethical values.

Today much of CIA operations is outsourced. I confirmed with a former private eye that it has always been so but what is different is that this practice is no longer considered on-the-line but well within ethical guidelines for the organization. Many of the outsourced operations are owned or utilize former CIA operatives who have corporate clients like HP, or the Talaban - who would know?

The poor intelligence given the Bush administration regarding WMD, yellow cake, oil production, whatever, suggests that outsourced inelegance (basically outsourced Information Technology) serves the nation poorly and is reflective of the movement from the ethical standards of which this nation was founded.

This now brings us to Bill Neukom, former chief counsel of Microsoft. Neukom is the lawyer that brought the world Abramoff. The company he now chairs hired Abramoff, Neukom put Abramoff's men on Microsoft's payroll, and those operatives turned the stunning defeat Microsoft and Neukom had in the last US antitrust case, into meaningless remedies. He did this with current Microsoft head counsel Smith using methods likely now being used on the EU antitrust commission (Austroturfing, Influence Peddling Apeals Court Judges, Blog and Reporter Handlers, pay to fire, pay not to hire, pay not to deal, pay to distribute, campaign fund, etc).

Neukom crossed the line with these actions in the US but just last year was able to have the Washington State Bar association's ethical values changed. The WBA pretty much now will allow corporate lawyers to do anything including putting known liers (like Bill Gates and Alchin) under oath without sanctions. Lawyers that complain are disbarred instead of the wrong doers. Neukom likely did this through influence peddling State Supreme Court members because an internal WBA committee disagreed with the changes.

Today Neukom is president of the ABA and Microsoft requires its internal legals to be ABA eligible meaning they support the inconsistent Ethical values of the association, values that Neukom would like changed to allow the wrong doing championed at Microsoft by himself and at Preston Gates and Ellis, the law and lobby firm he now chairs. Values of mob justice that were evident in Abramoff's wire tapping case and values of secrecy that have to many judges sealing cases that involve lawyer wrong doing.

Muslems and Catholics do not subsribe to ethical standards that change from year to year. Catholics view that consistancy as truth. Of course there are problems with this extreme of the ethics-can-change-over-time debate as well. But lets do see that the more the US is viewed as a country whose values change by the will of its legal profession, the less it will be valued.

We in the IT industry can do much to fix this. The hiring of US citizens schooled in traditional values of the nation which shun robber barrons, such as Bill Gates, pointing out the problems involving privacy when outsourcing is used, as well as whistleblowing are all steps that will create professionals from the current US IT wage slaves.

Frank L. Mighetto CCP

Posted by: mighetto   Posted on: 09/20/06 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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