So their CEO has a list of executives that he feels did so little he considers them "missing in action". If that were the case, why didn't he just fire them for cause? That would have stopped the vesting clocks on their options.

Or was he paying so little attention to who was and was not contributing that firing them didn't occur to him at the time? In that case, who's really "missing in action" here?

If I were going to take my company public soon, the impending litigation shitstorm is exactly the kind of thing I would not want to have hanging over me.