not like you would have expected different ...
Lucent Can't Link E-Mail To Company
By Mike Mills
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, September 23, 1998; Page C14
Lucent Technologies Inc. said yesterday that an internal investigation has found no evidence that a Lucent employee was the sender of an anonymous e-mail message that accused Ciena Corp. of Linthicum, Md., of falsifying equipment test results.
Ciena had said its own analysis of the path of the message showed that it originated at the headquarters of Lucent, a competitor in the market for telecommunications equipment. Ciena said the message, sent to an official at a third company, Tellabs Inc., on Aug. 28, was an apparent effort to scuttle Tellabs' plans to buy Ciena, a deal that was later called off.
Yesterday, officials at both Lucent and Ciena said they may never know the identity of the sender, who gave a mailing address of "Stalag 17, Maryland 21717" when registering for e-mail service. An official at the e-mail service provider said that no further data could be released without a subpoena but that, in any case, the registration information may be false.
Ciena officials have denied that the company ever falsified equipment test results.
The first sentence of the message, a copy of which was obtained by The Washington Post, states that "Ciena changed non-compliant test results to indicate compliance."
It goes on to say that Ciena had changed the results of testing on its equipment to falsely indicate the equipment meets certain industry standards. An independent testing facility "took steps to prevent future incidents," the message said. "Almost immediately following this incident, testing on Ciena's 40-channel DWDM was halted."
That last sentence was an apparent reference to a decision by AT&T Corp. to stop testing Ciena equipment that increases transmission capacity of fiber-optic cables fortyfold and end all consideration of buying the equipment.
It was AT&T's decision, relayed to Ciena less than an hour before shareholders were to vote on the Tellabs-Ciena merger on Aug. 21, that led to the ultimate collapse of Ciena's stock price and the merger itself on Sept. 14.
PricewaterhouseCoopers, Ciena's accounting firm, also received a copy of the message, according to Internet services involved in the transmission. Transmitted in the early morning of Aug. 28, it was also sent to the CNBC cable TV network.
Routing information on the message shows that its path across the Internet was convoluted, involving hops from New Jersey to California, then to Illinois before ending up in the recipients' electronic mailboxes.
The message's return address is "rker3cwx@starting-point.com," part of a free, advertising-supported e-mail service provided by WhoWhere Inc. of Mountain View, Calif.
During its transmission, the message passed through an e-mail site in New Jersey called lpwa.com, which is owned by Lucent. That site offers a service called the Lucent Personal Web Assistant, which allows senders to hide their identities. An estimated 600,000 people a day use it from anywhere in the world, officials said.
"We found no evidence to indicate that any employee from Lucent, or anyone connected to Lucent, originated the e-mail to Tellabs," said Lucent spokesman Bill Price. USA Today reported Lucent's findings yesterday.
Ciena spokesman Denny Bilter said yesterday that his company and Lucent "are generally saying the same thing."
"We traced the e-mail back to a Lucent facility," he said. "They are confirming something was sent from there. They're not saying it's a Lucent employee. We're not necessarily saying that either."
Efforts by Lucent to get a name of the account holder from the e-mail company WhoWhere did not succeed. "Without a subpoena, we can't give anybody a user's name," said Kim Meeks, spokeswoman for WhoWhere. Price said Lucent has not decided whether it will seek a subpoena.
The 21717 Zip code given by the user, which The Post obtained from another source, serves Buckeystown in Frederick County, 50 miles west of Ciena headquarters.
Bilter said Ciena continues to investigate whether Lucent was engaged in any kind of campaign to derail its merger.
Price reiterated that Lucent played no role whatsoever in scuttling the acquisition of Ciena. "It's ridiculous for Ciena to insinuate that Lucent had anything to do with it," he said. "It's an irresponsible accusation that rests on no evidence whatsoever."
Ciena shares rose 41.5 percent yesterday, or $4.56 1/4, to close at $15.56 1/4, ending a slide that began in mid-August. The increase came amid its announcement of a contract to sell equipment to Japan Telecom Co. and rumors that a large equipment maker was considering acquiring Ciena. |
