Whole Foods, and Mackey, are taking two contradictory paths in trying to gather the information. The first was by seeking subpoenas targeted at the 96 companies. Late last year that path caused a huge PR fallout in Portland, Oregon (but didn’t stop the motion for subpoenas), so this week Mackey decided to personally appeal to the CEOs of the various companies by sending them a letter.

This tactic is even more gutsy due to the nature of the information that Whole Foods is requesting. New Seasons, a Portland, Oregon-based natural foods retailer subpoenaed by Whole Foods, said it was asked to hand over two year’s worth of sales figures, future expansion plans and any internal communication regarding the Whole Foods/Wild Oats merger.

While Whole Foods says the info will only be going to their outside counsel, many involved are skeptical. Brian Rohter, CEO of New Seasons, may have put it best when he said, “That’s like trusting the fox to guard the henhouse – and we don’t have any faith it’s going to work like that. I’m sorry to say this, but some of the people at Whole Foods have a history of less than stellar behavior when it comes to competing fairly.”

Of course, he’s most likely referring to Mackey’s posing as an anonymous Internet user with the name ‘Rahodeb,’ posting over 1,200 comments on Yahoo! Finance message boards about Whole Foods in 2007.

The trial over the Whole Foods/Wild Oats merger is set for April, but in the meantime you can get your fix on news coverage of this story (from an insider’s perspective) by heading over to the New Seasons Market blog.

At issue was that in trying to protect competitive secrets, court officials didn’t sufficiently “black out” redacted portions of the court filings – and thereby the information could still be read.

Among the inadvertent disclosures was that Whole Foods prohibits its suppliers from doing business directly with Wal-Mart as Whole Foods “wants Wal-Mart to have to go through distributors because that raises Wal-Mart’s costs.”

The Rocky Mountain News has the best piece on what was supposed to be secret.

Commentary: Someone needs to get a better black magic marker.

AOL didn’t acknowledge any wrongdoing in the settlement. California was among the states that played a leading role in the settlement. New York and Florida were the only states that didn’t participate in the inquiry.

Commentary: AOL has invested heavily in its ethics efforts, both internally and externally, in recent years and it is nice to see them start to get some of these legacy issues from a past and different leadership regime behind them. As far as we can tell, it’s a different company culture now.

As AOL’s company spokeswoman Amy Call pointed out in discussing the impact of the settlement: AOL had already voluntarily improved the way it handled cancellations during 2005 and 2006. In her words “This just codifies those safeguards.”