be the first time the two sides of the paper had contradicted each
other.
Two weeks after our initial conversation, Adam put me in touch with
Richard and Joe Fuisz, Phyllis Gardner, and Rochelle Gibbons. It was
disappointing at first to hear that the Fuiszes had been involved in
litigation with Theranos. Even if they insisted they’d been wrongly
accused, the lawsuit gave them a big ax to grind and made them
useless as sources.
But my ears pricked up when I heard that they had talked to
Theranos’s just-departed laboratory director and that he was alleging
some sort of wrongdoing at the company. I also found the story of Ian
Gibbons tragic and was intrigued by the fact that Rochelle said he’d
confided to her on several occasions that the Theranos technology
wasn’t working. It was the type of thing that would have been
dismissed as hearsay in court, but it seemed credible enough to merit a
closer look. In order to take this any further, though, what I needed to
do next was clear: I needed to talk to Alan Beam.
—
THE FIRST HALF dozen times I dialed Alan’s number, I got his
voicemail. I didn’t leave a message and instead resolved to just keep
trying him. On the afternoon of Thursday, February 26, 2015, a voice
with an accent I couldn’t quite place finally answered the phone. After
ascertaining that it was in fact Alan, I introduced myself and told him I
understood he had recently left Theranos with concerns about the way
the company was operating.
I could sense he was very nervous, but he also seemed to want to
unburden himself. He told me he would speak to me only if I promised
to keep his identity confidential. Theranos’s lawyers had been
harassing him and he was certain the company would sue him if it
found out he was talking to a reporter. I agreed to grant him
anonymity. It wasn’t a hard decision. Without him, all I had were
secondhand sources and informed speculation. If he wouldn’t talk,
there would be no story.