uch-treasured reputation for reliability. Within
days of the crash AT&T's Chief Executive Officer, Bob Allen, officially
apologized, in terms of deeply pained humility:

"AT&T had a major service disruption last Monday. We didn't live up to
our own standards of quality, and we didn't live up to yours. It's as
simple as that. And that's not acceptable to us. Or to you.... We
understand how much people have come to depend upon AT&T service, so
our AT&T Bell Laboratories scientists and our network engineers are
doing everything possible to guard against a recurrence.... We know
there's no way to make up for the inconvenience this problem may have
caused you."

Mr Allen's "open letter to customers" was printed in lavish ads all
over the country: in the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, New York
Times, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, Philadelphia Inquirer, San
Francisco Chronicle Examiner, Boston Globe, Dallas Morning News,
Detroit Free Press, Washington Post, Houston Chronicle, Cleveland Plain
Dealer, Atlanta Journal Constitution, Minneapolis Star Tribune, St.
Paul Pioneer Press Dispatch, Seattle Times/Post Intelligencer, Tacoma
News Tribune, Miami Herald, Pittsburgh Press, St. Louis Post Dispatch,
Denver Post, Phoenix Republic Gazette and Tampa Tribune.

In another press release, AT&T went to some pains to suggest that this
"software glitch" might have happened just as easily to MCI, although,
in fact, it hadn't. (MCI's switching software was quite different from
AT&T's--though not necessarily any safer.) AT&T also announced their
plans to offer a rebate of service on Valentine's Day to make up for
the loss during the Crash.

"Every technical resource available, including Bell Labs scientists and
engineers, has been devoted to assuring it will not occur again," the
public was told. They were further assured that "The chances of a
recurrence are small--a problem of this magnitude never occurred
before."

In the meantime, however, police and corporate security maintained
their own suspicions about "the chances of recurrence" and the real
reason why a "problem of this magnitude" had appeared, seemingly out of
nowhere. Police and security knew for a fact that hackers of
unprecedented sophistication were illegally entering, and
reprogramming, certain digital switching stations. Rumors of hidden
"viruses" and secret "logic bombs" in the switches ran rampant in the
underground, with much chortling over AT&T's