 I was dealing with a chastened Walter Elisha. The best way to handle the question of intellectual leadership, I suggested, is simply to admit that you used exceedingly poor language once before and you aren't going to repeat it. Mike Armstrong is a seasoned execu- tive with a clear track record of success in the computing and commu- nications industries. He understands the telecommunications industry. He has global experience in both consumer and business-to- business markets. Focus on Mike, not on the past. As to Bob Allen, we decided to preempt the question as honestly as we could. "Some may feel they've seen this movie before," he would say in his prepared news conference remarks. "They may ask why we didn't pick Mike Armstrong the first time around. The answer is sim- ple. That was then; this is now." If Allen was asked whether Arm- strong had the "god-like" qualifications that would allow him to retire (as he would), he would simply say that he had been exasperated by persistent questioning on the same subject when he said that (as he had been), and that he was very comfortable leaving AT&T in Mike Armstrong's hands (which was mostly true). Announcement Day Announcement day got off to a rocky start with a particularly nasty front-page story in the Wall Street Journal by John Keller.4 The story purported to reveal "how AT&T's directors decided it was time for a change at the top." No one was surprised that the news of Armstrong's selection had not held-AT&T's annual board retreat at the Green- brier Resort had been just two weeks before, and the company had long been scheduled to release its third-quarter earnings on October 20. Most reporters expected the announcement to be combined with the quarterly earnings. When Keller discovered that neither I nor the Don't Dance to the Music of Your Own Buzz company's media relations vice president were home on a Sunday eve- ning, he assumed that something was up. Knowing that everyone else would be writing about Armstrong, Keller decided to tell the background story 