The concept captured the Zeitgeist of the personal computer revolution. Many young people, especially those in the counterculture, had viewed computers as instruments that could be used by Orwellian governments and giant corporations to sap individuality. But by the end of the 1970s, they were also being seen as potential tools for personal empowerment. The ad cast Macintosh as a warrior for the latter cause—a cool, rebellious and heroic company that was the only thing standing in the way of the big evil corporation" s plan for world domination and total mind control.Once again Jobs would end up suffering bad publicity without making a penny. Apple" s stock price kept dropping, and by March 2003 even the new options were so low that Jobs traded in all of them for an outright grant of $ 75 million worth of shares, which amounted to about $ 8. 3 million for each year he had worked since coming back in 1997 through the end of the vesting in 2006.None of this would have mattered much if the Wall Street Journal had not run a powerful series in 2006 about backdated stock options. Apple wasn" t mentioned, but its board appointed a committee of three members—Al Gore, Eric Schmidt of Google, and Jerry York, formerly of IBM and Chrysler—to investigate its own practices. " We decided at the outset that if Steve was at fault we would let the chips fall where they may," Gore recalled. The committee uncovered some irregularities with Jobs" s grants and those of other top officers, and it immediately turned the findings over to the SEC. Jobs was aware of the backdating, the report said, but he ended up not benefiting financially.(A board committee at Disney also found that similar backdating had occurred at Pixar when Jobs was in charge.)The laws governing such backdating practices were murky, especially since no one at Apple ended up benefiting from the dubiously dated grants. The SEC took eight months to do its own investigation , and in April 2007 it announced that it would not bring action against Apple " based in part on its swift, extensive, and extraordinary cooperation in the Commission" s investigation[and its]prompt self-reporting. " Although the SEC found that Jobs had been aware of the backdating, itcleared him of any misconduct because he " was unaware of the accounting implications.The SEC did file complaints against Apple" s former Chief financial officer Fred Anderson, who was on the board, and general counsel Nancy Heinen. Anderson, a retired Air Force captain with a square jaw and deep integrity, had been a wise and calming influence at Apple, where he was known for his ability to control Jobs" s tantrums. He was cited by the SEC only for "negligence" regarding the paperwork for one set of the grants(not the ones that went to Jobs), and the SEC allowed him to continue to serve on corporate boards. Nevertheless he ended up resigning from the Apple board.