Why I chased Peter Lynch out of that hotel

[Target rich: the Great White One]

You know him: Peter Lynch, the Fidelity mutual fund guy who's got "legendary'' bolted to his name. (And now he's suddenly in trouble.) Lynch taught me a lot about failing CEOs, snoozing boards -- and the value in asking pointed questions.

We had our hotel run-in 13 years ago, when I was an investigative reporter at The Idaho Statesman (hi, Dan!), trying to find out why Lynch and his fellow directors hadn't been doing their job watching over the old Morrison Knudsen Co. MK was a storied engineering and construction outfit that had employed generations of Idahoans. It led construction of the Hoover Dam. It was one of Boise's marquee employers, with a sterling reputation.

That is, until Bill and Mary Cunningham Agee slid into the CEO's suite, presiding over a compliant board of directors that included Lynch. Yes: those Agees. Of hanky-panky-in-the-1980s-Bendix-corporate suite fame. By 1995 in Boise, unhappy MK employees accused the two of acting like a modern-day Bonnie and Clyde, looting the company for personal gain.

Lynch's fellow boldface-name directors included Peter Ueberroth, the Los Angeles Olympics impresario, and Zbigniew Brzezinski, Jimmy Carter's National Security Advisor. Too late, directors caught on to Agee's incompetence, and moved to fire him during an emergency board meeting.

I flew to San Francisco for the directors' showdown with Agee at the swank Campton Place hotel, staking out the second-floor meeting. The Wall Street Journal was there -- and, somewhere nearby, that fabulous Diana B. Henriques of The New York Times. (She might have been wearing pearls!)

Lynch left the board room, then found himself trapped inside a small elevator with me, the Journal reporter -- and one suddenly wide-eyed hotel guest. During the one-floor trip down, the Journal reporter and I peppered Lynch, demanding to know why he and other directors had been asleep at the switch.

I left the Journal reporter behind when Lynch bolted out the elevator door, sprinting across the lobby toward a purring black Town Car, with tinted windows, curbside. I yelled after him: "Are you going to resign?''

He stopped in his tracks, turned around quickly, and shouted back: "What kind of question is that?" Then he rushed into his limo, without giving me my answer.

So, with that as background: Hi, Gannett board of directors!

Postscript: Last I read, the Agees were leading a cosseted life in Northern California's wine country. Nice work -- if you can get it.

[Image: this morning's Idaho Statesman, Newseum. The Statesman is now owned by McClatchy, after passing through Knight Ridder on its way out of Gannett in 2005.]