The Salesforce.com CEO was so outraged by a Wall Street Journal investigation into his mansion in Hawaii, that he had the reporter arrested and flew to New York to browbeat senior management at the newspaper, Valleywag's learned. Benioff, a billionaire promoter of web software, usually a publicity monger, sought to meet with his counterpart at Dow Jones, the parent company of the Wall Street Journal. Referred to the Journal's managing editor, Paul Steiger, Benioff accused the paper of harassment. In the newsroom, when Benioff turned up, with a man assumed to be a lawyer, some journalists assumed that, because he looked so money, he must be a potential acquiror of the business paper. A Dow Jones spokesman had said on Friday that it was outrageous to suggest any deal had been struck with Benioff over coverage. For the background:

The timeline, it has to be said, isn't entirely clear. We know that Pui-Wing Tam, working on an article about Benioff's 7,600 square foot complex on the Big Island of Hawaii. She was, reporters at the Wall Street Journal say, detained by the police while trying to get close to the property. The Dow Jones spokesman, Robert Christie, has never denied that she was detained, but, rather misleadingly, he says she was never formally charged.

Pui-Wing's article on Benioff's oceanfront getaway was published in the Journal on May 26. Extraordinarily, there was no mention of the arrest, or of Benioff's outrage. The only mention of any interaction with Benioff, in the piece, is this: Mr. Benioff, through a spokeswoman, declined to comment for this article.

It's not clear whether Benioff's visit to the Journal's headquarters came before publication, he trying to head off publication, or at least mention of the incident; or, less likely, that the visit came after publication, and an effort to head off further such intrusive coverage. Anyone remember the exact date he was spotted in Steiger's office? Send email to tips@valleywag.com.

The Journal, and Steiger in particular, deal with aggrieved CEOs on a regular basis. The usual tactic is to be mollifying, without making any firm commitments. These discussions are generally off-the-record, so the paper would not normally feel able to disclose the fact of the conversation, or the content of Benioff's complaint. The paper, also, tries to keep its reporter's personalities, and their subjective personal experiences, out of the way of the story. However, the arrest of a reporter would be unusual enough normally to pierce even the Journal's usual discretion. Steiger is the chairman of the Committee to Protect Journalists,

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