Carly Fiorina was one of my all-time feminist heroes, so when she was summarily dismissed by the board of Hewlett-Packard Company (NYSE:HPQ), I was a bit miffed. And when the Patricia Dunn scandal began to unfold, I wanted to believe she was innocent. Or at least, well, sane.

When I discovered the mountain of evidence against Dunn, also implicating Fiorina, I felt a little bitter. But always in the back of my mind I have to wonder, how is it that two of the very few powerful women in technology were the biggest casualties of the pretexting scandal?

The Wall Street Journal [subscription required] suggests it may not be random: after all, statistics wouldn't favor two powerfully-placed women being let go in as many years. If it smells like a chauvinist, and walks like a chauvinist... you know the rest.

But it's, of course, not that easy. Alan Murray examines the two women's behavior in the days, and months, following their respective firings and finds them both wanting.

Do you watch Law & Order? I do, and despite the fact that I actually did take several law courses in college and business school, I'll be honest: much of my law I learned from Dick Wolf's many franchises. So when I see the news today about Patricia Dunn I think, ripped from the headlines! and I wonder:

Will her attorney in her eventual trial claim that the cancer made her do it?

Dunn, the now-former, now-infamous chairwoman of Hewlett-Packard Company (NYSE:HPQ) is rumored to be heading towards an indictment today (Update: Dunn chose to surrender at a Silicon Valley courthouse on October 5, and will be arraigned November 17) for her rather pathological behavior, which ran the gamut from lying to spying to generally shocking paranoia. "Separately," she's been recently told by her physician that her ovarian cancer (diagnosed in 2004) is "advanced," and she'll be starting chemotherapy later this week.

Dunn has been battling her health for the past two years, while in the throes of what seems like an evil and invasive disease. If you've known anyone who's dealt with such terrifically defeating illness, you might have seen any number of different responses, from "courage" to fear to downright falling apart. My mother-in-law, who died of cancer two years ago, became blind and deaf to any negative news for the past several months of her life, completely ignoring the bad behavior of those around her. Another distant family member who's dying of liver disease has decided to hoard all his belongings -- and those of his brother and sister -- jealously guarding things that mean nothing to him in an odd denial of his fate.

It's not a stretch to me, then, to decide that these two pieces of news -- an indictment for strange, paranoid, and yes, criminal behavior; an indication that a serious disease is becoming more so -- might not be "separate" after all. I wouldn't at all be surprised if, indeed, the cancer made her do it.

I've worked for a paranoid boss or two. I won't name names or dish details, but let's just say I've been directed to spend a lot of company money on re-keying every office lock. And again with the changing locks. And again!

But reading about Patricia Dunn and gang, I know that my brushes with paranoia have nothing on Hewlett-Packard Company (NYSE:HPQ). Why don't we lift a few quotes from the New York Times article. Like, "conducted feasibility studies on planting spies in news bureaus of two major publications," (pretty crazy right?) and "Feasibility studies are in progress for undercover operations (clerical) in CNET and WSJ offices in SF bureaus." (that's from an HP memo!)

Really, truly, Patricia Dunn and some of her deputies, including Anthony Gentilucci, manager of global investigations, and (this is comedy gold) Kevin Hunsaker, chief ethics officer, thought about placing their moles in the WSJ secretarial and janitorial staff. It's not known what was the result of the feasibility study (my gut goes with "NOT"), or whether spies were actually engaged and deployed. It remains to be seen whether current CEO Mark Hurd can escape from the mess; Dan Farber says, "Wall Street better hope that Hurd comes out clean from this sordid affair." Shivers.

It's truly the work of a disturbed individual, and it didn't work out well for Ms. Dunn. As we all know, she will be stepping down January 1. She may be the most famous paranoid business leader, but she's surely not the only one. It's a cautionary tale from which Tom Taulli learned, "emails are forever" and Frank Furd learned that the culture of spying is invading our culture as a whole (and "Is *this* what they meant when they spoke of an 'MBA president'?") But what did I learn from this? My lesson is a bit ironic:

Beware the paranoid boss. And whatever you do, don't conduct that feasibility study on criminal acts. (And if you discover criminal misdeeds? Don't reply to the email describing them, "I shouldn't have asked." It just makes you look, umm, unethical.)

In the digital age, it's getting easier to investigate matters. As for Patricia Dunn , the former Chairman of Hewlett-Packard, she led an investigation that used some of these new-fangled techniques to snoop on the company's board. Now, it appears that some of the practices may even be illegal (that is, according to California's Attorney General).

Ironically, it looks like these e-investigation techniques are being used against Dunn. In fact, according to a Wall Street Journal piece, Dunn was fully-engaged in the investigation of the board – since the summer of 2005. And, yes, this comes from lots of internal HP emails (funny enough, it has been Dunn's contention that she has been hands-off with the investigation because of possible conflict-of-interest issues).

It even looks like the former CEO of HP, Carly Fiorina, was part of Dunn's investigation.

Other juicy tidbits: There was discussion to see if text messages of board members could be captured. Also, there was talk about planting informants at a couple news organizations, such as CNET.

True, Dunn had legitimate concerns about her board, which certainly had problems of leaking confidential information.

But, as more and more information about the investigation comes out, it appears that Dunn was too aggressive. In fact, some of HP's own experts had indicated to her that the investigative practices were pushing things too far.

Of course, this is now a moot point.

Basically, in the digital age, one thing is very clear: emails are forever. As the investigation at HP continues, expect more intriguing details to emerge.

Tom Taulli is the author of various books, including the Complete M&A Handbook and operates InvestorOffering.com.