When individual employees of a large corporation speak to the general public, they need to put in a disclaimer.  When a large corporation speaks to the general public, the disclaimer is not necessary. Bill was quite right to put a disclaimer after his personal remarks.

For the official statement, look in the thread for the Press Release which was also inserted by Bill Stewart presumably after getting clearance from AT&T's Public Relations people. It stated

              AT&T STATEMENT - CURRENT SPAM ATTACK - 10/22/03

AT&T and a number of other large companies have seen a marked
increase in the amount of incoming SPAM in recent days. A team of
experts that includes members from AT&T Labs, Network Services,
and Corporate Security has implemented a number of procedures to
remediate this situation and minimize its impact on those trying
to send e-mail to "att.com" addresses.

As of this morning - Wednesday, October 22nd - the level of incoming
e-mail messages is returning to normal and the situation appears
to be well in hand. Although all AT&T e-mail servers are fully
operational at this time, some incoming messages are experiencing
intermittent delays as SPAM filtering continues at all network
gateways.

Customers who received e-mail bulletins from AT&T Monday and Tuesday
requesting specific information are advised to disregard those
messages.  They were inadvertently sent out in error and we apologize
for any confusion or inconvenience they may have caused.

Network reliability is one of our top priorities at AT&T, so for
obvious reasons we will not be providing more detailed information
regarding the specific security procedures implemented to curb this
SPAM attack. We have no intention of helping those who generate
this type of computer and Internet mischief.

Regards,
________________________________

Terry Bowden
AT&T Service Delivery Manager
NZ