Bad Blood

(Axel Boer) #1

missile.


“It seems apparent to us that certainly one of your key sources is a
young man named Tyler Shultz.” She looked straight at me as she said
it in what was clearly a rehearsed opening salvo to try to fluster me. I
kept my poker face on and said nothing. They could suspect Tyler all
they wanted, but I wasn’t about to betray his confidence and give them
the confirmation they were fishing for. She continued by denigrating
Tyler as young and unqualified and then asserting that my other
sources were disgruntled former employees who were equally
unreliable. Mike interrupted her diatribe. We weren’t going to disclose
who our confidential sources were nor should Theranos presume to
know their identities, he said politely but firmly.


Boies chimed in for the first time, playing the good cop to King’s bad
cop. “We really just want to go through this step-by-step so that you
see that there just really isn’t a story here,” the seventy-four-year-old
superlawyer said softly. With his bushy eyebrows and thinning gray
hair, he called to mind a grandfather trying to reconcile squabbling
children.


I suggested we begin addressing the questions I had sent, but,
before I had time to read the first one, King’s demeanor turned
aggressive again and she issued a sharp warning: “We do not consent
to your publication of our trade secrets.”


We were minutes into the meeting and it had become clear to me
that her main strategy was going to be to try to intimidate us, so I
decided it was time to convey to her that that wasn’t going to work.


“We do not consent to waiving our journalistic privileges,” I snapped
back.


My retort seemed to have the desired effect. She turned more
conciliatory and we started going through my questions one by one
with the understanding that Daniel Young, as the only Theranos
official present, would be the one answering them. However, we were
soon at loggerheads again.


After Young acknowledged that Theranos owned commercial blood
analyzers, which he claimed the company used only for comparison

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