We slogged through the 119-page document so you wouldn't have to
In 1991, while Steve Jobs was at NeXT and before he returned to Apple (AAPL), the first President Bush considered him for an appointment on the White House's Export Council, triggering an FBI background check. [Update: The Commerce Department confirmed that Jobs did in fact serve on Bush's Export Council.]
In October 2011, MuckRock's Michael Morisy, a former journalist who has made a business of filing Freedom of Information Act requests, asked for copy of Jobs' secret file. On Thursday, the FBI posted a heavily redacted version. You can read it here.
Among the highlights that jumped out at us:
Overall, not a flattering picture, but nothing we haven't heard before.
The biggest surprise: As near as we can tell, every one of the more than three dozen people interviewed by the FBI concluded -- no matter how dishonest, immoral or narcissistic they saw him -- that they would nonetheless recommend him "for a position of trust and confidence with the Government."
If you spot something juicy that we missed, let us know and we'll add it to the list (with credit, of course.)
The insider trader who pled guilty Tuesday leaked details about the iPhone 4 and the iPad
The wiretap caught it all.
Walter Shimoon, then a director at Flextronics (FLEX), a Singapore-based company that supplies Apple (AAPL) with camera and battery components, was being paid up to $200 per hour to leak insider information to a shadowy group of hedge funds and so-called expert networks.
In an Oct. 1, 2009 phone call secretly taped MORE
Philip Elmer-DeWitt - Jul 6, 2011 5:57 AM ET