Last October, Jon Hoak, 57, was appointed vice president and chief ethics and compliance officer for Hewlett-Packard, the scandal-plagued California technology company that made the news last year for apparently spying on its own board members and journalists. The practice, called pretexting, involved investigators who misrepresented themselves in order to obtain phone records to learn who had been leaking company information to the media. HP’s chairwoman, Patricia Dunn, and general counsel, Ann Baskins, resigned as a result of the scandal. (In March, a California court dropped all charges against Dunn.) Last month, Mark Hurd, the company’s CEO and president, appointed former Morgan, Lewis & Bockius partner Michael Holston as the company’s general counsel.


Were you brought in as a result of the pretexting scandal?