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John Diebold, the noted computer consultant, who was asked by IBM to be a witness, gave the TIME conference "a peasant's view of what it is like to have the Justice Department's B-52s drop napalm on me." First, at Government request, he turned over 300,000 pages of documents from his company, the Diebold Group, relating to the computer industry. Said Diebold: "That is a minor ripple in the ocean of paper that has been delivered by IBM, but I wasn't even a party to the case!" Then he was tied up full time for two months giving depositions to the Government. Diebold was asked not only about the fees IBM paid his firm but about his personal net worth. Finally, Diebold reported, the Justice Department lawyers told him to produce more than 1,000 lengthy and confidential reports that Diebold's consulting company had made for its clients, including some plans for IBM's competitors to compete with IBM.
At that point, Diebold withdrew as a witness rather than disclose reports to clients "on things genuinely unconnected with the case for the sake of a fishing expedition on the part of the Justice Department." As he told the TIME conference:"Gradually, I realized that the Government lawyers don't understand what they're doing." For example, according to the Government's definition of the "general purpose" computer market, there were only eight competitors in 1969, said Diebold. "Since that date, we have clocked something on the order of 300 new players in thegame— Japanese, French, American. During that time, has the Government changed its definition of the industry? Indeed they have. Today they no longer maintain there are eight competitors; today they say there are four. Yet the reality is that there is very wide-scale competition in that industry, ease of entry and rapidly declining costs to customers."
Staal, who says Diebold dropped out rather than produce more evidence damaging to IBM's case, responds that the other companies do not make general purpose computers; they manufacture smaller or specialized computers or parts.
But change in technology and the computer market is a major obstacle to the Government's case. None of the IBM computer systems that were on the market when the Government filed suit are still being made by the company. The trustbusters claim that the same pattern of IBM monopoly persists, but they must constantly seek new facts to prove it.
The Government has never spelled out just how it wants to break up IBM to foster competition. Any "relief that the court eventually may grant must be based on up-to-date information. So last January—ironically on the tenth anniversary of the case—the Government made yet another discovery request for current information and IBM's plans for the future. IBM is resisting; it argues that this third round of discovery would bare its trade secrets, and further delay the trial.