House Foreign Affairs Committee chair Tom Lantos comes from Silicon Valley, but he’s been anything but a quiet neighbor to Yahoo over false testimony given to his Committee in February 2006.

Jerry Yang and Yahoo counsel Michael Callahan probably can’t wait to get out of the Nation’s Capital today, despite a decent forecast of 57 degrees and sunny for the Capitol Beltway and its environs.

Already, Lantos’ statement prepared ahead of this morning’s meeting with Yang and Callahan has leaked to Forbes. The Congressman is not pleased with Yahoo’s version of history regarding what they did and did not know about what China wanted to know about now-imprisoned journalist Shi Tao, and when Yahoo learned the truth about it:

“Yahoo (nasdaq: YHOO - news - people ) claims that this is just one big misunderstanding. Let me be clear - this was no misunderstanding,” House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Tom Lantos, D-Calif., said in a statement prepared for delivery at a hearing Tuesday.

“This was inexcusably negligent behavior at best, and deliberately deceptive behavior at worst,” Lantos said.

Lantos also believes that even if Callahan did not know the truth, as he has claimed, others at Yahoo did. Lantos isn’t buying that no one mentioned this to Lantos ahead of his 2006 testimony.

Via Forbes

UPDATE: The Wall Street Journal says Lantos said Yang and Callahan should apologize to Shi’s mother, seated behind them at the hearing, and offer her whatever support she needed.

Posted on Tuesday, November 6th, 2007 at 12:38 pm. Permalink