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There is a cliché dating back to the Watergate era, if not earlier, it is that it is not crime but camouflage that ends up trapping the guilty. It was certainly the case of Richard Nixon, and it seems that this may have been the case for Les Moonves, the head of the CBS who resigned under the pressure of 9 September.
Many women have accused the moon of being sexually assaulted and some incidents have been described in detail in two New Yorker articles. But it is not the aggressive or potentially illegal behavior of Moonves that has cost him his job. As the New York Times says, it was his lack of candor with the CBS board that sealed his fate and probably cost him $ 90 million at checkout.
According to journalist James Stewart, author of Den of Thieves and a master of dramas, the CBS board members were willing to stand with Moonves and defend him against allegations that he had assured them they were fake. "We will stay in this meeting until midnight, until we get an agreement that we are 100% behind our CEO, and his status will not change," said William Cohen, Member of the Board of Directors. of the board and former US secretary. defense, said Stewart saying at a meeting in July. (Cohen declined to comment on the Times)
Only if it became clear that Moonves was not sincere with the advice as to the nature of his past behavior and the extent to which he tried to conceal it, did they light. Moonves did not tell an investigator hired by the commission that a former colleague in the 1980s, Phyllis Golden-Gottlieb, had filed a lawsuit against him in Los Angeles last year and had not tried to find a job. at CBS for another woman, in an apparent effort to buy her silence.
"In the end, it was the evidence that Mr. Moonves misled his counsel – even more than the allegations of abuse by several women – who condemned him," Stewart wrote.
The CBS board of directors, apparently, was willing to give Moonves the benefit of the doubt over the allegations detailed in The New Yorker, but his disappointment was a bridge too far. Other CEOs have lost their jobs for similar reasons. Mark Hurd of Hewlett-Packard, for example, was not fired in 2010 for liaising with an HP contractor, but for abusing corporate resources and lying to the board. (Hurd has landed on his feet and is now co-CEO of Oracle.)
Even as it became clear that Moonves was due to leave in August, council members would be willing to give him half of the $ 180 million in compensation, even if he had been fired for no reason. (CBS did not respond to a request for comment.)
If the sordid story contains good news, it's because the CBS board has made sense. Not only did he force the resignation of Moonves, but according to Stewart, following the second, even more damning story of the New Yorker, "it is almost certain that the company will not pay Mr. Moonves anything."
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