A look at what happened between the release of the Freeh Report and the release of the Paterno Report.
By
Bill Bender
With the renewed interest
in the Freeh Report spawned by release of the
Sollers/Thornburg/Clemente/Berlin
(hereafter Sollers), rebuttal, it’s worth recapping what we already know about
Judge Freeh and his famous missive.
Freeh has stood his
ground, defended his work, and the initial wave of emotion has passed through
the various camps that see this issue from diametrically opposed points of
view. Prior to Sollers the Freeh report
was the subject of extensive criticism from those who questioned its methodology,
conclusions, and manner of presentation, as well as some serious critical
review by experts with an eye towards due process.
Those critical reviews
along with the work of numerous individuals who took it upon themselves to
scrutinize both the report and the man behind it identified the majority of its
failures well before Sollers introduced his conclusions on Feb 10th,
2013. But until the Sollers report garnered national media attention, the only
ones paying attention were the Penn State faithful, ‘true crime’ aficionados,
and those Americans whose intuition told them something was radically
wrong. Now that Freeh’s work is under
review and in the spotlight of the MSM, let’s revisit what we learned
subsequent to the Freeh report’s release:
Penn Staters for
Responsible Stewardship (PS4RS) undertook a review of the report in July
2012, conducted by lawyers among their number, and reached many of the same
technical conclusions as Sollers. No one
paid much attention. After all, the
source was highly partisan and the media had one of those ‘stories of the year’
in hand, so why dampen the heady times by publishing a fact-based challenge to
the report that confirmed the suspicions of a vocal minority. PS4RS of course
wasn’t alone in voicing their doubts. Prominent alums such as Franco Harris, media
watchdog
John Zeigler, and radio personality
Kevin Slaten were and continue to
be the most heard voices of reason, but our own committed group here at SMSS,
and others like us, also pointed out the obvious failings. Some of us even openly questioned the motives
behind Freeh’s Framing document, something Sollers apparently wasn’t authorized
to do, but those answers were and remain murky. The point is, even mid-2012 we were
questioning Freeh’s email ‘evidence’, lack of subpoena power, his dearth of
meaningful interviews, and his conclusions spun from the dust of a suspicious
agenda.
The Penn State Board
of Trustees (BOT) challenged Webster to replace “incredulous” with a word
that could capture the reaction of the Penn State community when the BoT
proclaimed they had no intention of formally reviewing or accepting Freeh’s
report, and went further to state they were only interested in the
recommendations that guided them in seeking reforms to institutional
governance. What did this mean? With everything on the line as it was, this
indicated to many of us the BoT did NOT want to be placed in the position of
defending Freeh’s conclusions.
Why?
If they were in agreement simply saying so
would cause no more damage than remaining silent, and avoid some of the more
strident calls for their collective heads. When it comes to motive, the
conventional wisdom among the dissenting alumni finds its answer in some sort
of instruction to Freeh to “get us out of this."
Within hours of Freeh’s
dramatic announcement and the report’s release
Ken Frazier had echoed the
report’s indictment of “The Big Four” while attempting an air of self-condemnation
for the BOT’s failure to provide oversight.
Though he spit the names of the newly accused out as if announcing the
latest lottery winners within hours of the report’s release, he looked, well,
rather nervous. Actually he looked rather guilty.
We’ll come back to Mr.
Frazier in a bit.
So in mid-2012 we knew the BOT had established
and was handling this internal investigation in ways that should have had the
satellite trucks back in State College in droves.
The Second Mile. You
remember them, the charity Jerry Sandusky started in 1977 which ultimately was
the source of the children he was convicted of abusing. They don’t get mentioned much in the media,
not nearly as much as Penn State, and of course The Big Four. They have an interesting history, and
interesting donors and financials. You
can learn a good deal about the latter through Ray Blehars’
articles here on
SMSS.
In September 2012 the
blog site
Tom In Paine dropped a
‘bombshell’ in revealing the bank where Freeh was vice chairman and General
Counsel during the time of Sandusky’s grooming ways was a major corporate
sponsor of Jerry Sandusky and Second Mile.
Further, despite credentials which proclaimed him free of Penn State
ties, it was revealed Freeh was close friends with Ric Struthers, vice
president and head of the credit card division of the bank in question, MBNA.
Struthers sat on the board of directors of Sandusky’s Second Mile until around
2006. Struthers was largely credited
with the MBNA partnership with Penn State and its Alumni Association that
resulted in thousands of MBNA credit card accounts among students and alumni,
and of course profits measured in multiple seven figures. When this article was published there were
unheard cries of conflict of interest.
No one in the MSM picked
it up, or followed that trail.
MBNA went so far as to
sponsor and attend a Testimonial Dinner at Penn State in honor of Jerry
Sandusky. Does this implicate MBNA, Ric
Struthers, and Louis Freeh in Sandusky’s activities? No, of course not. Does it constitute a major conflict of
interest in Freeh’s firm undertaking the Penn State investigation? We should probably ask the media, they have a
head for these things, don’t they?
Sollers didn’t go after
this, though we’ve known about it since last year, but maybe because it wasn’t
a Pulitzer winning journalist who told us about it, no one listened.
Louis Freeh. Imagine you sit on the Board of Trustees of
a national public university that enjoys an academic, athletic, and ethical
track record long the envy of your peers, and you’ve just been blindsided by a
scandal the scope and nature of which demands a reasoned, deliberate response
by seasoned professionals and leaders. With the resources available to you, you
can acquire some of the most proven, respected, and uncontroversial figures in
the fields of criminal and corporate investigation to assist in both crisis
management and investigation. Your
immediate goal is two-fold: engage
outside resources to investigate whose credibility is beyond reproach, and
develop and deploy a strategic communication plan that holds the
jump-to-conclusions crowd at bay as you sort things out.
That is, if your goal is
a forthright examination of what went wrong and how it went wrong.
The Penn State BOT did
neither.
We don’t know why the BOT
chose to act as they did, the theories are numerous, and for the most part are
on the side of logic. What they chose to
do was hire a man shrouded in controversy through his tenure as FBI Director.
His
questionable track record was no more a secret in 2011 than it is now. Due
diligence would have quickly disclosed his MBNA ties to Struthers and the
Second Mile, his botched FIFA investigation, his tendency to grandstand to make himself look good at the expense of
others including his own organization, and most importantly, the long term
damage he brought upon the credibility and reputation of the FBI. But the BOT perhaps
saw other qualities in Louis Freeh that suited their needs.
Louis Freeh, Part II,
the Contract. Actually, we don’t KNOW that there is a contract between Penn
State and Freeh, Sporkin, and Sullivan.
Requests from PS4RS and other alumni-interested parties to review this
agreement have gone unheeded, well, been refused, politely, sort of.
Pennsylvania State Education
Secretary
Ron Tomalis, who is also a Gov Corbett appointee to the BoT, says he
doesn’t have these records. Tomalis is also the vice-chairman of the Penn State
“Special Investigative Committee” (SIC) that hired Louis Freeh to….well we’re
not sure what they hired Louis Freeh to do, that’s the problem in not having
access to the contract. Why would a
public servant, not to mention the BoT, withhold this information from the
taxpayers who shelled out part of the $6.5 price tag, and a university community
hungry for real answers, if there is nothing to hide about a simple contract
for services?
Ken Frazier. The Chairman of the SIC is Bot member Ken
Frazier, the one whose venomous words for Spanier, Schultz, Curley, and Paterno
came so quickly after the publication of Freeh’s report. Although there were no leaks about the report
from Freeh’s team,
Frazier had a detailed grasp and insight as to the failings
of these men after just hours to review the 267 page report.
Don’t believe me? Good, I don’t believe it either.
Frazier is CEO of
Merck. One of his predecessors at Merck
also sits on the BOT, Lloyd Huck. Lloyd
Huck’s wife Dottie was a board member of the Second Mile. Now, without casting undue aspersions, I’ll
borrow from a
Nov 2011 Deadspin article to offer the point:
“Penn State, the school accused of covering up Sandusky's alleged
crimes, has begun its own inquiry, which is headed by a man with a history of
engaging in cover-ups, and who is chairman of the same company that once was
chaired by a member of Penn State's Board of Trustees (Huck), who, in turn, is
married to a member of the board of Sandusky's charity. And that man and his
wife happen to have donated large sums of money to Penn State and to Sandusky's
charity, both individually and through the company whose current chairman is
now heading Penn State's investigation. Yeah, Kenneth Frazier is going to crack
this thing wide open.”
Had Sollers reached a little further and
included motive in his review, we might know a lot more about the dealings of
the SIC, Ken Frazier, Louis Freeh, and the mysterious contract that brought
them all together.
All of the foregoing is
of course the tip of the iceberg. Those following this have read most of the thousands
of pages of facts, commentary, research, and opinion, and depending on their
position either dismiss it out of hand, or feel their anger and suspicion
grow.
An objective observer
would have concluded the Freeh selection as the arbiter of truth in this matter
as curious, back before Freeh ever interviewed his first anonymous witness. That
same observer would be calling for a Grand Jury investigation if it all hadn’t
been packaged and sold so cleverly.
The Sollers report has
garnered attention, it has changed a few minds, has raised questions in many
more minds, and those are good things. But over half a year ago “we” pointed
out many of these things, and few listened.
A few more are listening now in the wake of Soller’s report, but most
have already closed the front page and turned to the comics section.
We encourage the Paternos
to now move beyond the Freeh Report and
expand Soller’s charter, allowing him to take on new experts, and begin
to provide understanding and clarity to the actions of those involved both
within and external to Penn State that led to each failure along the way.
We certainly will
continue to do just that.
