just another piece of bad news?

Josh Feldman, writing for Mediaite, forwarded to a vast 'web audience' the Rachel Weiner story carried by the Washington Post today (THE newspaper for our nation's capital):

WaPo‘s Rachel Weiner reported on comments from HP CEO Thomas Hoshko about how Alexis had the security clearance to be in the Navy Yard.

Alexis had a security clearance that was updated in July, approved by military security service personnel.

“There had to be a thorough investigation,” Hoshko said. “There is nothing that came up in all the searches. “

Alexis had finished a contract the company in Japan as part of the work and was about to be reassigned to do additional contract work at the Navy Yard.

Betcha didn't know that Meg has given up her job, and Hoshko got it.

The true story of course is that Hoshko is CEO of "The Experts" which is the sub-contracting firm that employed and presumably did background checks on killer Aaron Alexis.  Of course, Hoshko said, "no, we just do drug abuse checks.  The military should do the background checks, and they are the ones who defaulted."  Wow!  The fox is watching the henhouse.

MarketWatch (THE stock market service) carried a headline last night in San Francisco saying: "Navy Yard Shooting Suspect was HP subcontractor"   PR nightmare, right?

In fact, he was a 'lowly employee' of an HP subcontractor, which is somewhat more removed than the headline might suggest.  HP presumably didn't do background checks of "The Experts" but left that up to the military as well?

MarketWatch went on to quote HP: “We are deeply saddened by today’s tragic events at the Washington Navy Yard. Our thoughts and sympathies are with all those who have been affected,” said Michael Thacker, an H-P HPQ -0.09%  spokesman, in a statement.

“Aaron Alexis was an employee of a company called The Experts, a subcontractor to an H-P Enterprise Services contract to refresh equipment used on the Navy Marine Corps Intranet (NMCI) network. H-P is cooperating fully with law enforcement as requested,” said Thacker.

The first releases, Reuters, Dow Jones, WSJ, all reported these words with the note that  "an HP spokesperson who wishes to remain anonymous" said them.  So much for staying anonymous.

And sad that HP's name came up at all in this tragedy.