ould have an equal shot at positioning the story with reporters. The fly in the ointment, from my perspective, was Dillenschneider's involvement. Mandl had hired his firm, and I knew that the temptation to leak the story to a favored reporter in advance of the official release time was going to be almost irresistible. We agreed to release the news early Monday morning, but I warned everyone to be ready to go on Sunday evening at the first hint that the story had leaked. Much to my sur- prise, no reporters called on Sunday evening and there was nothing in Monday morning's papers about Mandl's resignation. Dillenschneider had kept his word, something that is not always the case in dealing with outside agencies. Allen began a regularly scheduled 8 A.M. meeting of the senior officers in the so-called anteroom outside the boardroom of AT&T's Basking Ridge facility by announcing that Mandl had decided to re- sign to take a "once in a lifetime" position at another company. He said that Mandl's responsibilities would be split between Miller and Zeglis while he conducted an outside search for a new president and chief operating officer. Then he asked Mandl if he wanted to say any- thing. About half the people in the room already knew of Mandl's decision. The others looked around the oversized round table for a hint of what this really meant. From the curt way Allen had an- nounced the news, they could tell that he found the whole episode a little distasteful. Even Mandl, normally confident and a little brash, seemed uncomfortable as he expressed the customary words of mixed feelings. When he finished, Allen thanked him and said he was sure he had other things he had to take care of. Mandl left the room, and Allen moved on to other subjects. The News Breaks At 9:02 A.M., twenty-eight minutes before the news release was to be issued and even before the meeting in the anteroom broke up, a Salo- Take Control mon Brothers research analyst named Jack Grubman broke the news in what the New York Times called "a harshly negative n