U.S. committee to probe Yahoo's role in China arrest

A U.S. House of Representatives committee chairman doesn't buy Yahoo Inc.'s explanation of why it provided incomplete information to Congress about its role in the arrest of a Chinese journalist.

"Yahoo claims that this is just one big misunderstanding. Let me be clear — this was no misunderstanding," House foreign affairs committee chairman Tom Lantos said in a statement for delivery at a hearing Tuesday. "This was inexcusably negligent behaviour at best, and deliberately deceptive behaviour at worst."

Lantos, a Democrat from California,summoned two top executives from the Sunnyvale, Calif., internet company to testify on the matter at the hearing.

At a congressional hearing early last year, Yahoo general counsel Michael Callahan said the company had no information about the nature of a Chinese government investigation of Shi Tao when it shared information about the journalist's online activities.

Shi subsequently was given a 10-year prison sentence for engaging in pro-democracy efforts that the communist authorities deemed subversive.

Callahan has since acknowledged that Yahoo officials had received a subpoena-like document that made reference to suspected "illegal provision of state secrets" — a common charge against political dissidents.

Last week, Callahan issued a statement saying that he learned the details of the document months after his February 2006 testimony, and that he regretted not alerting the committee to it once he knew about it.

Lantos said that even though Callahan "may not have known the relevant facts," others at Yahoo did.

"Yet somehow, incredibly, Mr. Callahan was apparently not informed of these critical facts and the fundamental nature of Yahoo's complicity with the persecution of Shi Tao," Lantos said.

Yahoo declined to release Callahan's testimony in advance of Tuesday's hearing and a spokeswoman referred to the statement he issued last week, in which he acknowledged "a misunderstanding that I deeply regret and have apologized to the committee for creating."

Human rights and free-speech advocates have lambasted U.S. companies, including Google Inc. and Microsoft Corp., for helping the Chinese government stifle the flow of ideas in exchange for greater access to the country's rapidly growing Internet market. But the convictions of Shi and another Chinese journalist Yahoo provided information about have focused the most strident criticism on Yahoo.