According to testimony given to Congress Thursday, the tactics that HP used in its now notorious leak investigation are standard operating procedures at HP, have been for years, have been deployed "dozens" of times against other people under other circumstances and the use of "tracer" spyware is still a technique sanctioned by HP management. No one seems to know whether HP ever used it against a competitor.

Lest you need to be reminded, those tactics included attempting to "bug" a reporter's computer, planting a fake story with a reporter to see who she triangulated with, wholesale identity theft, rooting through the phone records of directors, reporters and their families, misuse of Social Security numbers, dumpster diving, old-fashioned surveillance and tailing, wholesale invasion of privacy and contemplating inserting spies in the newsrooms of major media outlets.

Apparently then this is the "HP Way."

Going into the Capitol Hill hearing on HP's spy caper, the Wall Street Journal reported that one of HP's suspected subcontract pretexters, Bryan Wagner, had taken a hammer and trashed his computer ahead of the California Attorney General Bill Lockyer getting anywhere near it. The Journal said Lockyer tried and failed to get a warrant to search Wagner's home in Denver.

So it now looks like you can add destroying evidence to the list of sins committed in HP's name.

Then Thursday morning, an hour or so before the hearing started, the news broke that HP general counsel Ann Baskins had tendered her resignation. Scheduled to testify, she showed up at the hearing and took the Fifth Amendment to protect herself against self-incrimination. Baskins, whose ouster was softened by a multimillion-dollar golden parachute and a deal for HP to pay her legal bills, refused to answer any questions whatsoever.

Understandable since, according a prepared statement by ousted HP chairman Patricia Dunn that the House Committee released late Wednesday night and reiterated in her testimony Thursday morning, Baskins' office directed the so-called Kona 2 phase of the investigation that saw the use of the most egregious tactics and HP relied on her legal opinion that the techniques used were legal.

Baskins, in turn, appears to have relied on the legal opinion of a person who was described as a "clerk" in the offices of Bonner Kiernan Trebach & Crociata, the Massachusetts law firm that shares its premises with Security Outsourcing Solution (SOS), the little investigation concern responsible for Kona 1 and 2 that - come to find out - has been on retainer to HP and has worked for the company, pretty much exclusively, for eight or nine years.

HP ethics officer Kevin Hunsaker, the senior lawyer on Baskins' staff who directed Kona 2, and HP global investigations manager Anthony Gentilucci, both of whom have now been fired, also took the Fifth and refused to answer any questions.

The same thing happened with a parade of HP contractors and subcontractors, including the guy with the hammer, who allegedly pretexted the phone records of close to two-dozen people during the HP probe. They were on Capitol Hill because they had been subpoenaed.

Dunn, who resigned last Friday at the board's insistence, refused to take personal responsibility for what happened and testified that HP CEO Mark Hurd had ultimate sign-off. In answer to a question, she said she sent the investigating team to Hurd for "approval of the techniques" used. Hurd, in turn, who told Congress that HP as a leader in privacy, said the investigation was Dunn's baby.

Dunn repeatedly claimed, despite multiple briefings and PowerPoint presentations by the hired investigators and internal staff, that she had no idea nor could she recall being told how phone records were obtained or knew what pretexting was until the last few weeks. She was under the impression phone records were "publicly available."

Throughout the Kona probe, she said, there was "never any hint that anyone at HP had any concerns" about its legality or propriety.

Dunn said she was told the investigation was using standard operating procedures and she was "fully convinced that HP would never engage in anything illegal…Indeed, given that attorneys were unambiguously overseeing the investigation in Kona 2 and were following similar practices as in Kona 1 reinforced my understanding that the investigations had been and were being handled appropriately."

Hurd, too, admitted he never asked about the investigative techniques used and said he "never thought about how they got the phone records." He is of the opinion that what started as a "proper and serious inquiry into leaks to the press became a rogue investigation."

Hurd, who has now replaced Dunn as chairman, took full responsibility for the fiasco and told Congress he screwed up by not being more attentive - he said he didn't read the final report by the investigative team that might have led him to question their operation - why remains unclear. In return, the House committee, doubtless aware that Wall Street connects him with HP's turnaround, only threw him softball questions. He emerged from the ordeal unscathed as indicated by the fact that HP stock was up a tad over 2% at the end of the day.

When asked, Hurd said that all pretexting activities at HP have ceased but dodged the question about the status of tracer technology. Apparently the company's investigation techniques are being reviewed. He has terminated HP's relationship with outside contractors and said there was an "open position" at the company.

Dunn testified that when the press leaks started last year she was urged by seven of HP's nine board members to make finding the source of the leaks her "top priority." Jay Keyworth, who ultimately confessed to a leak, was not one of the seven. There was no board vote directing that an investigation be undertaken.

The key reasons for concern over the leaks, she said, was the "corrosive" impact they had on the board and the fear that they would impact stock prices, creating a "major violation of securities regulations."

Dunn said that when the Kona investigations kicked off last year she was advised by HP's CFO and acting CEO Bob Wayman to use internal resources. She was ultimately referred to SOS owner Ron DeLia, who "was responsible for designing and implementing investigation involving breaches of confidential information at HP." At the beginning of Kona 2 she wanted to use Kroll Associates but Baskins recommended turning the investigation over to Hunsaker.

Dunn never "at any point considered" herself Kona's supervisor. First it was HP security officer Kevin Huska and later Baskins and Hunsaker. Dunn however named the project; seems that when asked for a code name for the investigation by one of the investigators she was at her vacation home in Hawaii.

Hunsaker brought DeLia back in and then work was farmed out to a host of subcontractors. Hunsaker and Gentilucci ignored the warning of their colleague Vincent Nye, a senior HP investigator, who flat out told them in a February e-mail that their Kona pretexting was "very unethical at the least and probably illegal" not to mention potentially damaging to the company.

Fred Adler, a former FBI agent and the only other HP employee besides Hurd not to take the Fifth, testified that it was his idea to try to insert "tracer" software into a CNET reporter's computer. Hunsaker and his crew, with Hurd's sanction, had dreamed up a fictitious source called Jacob, a supposedly disgruntled HP senior executive with a hot story, to see if the reporter checked it out with anyone on the HP board. If she did, they'd have their leak.

It was Adler who testified that the tracer concept has been used before and has not been discredited with HP management.

It now remains to be seen where all this goes. The California attorney general has said he has enough evidence to indict people inside and outside HP. There is still the SEC's inquiry to get past and pension funds have started agitating for more say in who sits on the board.

--Copyright Client/Server News