Leave it to Twitter, the microblogging service, to persuade a stubbornly private billionaire to chronicle his daily activities in short, 140-character bursts.
That is what has happened to Pierre Omidyar, the eBay founder, philanthropist and start-up investor. For more than a decade he has mostly preferred to stay below the public radar, but for the last two years he has been happily Twittering his life at twitter.com/pierre.
In between the predictable details of mundane life as a very wealthy man - video games with his family, flip-flopping on whether to grow a beard - Mr. Omidyar has divulged that he is being sued by a former employee.
"Ok, now I've seen everything," Mr. Omidyar wrote earlier this week. "I'm being sued by someone who claims I've been palling around with terrorists."
It turns out that John Picardy, a former special agent with the State Department, filed a wrongful termination lawsuit this month in Hawaii circuit court against Mr. Omidyar, his wife, his mother and Sky River Management, the Honolulu-based security firm that handles logistics and security for the Omidyar family.
In early 2008, according to the lawsuit, Mr. Picardy left his position with the State Department in Australia to join Sky River and the Omidyar security detail in Honolulu. He lasted all of four days. According to his complaint, Sky River told Mr. Picardy that it was firing him for making what he thought was an innocuous comment at a company dinner to two fellow employees, who were also roommates.
His comment, "What do you do when Jayson wants to get some face?" was a colloquial reference to going on a date, not to having sex, Mr. Picardy said. But his colleagues took offense, according to the complaint.
But Mr. Picardy alleges that he was actually fired for other reasons. In the complaint, he says he was questioned by Mr. Omidyar's mother, who is an American of Iranian descent, about his views on the Middle East. He also says he learned during his short employment that the family's airplane had been used for meetings in Syria with Hamas. The defendants "in fact wrongfully terminated Mr. Picardy from his employment because they feared the reporting to the U.S. government of their activities," the complaint alleges.
Mr. Picardy is asking for a jury trial and punitive damages. Sarah Steven, a spokeswoman for Mr. Omidyar, said the case had "no merit whatsoever."
And on Twitter, Mr. Omidyar seems to be finding some dark humor in the implication that he has been "palling around with terrorists."
"I guess my chances of becoming President have gone up. Thank you, Sarah Palin!" Mr. Omidyar tweeted on Wednesday.
