g over to lead the consumer long-distance business. Walter left open what Nac- chio would be doing. "Burlingame has some ideas," he said. In fact, Burlingame had no ideas. He had been told that Nacchio was being let go and that he should prepare an exit package. Nacchio left Walter's office and the building for a previously scheduled lunch. Burlingame, who expected to meet with Nacchio to discuss the formal- ities of his departure, was dumbfounded. He spent the rest of the afternoon trying to track Nacchio down, finally reaching him late in the day and convincing him to come back to the office. When Nacchio got there, he thought it was to discuss an interim position while he solidified plans for his new job, as he and Anschutz had not yet completed their negotiations. Burlingame had to tell him that there was no other job and that we planned to issue the news release that night. I could hear the screams from Marilyn Laurie's office, a floor away. "You mean McGovern already knows about this?" he shouted. "PR is already drafting a release?" After a while, Burling- ame's secretary, ashen-faced, came down and asked Laurie to join Burlingame and Nacchio. Laurie agreed to postpone any news release for twenty-four hours to allow Nacchio to complete negotiations for his new position. We issued the release late Sunday afternoon, December 22, simul- taneously with the release by Nacchio's new company, Qwest Com- munications. Our release said simply that McGovern was replacing Nacchio, who was leaving to become CEO of Qwest. But when Walter, who by then was back in Chicago, got on the phone with reporters, he made a point of saying that he had "fired" Nacchio. The Wall Street Journal used the management change as the lead for a Christmas Eve profile of Walter. Allen was embarrassed by the Journal story because it said that Walter had "summarily removed" Nacchio from his position. In fact, Allen had told Walter that one of his first acts should be to replace Nacchio, whom Allen considered immature and impulsive, but he Tough