(A strong case for not having an in-house TSCM team.)
A Wal-Mart Stores Inc. employee fired this week for allegedly intercepting and recording calls from a news reporter and others said he felt pressured to uncover who at the retail giant was leaking embarrassing information to outsiders.Bruce Gabbard, a 44-year-old employee of the company's information-security operation, said he wanted to tell his side of events for the first time. Mr. Gabbard and his supervisor were dismissed this week after the U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Arkansas told the retailer he was looking into possible violations of federal law in the alleged wiretapping.
After a flurry of articles about Wal-Mart's employment and benefit practices appeared in the New York Times newspaper and elsewhere, Mr. Gabbard said, he took it upon himself to find out if any of the newspaper's information was coming from internal sources.
"Our job was to plug any information hole," Mr. Gabbard said. "That was the primary reason for our team to be there."
Mr. Gabbard had worked for Bentonville, Ark.-based Wal-Mart for 19 years and was a member of its Threat Research and Analysis team, a group of about 20 employees in its information-systems division. He and others would sweep rooms for electronic-listening devices and do "forensic" data gathering for use in court cases. ...
Kenneth H. Senser, a senior vice president who heads Wal-Mart Global Security, instructed Mr. Gabbard and another member of his team to find the source of the leak, Mr. Gabbard said. He swept Ms. Chambers' office for bugs to no avail, he said, and then they examined the computers of the people who had received and written different iterations of the Chambers memo. (more)
UPDATE - 3/29/07
Wal-Mart PR is in fine fettle... (more)
