r experience with the sex industry. In the 1990s, the company introduced something called "900 ser- vice," which provided billing services for telephone-based businesses. The idea was that a company that gave information over the phone- live or recorded-could bill the people who called it through AT&T on their long-distance bill. The per-minute charge could be whatever the business thought the market would bear, as long as it explained the charge up front and didn't start charging until the customer agreed. The service proved SO popular that there was a waiting list for it while we added facilities to our network. But it soon became clear that the majority of the message services were providing not weather reports or sports scores, but sexually explicit content, including live conversa- tions. When the Religious Right discovered the service, it began a letter- Pay Attention to the Power of the Few writing campaign, and we were eventually forced to withdraw the ser- vice from organizations that reflected negatively on our brand, which included not only pornographers but also neo-Nazis and other hate groups A small group of managers in one of our customer care cen- ters inherited the thankless task of monitoring ads at the back of adult publications to ensure that no porn services were clandestinely using the service under a pseudonym. I promised Armstrong that the Journal article alone would stimu- late a similar backlash. It would be far better to cancel the service now, before it was launched, than to be forced to cave later. Armstrong agreed and instructed me to tell Somers to cancel the launch. When I reached Somers by phone at his office in Denver, his reaction was not unexpected-he accused me of trying to hang him out to dry. "Not at all," I replied. "You can make the announcement. It doesn't have to come from headquarters. Just say the story is premature. You had considered it, but you've decided not to launch the channel because it's inconsistent with our values." Somers wasn't mollified and ac- cused me o