date in order to avoid fueling more speculation about succession. I flew down with Allen. Walter and Zeglis took a separate company plane, in keeping with corporate security's policy on key executives flying together. But when we got to Washington, Allen and Walter somehow ended up in the same car. Walter apparently spent the short trip to USA Today's headquarters complaining about media leaks and vowing to get to the bottom of them. For the car ride back, Allen franti- cally waved me into his car SO he wouldn't have to relive the same conversation. Somewhere in the hour and a half we spent with USA Today, someone asked what Allen thought of Hundt's speech. Allen said, "I thought it was inappropriate, and I don't think I should say more." That was the sum total of what he said. The next day's paper screamed that he had "ripped into Hundt"; "assailed the FCC"; and "blamed regulators for the collapse of the SBC deal."6 I called the editors, and they apologized profusely. It seems that someone had written all the headlines and subheads at the stroke of midnight, just before the paper was beamed up to the satel- lites for transmission to their printing plants. The editors and writers who attended the editorial board meeting were all at home by then, safely tucked into their beds, and didn't see the final version until they got to work the next day. Although I pretended to be upset, I was secretly delighted that they had chosen to beat a dead horse rather than pick up on the real story that was sitting across the table from them-John Walter would be gone before the company announced its second-quarter results on July 21. I had drawn that line in the sand because making the announce- ment after we issued our financial results would unnecessarily give Walter another opportunity to position himself during the conference call that typically accompanied our release, and we would be stuck with whatever he said in interviews. Besides, once the board had reached even a tentative decision on succession, I couldn't continue to 