HP inquiry may focus on local firm
California officials investigating the corporate spying issues at Hewlett-Packard Co. are examining the role of a Massachusetts investigations firm, Security Outsourcing Solutions Inc., in the events leading to Tuesday's decision by H P chairwoman Patricia C. Dunn to step down, according to published reports.
Security Outsourcing and the law firm with which it shares office space, Bonner Kiernan Trebach & Crociata LLP, describe work for corporate clients on their websites.
Neither of the two local firms would comment yesterday; a spokesman for Hewlett-Packard, the California computer maker, wouldn't discuss its relationship with the two firms; and the California attorney general's office declined to comment.
Security Outsourcing Solutions lists as its contact information the same downtown address and phone number as Bonner Kiernan, and gives a second address in Needham. It assists ``corporations and institutions in addressing their organizations' internal and external security needs," according to its website. The firm works with companies that do not have full-time security departments, and those whose internal security departments lack expertise to address all their security concerns. According to the site, SOS ``maintains a vast network of reputable security companies who utilize the most modern techniques and sophisticated equipment available in providing their specialized services."
Exactly what sort of security services were used is front and center in the Hewlett-Packard investigation. Dunn on Tuesday said she would step down as the company's chairwoman following disclosures she approved a private investigation that secretly -- and perhaps illegally -- obtained the phone records of other directors at the company and journalists who covered it.
Hewlett-Packard now faces questions from state and federal authorities seeking more answers about how far it was prepared to go to spy on its dissidents.
Yesterday, citing an unidentified source briefed on the investigation, The New York Times reported that efforts by California regulators ``are focusing in part" on Security Outsourcing, which it reported was hired for the investigation. The Wall Street Journal reported that ``people familiar with the matter" say ``H P has told them one of the investigators connected to the case is Ronald R. DeLia" of Security Outsourcing.
The address Security Outsourcing shares with Bonner Kiernan is on the sixth floor of a downtown Boston office building, One Liberty Square, whose curved facade faces Liberty Square and the monument to the Hungarian anti-Soviet uprising of 1956. A guard there yesterday wouldn't let a reporter past the front desk, saying the firm had left instructions in the morning that only clients be allowed in.
A call to the number Security Outsourcing Solutions lists on its Web page was answered by a Bonner Kiernan receptionist at the same telephone number. Both she and others there referred questions to partner John A. Kiernan, who they said was involved in a trial yesterday and not available to comment.
Security Outsourcing lists a second business address, in Needham, which is the same as the address its president, Caroline DeLia, gave for its Massachusetts secretary of state's office filing.
The address is a neatly kept two-story yellow house in Needham. No one answered the door there yesterday afternoon.
Federal court records show Kiernan has represented corporations including a local unit of the fast-food chain McDonald's Inc., federal rail operator Amtrak, and healthcare services provider McKesson Corp. The firm's website says its legal work includes conducting investigations for corporate clients into alleged fraud, commercial bribery, and theft of corporate property, including theft of proprietary information.
Kiernan, one of the firm's founding partners, was a prosecutor for the Suffolk district attorney's office for much of the 1970s and 1980s. Among the high-profile cases he prosecuted was that of David and Ginger Twitchell, a Christian Scientist couple convicted of involuntary manslaughter for failing to get medical attention for their ailing son. Kiernan was chief of the homicide division during his final eight years at the DA's office, leaving in 1988 to go into private practice.
At Bonner Kiernan, his legal practice includes representing Fortune 500 corporations faced with allegations of waste of assets, procurement fraud, loss of inventory, and theft of proprietary information, according to his online biography. ``These investigations have been conducted in a manner designed to identify and remove the perpetrators of fraud and corporate waste, to ensure compliance with appropriate standards of business ethics, and to protect against potential retaliatory litigation," it states.
Kiernan's biography states that he has been retained to represent the governor, the attorney general, and the secretary of public safety. A spokesman for Governor Mitt Romney said the office has only one record of Kiernan doing work for the state, on a minor $550 civil property matter in 2006. A spokeswoman for attorney general Thomas F. Reilly said a preliminary search of records since the 1990s did not show him doing any work for the agency. A spokeswoman for the department of public safety said Kiernan has done no work for the current or immediate past secretaries of the agency.
Ross Kerber can be reached at kerber@globe.com; Sacha Pfeiffer at pfeiffer@globe.com. 
