Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang and general counsel Michael Callahan have been requested to attend a House Committee on Foreign Affairs meeting over Yahoo’s role in the incarceration of a journalist in China.
Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang and general counsel Michael Callahan have been requested to attend a House Committee on Foreign Affairs meeting over Yahoo’s role in the incarceration of a journalist in China.
Callahan will have to tread softly before Congressman Tom Lantos, who chairs the Committee on Foreign Affairs. He and fellow Committee members are none too pleased with the idea that Callahan gave incorrect information to them in February 2006 regarding Yahoo’s role in the chain of events leading to journalist Shi Tao’s ten-year jail sentence.
The Chinese journalist had been found guilty of passing state secrets; in this case, he passed a memo out of the country that had come down from the central government, concerning what reporters could and could not write regarding the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989, as the anniversary of that tragedy approached.
Callahan’s 2006 testimony claimed Yahoo had no knowledge of why Shi was being investigated; Yahoo had complied with a law enforcement request for details about a Yahoo Mail account. However, evidence emerged about the case in July 2007, documenting Yahoo being informed of the investigation in April 2004.
Congressman Chris Smith, also on the Foreign Affairs committee, blasted Yahoo over its previous testimony before the Committee:
“Last year, in sworn testimony before my subcommittee, a Yahoo! official testified that the company knew nothing ‘about the nature of the investigation’ into Shi Tao, a pro-democracy activist who is now serving ten years on trumped up charges. We have now learned there is much more to the story than Yahoo let on, and a Chinese government document that Yahoo had in their possession at the time of the hearing left little doubt of the government’s intentions,” said Congressman Chris Smith (R-NJ). “U.S. companies must hold the line and not work hand in glove with the secret police.”
As we noted in July regarding Callahan’s testimony, we think Yahoo will try to demonstrate that its Hong Kong business unit received the Notice of Evidence Collection, and its damning statement, but did not share the Notice with Yahoo China. Callahan’s previous testimony showed him being very careful in citing a separation between those two operations.
Now he and Yang just have to convince Lantos of this.
