H-P Clears the Air, but Not the Cloud

What's Dunn is done.

Patricia Dunn, the Vic Mackey of Hewlett-Packard's legendarily dysfunctional board, has resigned not just as its chair but now she's cut ties with the whole cabal entirely.

And that's supposed to make us feel a lot better. But do you really feel better? I know I don't. In fact, the more this slow-motion train wreck plays out, the more I fear for H-P's future.

First of all, Dunn should have resigned a week earlier, when it was clear she unleashed private investigators to commit possibly illegal snooping on board members and journalists. At best, the investigators went way beyond her control. At worst, they did exactly what she wanted.

But Dunn didn't resign then. She held on until a report in The New York Times suggested the investigators were contemplating posing as janitors in newsrooms -- a self-effacing act of servitude if there ever was one.

So, the message from H-P is clear: Flirt with lawlessness by pretexting -- or fraudulently posing as another to gain phone records -- and your wrist is slapped. But think about sending someone to fish through reporters' trash cans, and you're history. I'll let the case studies in MBA courses parse that one out, because it makes no sense to me.

In an attempt to right things, H-P CEO Mark Hurd finally came forth Friday to a) do his best Sergeant Schultz and say he knew nothing -- nothing! -- and b) apologize for something he admittedly knew nothing about. It was that rarest of sights on Wall Street: the CEO as naïve whipping boy.