ck of AT&T's archrival, MCI. He saw Mandl's resignation as an opportunity to drive one more nail into the company's coffin, on the theory that anything that was bad for AT&T was probably good for MCI. Ironically, the news had probably been leaked to Grubman in the hope that he would throw his support behind Mandl's new venture. Grubman eventually did SO (in fact, about a year later, Salomon Smith Barney co-managed the initial public offering of Mandl's new com- pany, now known as Teligent), but not before tending to his own paro- chial concerns. Sadly, there are only two ways to control the timing of a news re- lease: either severely limit the number of people involved, keeping Take Control anyone with a separate agenda in the dark about your actual plan, or leak it yourself to selected reporters. For obvious reasons, we had only the second option in Mandl's case, and we chose not to exercise it. If I had it to do over again, I would probably make the same decision, but I would also try to find a way to better align Mandl's goals and our own, making him less likely to leak the information (as he probably did in this case, despite his later protestations). For example, in later years, I went SO far as to prepare two releases announcing an execu- tive's departure. In one, the executive was leaving to take advantage of other opportunities; in the other, he was being replaced. Not one of those stories leaked. Unfortunately, it is not always possible to make the penalty for early disclosure SO evident. Nor is it always possible to align goals in other ways. And the legal penalties for selective disclosure-though murky when working journalists are involved-are severe. One alter- native is to pre-brief selected reporters who agree not to publish the information until a set hour. This allows you to put your announce- ment in perspective for the journalists. It gives them time to think about its implications, and even to do some discreet research, but it preserves the release date. Few, if any, journalists will sign a for