blond hair graying slightly at the temples, crinkly eyes, and sparkling smile. He was also quite young-just forty-nine, about a year younger than I was at the time. Walter was seated at the long conference table Complete the CEO in the office across from Bob Allen's, sorting through all the material we had prepared in the past few days, including a detailed timeline, news release, letter to employees, and Q&A. Walter could be forgiven for finding it all a little confusing. He also had a similar pile of material that Donnelly planned to issue the next day. But he seemed fixated on the fourth question in our Q&A: "Isn't R. R. Donnelly having serious problems of its own? Their third-quarter earnings declined 26 percent. They recently had to take $560 million in restructuring charges because of a failed strategy. If Walter couldn't solve Donnelly's problems, why do you think he can solve AT&T's?" The answer to that question had come from eleven pages of mate- rial faxed to us by Donnelly's corporate communications department. But Walter seemed less concerned with the answer than with the ques- tion. "Who asked this?" I explained that we tried to think of the rudest questions that re- porters might throw at us to be sure we were equipped to answer them. "Well, it's wrong," he said. "Did this come from Donnelly's Inves- tor Relations department? If it did, it's only because the head of that department knows that I wanted to fire her. She's totally incompe- tent." I tried to change the subject, drawing his attention to the other questions he might be asked. "Let's change this question," he said as he started scribbling on the Q&A in front of him. When the meeting broke up at around IO P.M., Walter was still obsessing about how his record at Donnelly would be perceived. In- deed, it was still on his mind at lunch the next day, when he asked to be briefed on the news conference. Marilyn looked at me, and, be- tween bites of my sandwich, I ran through the agenda again, describ- ing the setup for the news conference and rei