Mike and I went over it with the standards editors and the lawyers and
concluded that it contained nothing that undermined what we had
published. It was another smokescreen. The paper put out a statement
to say that it stood by my stories.
—
AFTER HOLMES’S APPEARANCE at the Journal conference, Theranos
announced that it was making changes to its board of directors, which
had been getting lampooned since the publication of my first story.
George Shultz, Henry Kissinger, Sam Nunn, and the other aging ex-
statesmen all left to join a new ceremonial body called a board of
counselors. In their place, Theranos made a new director appointment
that signaled an escalation of hostilities: David Boies.
Sure enough, within days, the Journal received letters from Heather
King demanding that it retract the central elements of my first two
articles, calling them “libelous assertions.” A third letter followed
demanding that the paper retain all documents in its possession
concerning Theranos, “including emails, instant messages, drafts,
informal files, handwritten notes, faxes, memoranda, calendar entries,
voice mail and any other Records stored in hard copy, or any
electronic form (including personal cell phones) or any other
medium.”
In an interview with Wired, Boies suggested that a defamation suit
was likely. “I think enough has now been put on the record so people
are chargeable with being knowledgeable with what the facts are,” he
told the magazine. Taking King and Boies at their words, the Journal’s
legal department dispatched a technician to copy the contents of my
laptop and phone in preparation for litigation.
But if Theranos thought this saber rattling would make us stand
down, it was mistaken. Over the next three weeks, we published four
more articles. They revealed that Walgreens had halted a planned
nationwide expansion of Theranos wellness centers, that Theranos had
tried to sell more shares at a higher valuation days before my first
story was published, that its lab was operating without a real director,