 Calls hadn't asked for a public execution. On Christmas Eve, Allen called Nacchio at home and apologized for the way the announcement had been handled. Allen was also troubled by several other assertions in the story. "To hear AT&T's new president tell it," the Journal said, "he is pretty much free to run the business without a lot of second-guessing from Mr. Allen." Furthermore, it quoted a marketing manager as saying, "[Wal- ter] seems to be dismantling everything Bob Allen put in place, like the separate business units and the corporate culture." And the story began by saying, "[Walter] already is acting as AT&T's de facto CEO, the post he isn't supposed to assume until January 1998." Allen didn't think Walter was overreaching. He knew how the media worked, and he himself had been caught off guard more than once. But he was worried that when Walter was pushed into areas in which he wasn't yet competent (which, after less than ninety days, was most areas), he was vulnerable to mistakes and to being misinter- preted. Allen asked us to "throttle back" the wind machine. SBC Comes Calling As it happens, the crafty CEO of SBC Communications, Ed Whitacre, also read the Wall Street Journal story. Donnelly printed his company's phone books, as it did for most of the other Bell companies, SO he knew John Walter well. In fact, they had gone bird hunting together on Whitacre's 1,800-acre ranch eighty miles north of San Antonio. Although he had sent Walter a friendly note when his appointment at AT&T was announced, he frankly didn't understand it. Walter was a nice enough guy and certainly a good salesman, but, as Whitacre put it to his executive team, "he didn't know diddly-shit about the telephone business." Now the Journal made it sound as if he was in charge. Whitacre, a lanky six feet four with a southern drawl and a crusty demeanor, was probably the shrewdest of the Bell company CEOs. Although Southwestern Bell, as the regional phone company was first known, was initially considered the runt of the Baby Bells and ha