Posted on 02/10/2013 7:10:13 AM PST by Uncle Chip
A report commissioned by Joe Paterno's family calls the July 2012 Freeh report that was accepted by Penn State trustees before unprecedented sanctions were levied by the NCAA against the school's football program a "total failure" that is "full of fallacies, unsupported personal opinions, false allegations and biased assertions."
The Paterno family report, which targets nearly every conclusion and assertion the Freeh report made about Paterno in the wake of the Jerry Sandusky child sex abuse scandal, states that while former FBI director Louis J. Freeh has had an honorable past and good reputation, his investigation -- especially as it relates to Paterno -- relied on "rank speculation," "innuendo" and "subjective opinions" when it concluded that Paterno concealed facts about Sandusky in part to avoid bad publicity.
Freeh was hired on Nov. 21, 2011 and paid $6.5 million by Penn State University trustees --
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The Paterno family immediately roundly and loudly rejected the report, and, four days after its release, instructed its lawyer to form a "group of experts" to conduct a comprehensive review of the facts and conclusions. The Paterno family asked its attorney's law firm, King and Spalding of Washington, D.C., to start "a comprehensive review of the report and Joe Paterno's conduct. They authorized us to engage the preeminent experts in their field and to obtain their independent analyses."
The law firm hired former U.S. attorney general Richard Thornburgh, former FBI supervisory special agent and former state prosecutor James Clemente, and Dr. Fred Berlin, a treating physician, psychiatrist, psychologist and expert in sexual disorders and pedophilia at The Johns Hopkins Hospital and School of Medicine. The family's report attacks Freeh's conclusions, assertions, methodology, investigative abilities and choices, disclosures and independence.
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(Excerpt) Read more at espn.go.com ...
Did Paterno interview with Sally Jenkins and a biographer in December 2011?
Did he interview with Freeh in December 2011?
What Joe Paterno said in that Sally Jenkins interview was available to Louie Freeh to use in his Report.
How much of it did he subsequently use???
Chip I posted a quote from Freeh and linked to it. You posted some guys blog with no quotes or sources.
A reasonable statement; please remember, tho, that it 'twas also these "people in positions of authority" who signed off on putting the Joe statues up to begin with...
IOW, having been the edifiers who encouraged this personality cult, 'tis not surprising that they felt that whatever authority they lended to this "cult's" rise...they u-turned upon its sudden demise.
So did I.
I'll post them again:
“The Special Investigative Counsel requested an interview with Paterno in December 2011. Through his counsel, Paterno expressed interest in participating but died before he could be interviewed.” [The Louie Freeh Report, page 53]
“Mr. Paterno passed away before we had the opportunity to speak with him, although we did speak with some of his representatives. We believe that he was willing to speak with us and would have done so, but for his serious, deteriorating health.” [From the Louie Freeh July 2012 press conference]
Graham Spanier was president of Penn State since 1995. He arrived on campus vowing to make Penn State the most "gay friendly" campus in America. Apparently he succeeded beyond his wildest imagination. After seventeen years as Penn State president, do you suppose that "gay friendly" Spanier had influenced the selection of more than a few trustees???
Do you suppose that most Americans who could name a single person associated with Penn State, would name Joe Paterno, America's winningest college football coach or would they name Graham Spanier (probably a name unknown to 99+% of Americans?
The one known actual perpetrator of child rape remains Gerry Sandusky. He is doing hard time at the State Pen. It will get a lot harder if he is put into general population with a few hundred guys named Big Bubba. Prisoners really despise kiddie rapers.
There is no circumstance in which Joe Paterno is known to have failed in his contractual obligation imposed by Penn State to report exclusively to university higher ups in a well-established chain of command. At the top of that particular food chain was Graham "Gay Friendly" Spanier, but Spanier was protected in a sense since the chain prudently provided him with "buffers" to preserve his plausible deniability, as politicians might say since the days of Watergate. Joe Paterno was to report any information as to criminal activity ONLY to people such as Schultz and Curley. One of them (I believe it was Schultz) was a total civilian who was in charge of the Penn State University Police Department. Investigations by Penn State University police can be quashed at the outset when people like Paterno are forbidden to report directly to them but must go through CYA university civilian bureaucrats who are going to protect the university and its big shots (by which I do not mean 80+ year old football coaches).
Universities have their own police departments as a means of keeping conventional law enforcement off campus lest the university be embarrassed by negative publicity. If anyone called the Pennsylvania State Police, the Center County Sheriff's Office or the Bellefont Police Department, the uniform response would have been: That's not our jurisdiction and you will have to call the Penn State University Police. Paterno was contractually required NOT to report anything to the Penn State University police but ONLY to their civilian supervisor.
I very much doubt and disagree with your rendition of what you claim are the "facts" as to what McQueary observed, what he reported to Paterno and when he reported. There are also claims that McQueary has often changed his story even when under oath. I won't ask you to take my word for it any more than I am taking yours. I will further check and, if you are right, I won't be bashful about saying so and admitting I am wrong. For now, we are in disagreement on those factual allegations. Until I double check, I don't want to waste your time, my time or anyone else's in a tit for tat argument over what McQueary saw, heard or re[ported and to whom. I would observe that whatever McQueary actually witnessed, he had, if anything, a higher responsibility, IF he witnessed a crime, to personally report that crime to law enforcement. For him, as the actual claimed witness, to fail to do so is the felony called "misprision of a felony."
Louis Freeh's major credential in life is that Slick Willie appointed him to head the FBI. I don't remember Freeh doing a particularly good job at FBI. OTOH, I have never been much of a fan of GOP-E Thornburgh's either. It may well be that, whatever the facts, each of these lawyers was respectively dancing with the girl what brung him.
Additional items that are not yet referenced here up to and including your #59 is the curious disappearance and apparent murder (he has now been declared dead by the courts although never found) of Center County's veteran elected prosecutor Ray Gricar who disappeared in April of 2005. His car was found in Lewisburg in the parking lot of an antique store. His laptop was found relatively nearby in the Susquehenna River with its hard drive removed. The hard drive was found damaged beyond retrieval of any stored information about 100 yards further downstream. Gricar was believed to have been investigating Sandusky. I practiced criminal law for decades. I cannot imagine why it is that local law enforcement in Pennsylvania would EVER allow the investigation of the disappearance and probable murder of an elected official much less an elected district attorney to gather dust on the shelf.
Sandusky had set up a tax-free foundation: The Second Mile Foundation to arrange recreation for fatherless boys by arranging for them to be taken on various adventures by men including (surprise!) Gerry Sandusky. I would like to know whether any of Penn State University's big shots or trustees were, like Sandusky, "volunteers" for the foundation. Wouldn't you?
Most of all, I would like to see Graham "Gay Friendly" Spanier investigated relentlessly and, if appropriate, indicted, convicted and sentenced to the maximum available sentence in general population with Sandusky and Big Bubba X 200.
As a sports fan, I care almost exclusively for the New York Yankees. It would be nice if the Cubs would finally win a World Series for the first time since 1908. You could not pay me to watch basketball. Other than this year's magnificent ass-whuppin' of Notre Shame by Alabama, I have little to no interest in college football. I imagine that the pope rooted for Alabama as well. I have occasional but not very recent interest in pro football. My only connection to Penn State would be that I once drove past its football complex in the off season while driving through Happy Valley to visit Yalie college friends at their hobby farm a good distance from Penn State. I admire excellence and Joe Paterno apparently exemplified excellence as a coach and he deserves his reputation back.
I have news for you -- he doesn't.
And you won't find much debate about that among thinking people.
Yes and no, as you're aware. Of course the real issue is why he didn't interview with Freeh. For all we know it may have been Freeh's scheduling. And neither of us has that info, so it makes sense to refrain from posting statements as though you do.
In fact I think I’m going to bow out of this. There’s no point.
Well, you posted a factual in accuracy and seem unwilling to admit it. So I'm not surprised that you'd want to leave the conversation.
Saul Alinsky's Rules for Radicals: RULE 13: “Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.” Cut off the support network and isolate the target from sympathy. Go after people and not institutions; people hurt faster than institutions.
Paterno is the easy target, that's why so many focus on him. Those that do are at a minimum, lazy. This was far more layered and complex than Paterno's reporting what McQueary told him to his boss Curry and also Schultz, the head of the campus police.
"He died before he could be interviewed."
I hate it when that happens.
Alternative history (Oh, for what might have been):
In his never ending pursuit of justice, in the interests of preserving his legacy, and out of the deepest concern for the vile suspicions his family would have to deal with if he went to his grave before cooperating with a thorough examination from a skilled and experienced prosecutor, Coach Paterno invited Judge Freeh into his home as he lay on his death bed, and he answered each and every question Judge Freeh posed.
Brave Coach Paterno...such a brave and good man.
So the Curry and Shultz families bought a study too?
Easy? No, just the most well known. He was in essence the face of PSU. There weren't statues of the school president or athletic director on campus, were there?
He's a craven coward, and is only slightly less repugnant than the silly losers who keep trying to excuse his weakness.
Paterno was all ate up, as we say down south, with the sin of pride. God used his weakness to teach us all a lesson, if we choose to learn from it.
iirc, back in 2004 or so didn’t the PSU president along with the athletic director reportedly demand Paterno resign or be fired? Yet we’re supposed to believe he was powerless to stop a child sex predator outside of reporting some inappropriate horse play in the showers to the “higher ups”.
When McQueary was asked why he didn't report the incident to the police he said "I did -- I met with Schulz".
To McQueary, Paterno and anyone else in the know, Schulz was the head of the Penn State University Police.
When McQueary is said to have "witnessed" the anal rape of a child, I understand that it was by hearing slapping noises from the shower room, that he never entered the shower room, never identified the victim, did not (as a 28 year old athlete and coach) cold cock Sandusky (a normal hormonal reaction for most straight men) and thoroughly stomp his offending organs, and, in fact did not do anything but tell his daddy days later and a day or so after that tell Paterno.
Then, McQueary NEVER reported to law enforcement although McQueary and not Paterno was the actual witness if there was one. The argument of Paterno's antagonists seem to be that he somehow had an obligation to take McQueary more seriously than McQueary took himself. And yet the attacks on Paterno ALL depend upon McQueary and McQueary's credibility and which of several versions of McQueary's story McQueary chose to tell Paterno.
Not so long a time ago, Corbett was elected governor, and Tuomey was elected to the Senate. You suggest a theory that Paterno was somehow tainted by being a Pennsylvanian and thus in the same state as the execrable Mumia (may he be executed one way or another).
Yes, precisely. Paterno was the easy target. By that I mean recognizable and out in the open, a very public figure.
At some point, didn’t PSU tell Sandusky “No more boys in the showers”.
But Paterno never put 2 and 2 together.
Seems legit.
Exactly!
You mean he did what was required by law and by contract.
He handed the ball off cleanly to his superior [Curley] and then made sure it went to the head of the PSU Police Department [Schulz]-- which he didn't have to do but did anyway.
He was a football coach -- not a child psychologist, criminal investigator, law enforcement officer, university president or vice president, or even the athletic director.
He handed the ball off to those whose position it was to carry it forward and they fumbled it.
Why is that his fault????
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