Choosing the crooked path

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I’ve been feeling funny all afternoon, and for once it has nothing to do with alcohol, aspirin or cookie dough.

About three years ago I flew to Long Island to interview the then-CEO of Computer Associates for a magazine cover story. It was a great conversation, where I learned how his impoverished origins influenced his management of a controversial Fortune 500 company. The entire time we talked, I couldn’t help comparing notes since we were the exact same age and had had some parallel experiences during our youth. I even mentioned it to him. Of course, he went on to run one of the world’s largest software companies, live in multiple mansions and buy a professional hockey team. I, on the other hand, stuck much closer to my humble roots. And yet I couldn’t help but like the guy, even when, upon my asking about certain federal probes, I though he protested his innocence too much. They were indeed hollow declarations, made, we now know, around the same time he paid millions to a minion to keep his trap shut.

So today Sanjay Kumar pleaded guilty to multiple crimes committed while he was president of CA, joining the jumpsuit gang of former executives now doing time for cooking the books to maintain their power base and lavish lifestyles. Good-bye mansions; hello Big House. Still, I can’t help but wonder if Sanjay wishes now that he’d stayed one of the little people like me. And if when he lied to me, and when I elected to let it go, he felt even the faintest, teeny tiny stab of guilt.

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