erger closed. SBC's negotiators saw this as a clumsy effort on the part of AT&T to tie the company's hands while the FCC, the Department of Justice, and who knew who else dithered over the merger. And what, they asked, if the merger was turned down? Once their local markets were open, there would be no way to close them again. AT&T, which would have been insulated from attacks in SBC's seven-state territory, would have lost nothing. But SBC would have lost months getting into long distance and would have aided and abetted the loss of its local market share. By contrast, the so-called social issues-such as who would run the merged companies-were a breeze. Allen planned to stay on at AT&T for the two years the merger review would probably take and then would step down in favor of Whitacre. Left open was whether Walter would have a role in the new company. It was at about this point that Walter had a change of heart-a merger that had made sense to him just weeks before suddenly looked highly dubious. And he didn't keep his misgivings to himself. He agitated the heads of the consumer and business long-distance businesses, whom he had just installed the previous December, by warning them that their jobs were at risk if the merger went through. Never one to have difficulty putting two and two together, Allen was more than disappointed in his new president, and he shared his misgivings with the board in executive session. Expect the Dumbing Down of Reality The Leak Then, on Memorial Day 1997, as I was forming hamburger patties to put on the charcoal grill, my home phone rang. It was John Keller, who told me that he was putting the final touches on a story for the next day's Journal that would break the news about our merger discus- sions with SBC. According to "sources close to the negotiations," he said, we had been in discussion for some time, but now the discus- sions had grown SO serious that we had put some business transac- tions on hold. This last reference clearly concerned some wireless swaps that we had postpo