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FC: ESPN takes on Penn State once again

It's not perfect but it gets it right in this case.
I know you like to think that, but you are wrong.
You are a liar
PROVE IT OR STFU, OSTRICH ****ER.
You sound high again. Quit smoking that shit!
Anytime anyone says something you don't agree with, you think they are either high or mentally ill. I think this suggests that you are mentally ill.
You have not proven anything and said you risked your life serving your country. Which you did not.
I 100% did risk my life serving my country. That doesn't make me a hero. No idea why you are so hung up on that.
No, you asserted something, I asked for independently verifiable proof and you will not give it.
I gave you FIVE pieces of proof that I am who I say I am. That should be enough for any rational person. You are clearly not rational.
You are a liar. the burden is on you to prove who you are. Which you have not.
The burden is on the accuser. You accuse me of lying. PROVE IT, Ginger.
I'm whipping you like a rented mule
Your mule just kicked you in the bozack.
 
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So, not rescinded
Because they didn't ask to have the fine rescinded.
Can't have sanctions without infractions. Your attempt at being pedantic is stupid.
You obviously can, because they did.
They admitted their guilt and weren't crazy like you.
They just wanted it to "go away". They made a bad choice. And have since realized it was wrong.




See the page Rooster
The page that doesn't mention the word Infractions? Strong logic there, Ginger.
 
Prove it or STFU. You make accusations without proof just like the OAG!!!! Maybe you are Fina?? LOLOLOLOLOL.
None of your business
What difference does it make? You say I'm too chicken to meet you, but you won't suggest a place or tell me what would be convenient for you. You are the coward.
Why would I do that? Spend money traveling for nothing while you laughed about it after not showing? Seriously Rooster, maybe most of your friends are that dumb but not this one.
Pick a brewery near your house. I'll even pay your Uber. Nothing to lose.
EDIT: I think you are hot for me! 🤢
I think you are homophobic.
 
Prove it or STFU. You make accusations without proof just like the OAG!!!! Maybe you are Fina?? LOLOLOLOLOL.

What difference does it make? You say I'm too chicken to meet you, but you won't suggest a place or tell me what would be convenient for you. You are the coward.

Pick a brewery near your house. I'll even pay your Uber. Nothing to lose.

I think you are homophobic.
I see the jackass is still at it.

He seeks attention.
 
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Not at all. A much higher authority. You may be able to figure it out. OJ was cleared of murder charges but was convicted for a much less punitive civil lawsuit. Spanier was cleared from from everything but a misdemeanor slap on the wrist that amounted to next to nothing. Absent politics, it would have been nothing. I made no comments on emails.

Any authority, actually.



Throughout the Freeh investigation, which was the legal basis for the NCAA's unprecedented sanctions imposed against Penn State that included a record $60 million fine, there were "substantial communications" between the AG's office and Freeh's investigators, the motion states. Those communications included a steady stream of leaks to Freeh's investigators emanating from the supposedly secret grand jury probe overseen by former Deputy Attorney General Frank Fina, a noted bad actor in this case.

The collusion and leaks between the AG's office and the Freeh Group are documented in three sets of confidential records filed under seal by Sandusky's lawyers; all those records, however, were previously disclosed on Big Trial. The records include a private 79-page diary kept by former FBI Special Agent Kathleen McChesney, the co-leader of the Freeh investigation, in 2011 and 2012; a seven-page "Executive Summary of Findings" of a 2017 confidential review of the Freeh Report conducted by seven Penn State trustees; and a 25-page synopsis of the evidence gleaned by the trustees in 2017 after a review of the so-called "source materials" for the Freeh Report still under judicial seal.

In documents filed Saturday in state Superior Court, Sandusky's lawyers argued in their motion for a new trial that the collusion that existed between the AG and Freeh amounted to a "de facto joint investigation" that not only violated state law regarding grand jury secrecy, but also tainted one of the jurors who convicted Sandusky.


According to the motion for a new trial, "Juror 0990" was a Penn State faculty member who was interviewed by Freeh's investigators before she was sworn in as a juror at the Sandusky trial.

"At no time during this colloquy, or any other time, did the prosecution disclose that it was working in collaboration with the Freeh Group which interviewed the witness," lawyers Philip Lauer and Alexander Lindsay Jr. argue in the 31-page motion filed on Sandusky's behalf.

At jury selection, Joseph Amendola, Sandusky's trial lawyer, had no knowledge "about the degree of collaboration" ongoing between the AG's office and Freeh investigators, Sandusky's appeal lawyers wrote. Had he known, Amendola stated in an affidavit quoted in the motion for a new trial, Amendola would have "very likely stricken her for cause, or at a minimum, used one of my preemptory strikes to remove her as a potential juror."

Had he known the AG and Freeh Group were working in tandem, Amendola stated in an affidavit, he would have also quizzed all other potential jurors about any interaction with investigators from the Freeh Group. And he "would have sought discovery of all materials and statements obtained by the Freeh Group regarding the Penn State/Sandusky investigation."



In their motion for a new trial, Sandusky's lawyers describe the hardball tactics employed by Freeh's investigators as detailed in a seven-page June 29, 2018 report from the Penn State trustees who investigated the so-called source materials for the Freeh Report. In their report, seven trustees state that "multiple individuals have approached us privately to tell us they were subjected to coercive tactics when interviewed by Freeh's investigators."

"Investigators shouted, were insulting, and demanded that interviewees give them specific information," the seven trustees wrote, such as, "Tell me that Joe Paterno knew Sandusky was abusing kids!"

"Some interviewees were told they could not leave until they provided what the interviewers wanted, even when interviewees protested that this would require them to lie," the trustees wrote. Some individuals were called back by Freeh's investigators for multiple interviews, where the same questions were repeated, and the interviewees were told they were being "uncooperative for refusing to untruthfully agree with interviewers' statements."

"Those employed by university were told their cooperation was a requirement for keeping their jobs," the trustees wrote. And that being labeled "uncooperative" by Freeh's investigators was "perceived as a threat against their employment."

Indeed, the trustees wrote, "one individual indicated that he was fired for failing to tell the interviewers what they wanted to hear."

"Coaches are scared of their jobs," the trustees quoted another interviewee as saying.

"Presumably," Sandusky's lawyers wrote, as a Penn State employee, "Juror number 0990 was subject to this type of coercion."

In their motion for a new trial, Sandusky's lawyers ask the Superior Court for permission to conduct an evidentiary hearing so that Sandusky's lawyers could learn the depth of the collaboration that existed between the AG's office and Freeh's investigators.

At that evidentiary hearing, Sandusky's lawyers wrote, they would seek to depose Freeh, McChesney, and other Freeh investigators that include Gregory Paw and Omar McNeill. Sandusky's lawyers also seek to interview former deputy attorney generals Frank Fina, Jonelle Eshbach and Joseph McGettigan, as well as former AG agents Anthony Sassano and Randy Feathers.

According to the motion, the communications on the part of the AG's office "appear to have included information, and even testimony, from the special investigating grand jury then in session, which communications would be in direct violation of grand jury secrecy rules, and would subject the participants in the Attorney General's office to sanctions."

Sandusky's lawyers are also seeking disclosure of all of the so-called source materials for the Freeh Report. Those records, as previously mentioned, are still under seal in the ongoing cover-up of the scandal behind the Penn State scandal, as led by the stonewalling majority on the Penn State board of trustees.

Sandusky, 76, was re-sentenced on appeal last November to serve 30 to 60 years in prison for sexually abusing ten boys, the same sentence he originally got after he was convicted in 2012 on 45 counts of sex abuse.

According to a Dec. 2, 2011, letter of engagement, Freeh was formally hired by Penn State to "perform an independent, full and complete investigation of the recently publicized allegation of sexual abuse."

But instead of an independent investigation, the confidential documents show that Freeh's investigators were hopelessly intertwined with the AG's criminal investigation, tainting both probes. According to the confidential documents, the AG's office was supplying secret grand jury transcripts and information to Freeh's investigators; both sets of investigators were also trading information on common witnesses and collaborating on strategy.

The records show that former deputy Attorney General Fina was in effect directing the Freeh Group's investigation by telling Freeh's investigators which witnesses they could interview, and when. In return, Freeh's investigators shared what they were learning during their investigation with Fina. And when they were done, Freeh's investigators showed the deputy AG their report before it was made public

In their motion for a new trial, Sandusky's lawyers argue that their client's constitutional rights were trampled under the mad rush to save Penn State's storied football program from the NCAA's threat to impose the "death penalty" on the Nittany Lions.

To save Penn State football, the NCAA and Penn State's trustees had worked out a consent decree with voluntary sanctions. The consent decree, which called for the university's unconditional surrender, required that two things happen by the opening of the 2012 college football season to save Penn State football: Jerry Sandusky had to be convicted and the Freeh Report had to be published.

Sandusky was indicted by a grand jury on Nov. 5, 2011, the details of which were leaked to reporter Sara Ganim of the Patriot-News of Harrisburg.

On Nov. 21, 2011, Penn Stated agreed to hire Freeh.

The railroad was running right on schedule. And Judge John Cleland, who presided over Sandusky's trial, demonstrated time and time again that he was willing to sacrifice Sandusky's constitutional rights to keep the trains running on time.

On Dec. 12, 2011, an off-the-record meeting was held at the Hilton Garden Inn at State College, attended by the trial judge, John Cleland, the prosecutors, the defense lawyers, and a district magistrate judge. At the off-the-record hotel meeting, Sandusky's lawyers agreed to waive a preliminary hearing where they would have had their only pre-trial chance to question the eight alleged victims who would testify at trial against Sandusky.

For any defense lawyer, this unusual conference led to a decision that was akin to slitting your own throat. But Sandusky's defense lawyers were completely overwhelmed by the task of defending their client against ten different accusers -- two of whom were imaginary boys in the shower -- while confined to a blitzkrieg trial schedule.

On Feb. 29, 2012, Amendola sought a two-month delay for the trial that was denied by Judge Cleland.

On the eve of the Sandusky trial, Amendola and his co-counsel, Karl Rominger, made a motion to withdraw as Sandusky's defense lawyers because, as Amendola told the judge, "We are not prepared to go to trial at this time."

The motion was denied.

In an affidavit, Amendola stated that "no attorney could have effectively represented Mr. Sandusky" given the "time constraints" imposed by Judge Cleland. Amendola stated that in the days and weeks before the Sandusky trial, he was hit with "more than 12,000 pages of discovery."

Those time constraints, Amendola stated, kept two expert forensic psychologists from participating in Sandusky's defense, which would have included reviewing the discovery in the case.

But under Judge Cleland, the Pennsylvania Railroad that Jerry Sandusky was riding on had to stay on schedule. And everybody knew it, including the prosecutors in the AG's office, as well as Freeh's investigators.

In the McChesney diary, on May 10, 2012, she noted in a conference call with Gregory Paw and Omar McNeil, two of Freeh's investigators, that Paw is going to talk to Fina, and that the "judge [is] holding firm on date of trial."

In his affidavit, Amendola, Sandusky's trial lawyer, states that McChesney didn't receive this information from him.

"An obvious question arises as to whether or not the trial judge was communicating with a member of the Freeh Group, attorneys for the attorney general's office, or anyone else concerning the trial date," Sandusky's appeal lawyers wrote.

In their motion for a new trial, Sandusky's lawyers seek to question Judge Cleland at an evidentiary hearing "to determine whether, and to what extent, collusion between the office of the attorney general, the Freeh investigation and the NCAA had an impact on the trial."

And "whether, as a result, defendant's right to a fair trial, and the effective assistance of his counsel, were negatively affected or compromised."

They were. Meanwhile, the trains were running on time.
On June 22, 2012, Sandusky was found guilty.

On July 12, 2012, the Freeh report was issued.

On July 23, 2012, NCAA President Mark Emmert and PSU President Rodney Erickson signed a consent decree that imposed sanctions on PSU football program.

Less than two weeks later, on Aug. 6, 2012, the Penn State football team, under new coach Bill O'Brien, gathered at the practice field at University Park for the official start of training camp.

On Sept. 1, l2012, the Nittany Lions played Ohio University at Beaver Stadium in the season opener, lost 24-14, en route to a 8-4 season.

So Penn State football was saved at the expense of Jerry Sandusky's constitutional rig

In their motion for a new trial, Sandusky's lawyers cite a history of leaks on grand jury investigations that deputy attorney general Frank Fina was the lead prosecutor on.

It began with a partial grand jury transcript in the bonus gate investigation that was leaked to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette in 2009.

Next, the indictment of Sandusky was leaked to Sara Ganim in 2011, who was functioning as the press secretary for the AG's office.

Finally, the names of four state legislators who allegedly took bribes from Tyron Ali during an undercover operation -- and the amount of money and gifts that they took -- was leaked to The Philadelphia Inquirer in 2014.

According to Sandusky's lawyers, "this form of prosecutorial misconduct" -- leaking -- had become "entrenched and flagrant" in the AG's office. Especially when Frank Fina was in charge of a grand jury investigation.

Fina has previously been disciplined for his overzealous and unprincipled actions in the Penn State investigation.

In February, the state Supreme Court in a
5-1 decision suspended Fina's law license for a year and a day after the state's office of disciplinary counsel found that Fina had improperly obtained grand jury testimony against three former Penn State officials from their own lawyer.

Fina had threatened to indict former Penn State General Counsel Cynthia Baldwin, unless she became a cooperator in the grand jury against her own clients. To pull that off, the disciplinary board found, Fina had to deceive a grand jury judge about his true intentions when he interviewed Baldwin before the grand jury. And he had to browbeat Baldwin to the point where she was willing to betray the attorney-client privilege by testifying against her clients.

For her misconduct in the grand jury investigation of Penn State, the state Supreme Court gave Baldwin, a former state Supreme Court justice, a public reprimand.


McChesney's diary is replete with constant, ongoing communication between Freeh's investigators and the AG's office while both investigations were up and running.

For example, in her diary McChesney makes reference to a 1998 police report that the Freeh team should not have had access to. The report was an investigation into the first incident involving Sandusky showering with a child, but the investigation had cleared Sandusky of any wrongdoing.

In her diary, McChesney doesn't mention how the Freeh Group obtained that police report, but three lines later, McChesney wrote: "Records - IT: Team working with Atty general, will receive in stages."

McChesney's diary portrayed Fina as not only leaking grand jury secrets to the Freeh Group, but also being actively involved in directing the Freeh Group's investigation, to the point of saying if and when they could interview certain witnesses.

McChesney recorded that the Freeh Group was going to notify Fina that they wanted to interview Ronald Schreffler, the investigator from Penn State Police who probed the 1998 shower incident. After he was notified, McChesney wrote, "Fina approved interview with Schreffler."

According to McChesney, members of the Freeh Group "don't want to interfere with their investigations," and that she and her colleagues were being "extremely cautious & running certain interviews by them."

McChesney wrote that the Freeh Group even "asked [Deputy Attorney General] Fina to authorize some interviews." And that the AG's office "asked us to stay away from some people, ex janitors, but can interview" people from the Second Mile, Sandusky's charity for youths.
In her diary, McChesney speculated about the need to have somebody "handle, organize, channel data" from the attorney general's office. GP, she wrote, presumably, Greg Paw, discussed "Piggyback on AG investigation re: docs."

In her diary, McChesney is also extremely knowledgable about what the AG was up to during its supposedly secret grand jury investigation of Penn State. She described the "AG's strategies: may go to new coach to read riot act to [Penn State Associate Athletic Director Fran] Ganter et al."

On March 7, 2012, McChesney wrote that the Freeh Group continued to be in "close communications with AG and USA," as in the U. S. Attorney.

On March 30, 2012, Greg Paw related to McChesney what he learned during a call with Frank Fina. Fina, according to Paw, was "relooking at [Penn State President Graham] Spanier," and that Fina was "not happy with University & cooperation but happy to have 2001 email."

She also knew that the grand jury judge was "not happy with" Penn State Counsel Cynthia Baldwin," specifically "what she [Baldwin] said about representing the university."

In the grand jury proceedings, Baldwin asserted that she had represented the university, and not Penn State President Graham Spanier, Athletic Director Tim Curley, and Penn State Vice-President Gary Schultz. Apparently, the grand jury judge had a problem with that, McChesney wrote.

Freeh's investigators also interviewed Baldwin on several occasions.

Baldwin's grand jury testimony was described by McChesney in her diary as "inconsistent statements." McChesney also noted that "we are getting" copies "of the transcripts."

And the grand jury transcripts on Baldwin weren't the only documents the AG's office was sharing with Freeh's investigators. On April 2, 2012, McChesney recorded being notified by fellow investigator McNeill that "AG documents received re: Curley and Schultz."

In her diary, McChesney continued to log grand jury secrets that not even the defendants in the Penn State case were aware of.

On April 16, 2012, McChesney recorded "next week more grand jury," and that Spanier would be charged. She added that Spanier's lawyer didn't "seem to suspect" that Spanier was going to be arrested. She also recorded that Spanier's lawyer "wants access to his emails," but that Fina did not want Spanier "to see 2001 email chain," where Penn State administrators talked about how to handle Sandusky and his habit of showering with children.
McChesney wrote that the grand jury was meeting on April 25th, and that an indictment of Spanier might come as soon as two days later. She also recorded that Fina "wants to question [people]; then it turns into perjury," which McChesney noted was "not fair to the witness."


On April 19, 2012, Paw "spoke with Fina," and was advised that the deputy attorney general "does not want Spanier or other [defendants] to see documents; next 24 hours are important for case & offered to re-visit over weekend re: sharing documents."

McChesney further recorded that "attys and AG's office staffs are talking & still looking to charge Spanier." Paw, she wrote, was scheduled to meet with Spanier's lawyer tomorrow, and that "Fina said the 4 of them [including Wendell Courtney] are really in the mix." McChesney was presumably referring to Spanier, Curley, Schultz and Courtney, then a Penn State counsel.

The emails from the trio of Penn State administrators, McChesney wrote, would be "released in a [grand jury] presentment and charging documents."

The night before Spanier was arrested, Paw sent an email to his colleagues at the Freeh Group, advising them of the imminent arrest.

The subject of Paw's email: "CLOSE HOLD -- Important."
"PLEASE HOLD VERY CLOSE," Paw wrote his colleagues at the Freeh Group. "[Deputy Attorney General Frank] Fina called tonight to tell me that Spanier is to be arrested tomorrow, and Curley and Schultz re-arrested, on charges of obstruction of justice and related charges . . . Spanier does not know this information yet, and his lawyers will be advised about an hour before the charges are announced tomorrow."
Other members of the state attorney general's office were helpful to Freeh's investigators. McChesney wrote that investigator Sasssano divulged that he brought in the son of Penn State trustee Steve Garban because "he had info re [Jerry Sandusky] in shower." The AG's office also interviewed interim Penn State football coach Tom Bradley about his predecessor, Joe Paterno, and the 1998 shower incident.

"Bradley was more open & closer to the truth," McChesney wrote, "but still holding back."

On April 26, 2012, McChesney noted in her diary that "police investigators have interviewed 44 janitors, 200+ victims." On May 1, 2012, she wrote that Fina told them that "Spanier brings everyone in on Saturday." Fina also told the Freeh Group that he found out from Joan Coble, Schultz's administrative assistant, and her successor, Kim Belcher, that "there was a Sandusky file," and that it supposedly "was sacrosanct and secret."

McChesney recorded that Fina told the Freeh Group that one of Schultz's administrative assistants "got a call on her way to work on Monday from Schultz." She was told she had to surrender keys, presumably to the locked file. "She's emotional," McChesney wrote. " She may have been sleeping w Schultz."

Both Coyle and Belcher got immunity to testify against Schultz. Meanwhile, there were several leakers on Schultz's supposedly secret file that he was keeping on Sandusky. As McChesney recorded in her diary, "Fina got papers from two different sources."

The cooperation between the attorney general's office and Freeh's investigators went both ways.
When Freeh's investigators, including McChesney, interviewed Penn State counsel Baldwin and learned somebody else in the attorney general's office was leaking her information, they knew they had to tell Fina.

"Paw: didn't tell Fina that Baldwin heard @ the charges before they happened, but will tell him that," McChesney wrote. Baldwin, McChesney added, told Freeh's investigators that "a colleague in the AG's office leaked that Curly, Schultz and Sandusky would be charged," and that Spanier "was stunned."


From the get-go, the prospect of Freeh's investigators working in tandem with the AG's office was laid out in emails circulated among Freeh's investigators.
"If we haven't, we should make certain that we determine the utility of looking into all the same areas of interest raised by the AG in the subpoenas, to ensure that we do not get 'scooped' [borrowing Louie's term used in connection with the recent federal subpoena]," Omar McNeill, a senior investigator for the Freeh Group, wrote his colleagues on Feb. 8, 2012.

"I think that we are delving into most of the same areas, but I am not sure at all," McNeill wrote.

"I want to make sure that we are comfortable that we have an understanding of all the areas the AG has inquired about in subpoenas [or otherwise if our contacts at the AG have provided us other insights] that we can state when asked -- as we certainly will be -- that we made a conscious, strategic decision as to whether to pursue those same lines of inquiry in some form," McNeill wrote.

Another term for those grand jury "insights" gleaned from our "contacts at the AG" -- leaks.
In a June 6, 2012 email, written a month before Freeh released his report on Penn State, Paw informed the other members of the Freeh Group about the feedback that Fina was getting from the grand jury.

"He [Fina] said that the feedback he received from jurors was that they wanted someone to take a 'fire hose' to Penn State and rinse away the bad that happened there. He [Fina] said that he still looked forward to a day when Baldwin would be ‘led away in cuffs,’ and he said that day was going to be near for Spanier.”

The cooperation between the Freeh Group and the AG's office continued to go both ways. On June 26, 2012, Gregory Paw told Fina that the Louie Freeh report would be out by the week of July 13th.
Fina agreed to keep it confidential, and then, according to Paw, "He [Fina] also said that he was willing to sit with us and talk to the extent he can before the report is released if we wished for any feedback," Paw wrote.
 
Can someone else please step in here and tell this Nole bozo that the most likely explanation here is not that I've spent time faking obscure government paperwork, but that I am actually who I say I am?

Jesus...
It is clear who you are — a scientist who went to school at Penn State, earned his PhD and was awarded a congressional medal. Any reasonable person would accept that you are who you say you are.

The fact is that you are not dealing with a reasonable person and nothing will ever be proof enough for him and that he will never admit that he is wrong. He demonstrated to me that he was not reasonable when he was unable to articulate any closing arguments that he would make as Sandusky's defense attorney and did not want to admit that there are any serious counter arguments to the prevailing media narrative that Sandusky was a master pillar of the coummunity child molester and that Penn State administrators knowingly covered-up his crimes.

It is obvious to me that he has an agenda. I am guessing that he is an OAG troll. I am not interested in engaging him because I can't take him seriously.
 
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It is clear who you. A scientist who went to school at Penn State, earned his PhD and was awarded a congressional medal. Any reasonable would accept that you are who you say you are.

The fact is that you are not dealing with a reasonable person and nothing will ever be proof enough for him and that he will never admit that he is wrong. He demonstrated to me that he was not reasonable when he was unable to articulate any closing arguments that he would make as Sandusky's defense attorney and did not want to admit that there are any serious counter arguments to the prevailing media narrative that Sandusky was a master pillar of the coummunity child molester and that Penn State administrators knowingly covered-up his crimes.

It is obvious to me that he has an agenda. I am guessing that he is an OAG troll. I am not interested in engaging him because I can't take him seriously.
I've had this PSU arguement more than I care to recall. I've lost friendships. Here is the process:

  1. limit the conversation to Paterno, don't take the bait to discuss C/S/S
  2. make sure the other person knows what happened with MM. Make sure they know that he didn't see anything, that he waited to tell his father/neighbor (both required reporters), and that MM didn't tell Joe anything as he was afraid to use the words.
  3. Establish that JS wasn't an employee and Joe had no jurisdiction over him
  4. Establish that after three years of study, the NCAA published what to do when an assault is reported and that it to report it to your AD, report it to someone outside of sports and to get out of the way and let them handle it. That is exactly what Joe did.
  5. If you can get agreement on these facts, you can show that Joe was railroaded. And you can show that the prosecution and media were in on it. They purposely distorted facts. Then you can move to the next phase.
  6. The second phase, if your opponent will finally admit that Joe didn't break any laws, get him to admit that if the media and law went after Joe, why wouldn't they go after C/S/S?
  7. Then walk them through the felony charges, the guys ages, and five years of torture to only get a minor misdemeanor charge (and the jury foreman said it was to get one jurist on board so they could enjoy the weekend, it was a Friday).
  8. If you have time you can discuss the exhaustive investigation for the '98 incident (two psychologists, two sting operations, and no charges). But you are better off avoiding this unless your opponent is willing to reason because dumb people can't understand it all.
  9. Then get them to understand it was not one incident to get JS convicted. None of them stood on their own merit. Not the '98 incident that was fully vetted. Not the janitor. Not MM who states he didn't see anything but through a mirror. Not any of them. Except that the reason for JS's conviction was the totality of all of these events together. Then ask who knew of all of these events before 2011? Not Joe, not curley, not schultz, and not Spanier. The only ones that possibly could have known are JS, the SC Police and/or The second mile.
  10. Now if your opponent still feels there was a conspiracy, tell him/her to look at the State College Police and/or The Second Mile. This is where JS was allowed to get away with things and who, if any, covered it up.
 
Prove it or STFU. You make accusations without proof just like the OAG!!!! Maybe you are Fina?? LOLOLOLOLOL.

What difference does it make? You say I'm too chicken to meet you, but you won't suggest a place or tell me what would be convenient for you. You are the coward.

Pick a brewery near your house. I'll even pay your Uber. Nothing to lose.

I think you are homophobic.
Interesting thought.
I’ve thought this d!ckhead could be Fina for a while.
 
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I know you like to think that, but you are wrong.
No, it is correct
PROVE IT OR STFU, OSTRICH ****ER.
Liar
Anytime anyone says something you don't agree with, you think they are either high or mentally ill. I think this suggests that you are mentally ill.
No anytime somebody says something crazy like that post I figure they are high. I think you are high a lot.
I 100% did risk my life serving my country.
BS Liar
That doesn't make me a hero. No idea why you are so hung up on that.
Because it's stolen valor
I gave you FIVE pieces of proof that I am who I say I am. That should be enough for any rational person. You are clearly not rational.
You haven't given me one piece of proof. Sorry, faked screen shots won't get it done.
The burden is on the accuser. You accuse me of lying. PROVE IT, Ginger.
The burden is on who makes the claim. You made the claim and I called you out. You have no proof so You are a liar.
Your mule just kicked you in the bozack.
No the mule just laid down.
 
Prove it or STFU. You make accusations without proof just like the OAG!!!! Maybe you are Fina?? LOLOLOLOLOL.
Liar
What difference does it make? You say I'm too chicken to meet you, but you won't suggest a place or tell me what would be convenient for you.
I thought I told you Hong Kong. I can get there pretty quick.
You are the coward.
Says the man who hides behind an anonymous internet handle. LOL
Pick a brewery near your house. I'll even pay your Uber. Nothing to lose.
I thought I told you Hong Kong. Let me know when.
I think you are homophobic.
Are you fighting your urges? LOL
 
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It is clear who you. A scientist who went to school at Penn State, earned his PhD and was awarded a congressional medal. Any reasonable would accept that you are who you say you are.
Are you a reasonable person who believes in conspiracy theories? LOL Plus his persona is BS. You don't know what he is he just agrees with your delusion.
The fact is that you are not dealing with a reasonable person and nothing will ever be proof enough for him and that he will never admit that he is wrong.
Show me the evidence that isn't faked. He knows what to do but won't do it because he would be found out as a fraud.
He demonstrated to me that he was not reasonable when he was unable to articulate any closing arguments that he would make as Sandusky's defense attorney and did not want to admit that there are any serious counter arguments to the prevailing media narrative that Sandusky was a master pillar of the coummunity child molester and that Penn State administrators knowingly covered-up his crimes.
Because the counter narrative is a conspiracy theory and not credible
It is obvious to me that he has an agenda. I am guessing that he is an OAG troll. I am not interested in engaging him because I can't take him seriously.
I know the case and kick your butt when you state false crap on here. THATS why you won't engage.
 
She openly disclosed it in an email to McQ.
she essentially said, “we [OAG] are intentionally lying to the public to bolster our case”
If what you say is true. Why wasn't she charged or disbarred? Plus she didn't say that. You made it up.
 
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I've had this PSU arguement more than I care to recall. I've lost friendships. Here is the process:
Let's walk this dog.
  1. limit the conversation to Paterno, don't take the bait to discuss C/S/S
Why not? They were the perpetrators of the coverup
  1. make sure the other person knows what happened with MM. Make sure they know that he didn't see anything,
He DID see something and it was Sandusky molesting a child. He freaked out and that was attested by Dranov and his father. Further he testified to what he saw in court. Twice.
  1. that he waited to tell his father/neighbor (both required reporters),
He told them the night it happened but because he was freaked out didn't tell them all of what he saw. Neither Dranov nor MM's dad were mandatory reporters under those conditions and the law at that time.
  1. and that MM didn't tell Joe anything as he was afraid to use the words.
Joe's testimony belies that. He told the OAG investigator that he was told by MM that he saw Sandusky doing something "sexually inappropriate" with a child. Definitely reportable to the police.
  1. Establish that JS wasn't an employee and Joe had no jurisdiction over him
Still Joe knew about it and yet participated in the decision not to report Sandusky. That allowed another victim to be abused on PSU campus 6 months later.
  1. Establish that after three years of study, the NCAA published what to do when an assault is reported and that it to report it to your AD, report it to someone outside of sports and to get out of the way and let them handle it. That is exactly what Joe did.
Joe DID NOT do that. It was not reported outside of the AD and Curley handled the whole thing. Joe then was part of the decision NOT to report Sandusky.
  1. If you can get agreement on these facts, you can show that Joe was railroaded. And you can show that the prosecution and media were in on it. They purposely distorted facts. Then you can move to the next phase.
This is a conspiracy theory.
  1. The second phase, if your opponent will finally admit that Joe didn't break any laws, get him to admit that if the media and law went after Joe, why wouldn't they go after C/S/S?
Joe lied to the GJ about his knowledge of 1998. The other part is a conspiracy theory.
  1. Then walk them through the felony charges, the guys ages, and five years of torture to only get a minor misdemeanor charge
EWOC is not minor and they all (CSS) served time in jail. Well deserved and just.
Curley and Schultz, in lengthy colloquies with current case prosecutors Laura Ditka and Patrick Schulte, acknowledged receiving McQueary's report and interfering with or preventing its transmission to police and child welfare officials. They conceded a legal duty to do that and as a result of that inaction, the men admitted, prosecutors could show Sandusky continued to have access to boys and, in fact, abused another boy in Penn State's football facilities before his eventual arrest in 2011.
  1. (and the jury foreman said it was to get one jurist on board so they could enjoy the weekend, it was a Friday).
Here's what one juror said: “It didn’t feel like they were conspiring to endanger children,” Ms. Navazio said. “They were conspiring to protect Penn State.” and the Foreman said this: "They did that," Black said of Spanier, Curley and Schultz. "They were more interested in protecting the brand than in protecting the children."
  1. If you have time you can discuss the exhaustive investigation for the '98 incident (two psychologists, two sting operations, and no charges).
You mean the licensed Psychologist that said in 1998 that Sandusky was a likely pedophile and gave the report to PSU police?
  1. But you are better off avoiding this unless your opponent is willing to reason because dumb people can't understand it all.
No charges doesn't mean no issue. The DA didn't want to try a Pillar of the Community based on one report. But Dr. Chambers saw what he was and told PSU. She was right but PSU ignored her.
  1. Then get them to understand it was not one incident to get JS convicted. None of them stood on their own merit. Not the '98 incident that was fully vetted.
See above about Dr. Chambers report
  1. Not the janitor. Not MM who states he didn't see anything but through a mirror. Not any of them. Except that the reason for JS's conviction was the totality of all of these events together.
This is not unusual for prosecuting a beloved figure like Sandusky. It's hard to do. That's why they had to find other victims of his as just one wouldn't be enough. See Michael Jackson
  1. Then ask who knew of all of these events before 2011? Not Joe, not curley, not schultz, and not Spanier.
They knew about 1998 and 2001
  1. The only ones that possibly could have known are JS, the SC Police and/or The second mile.
TSM did not know about 1998 and the police did not know about 2001.
  1. Now if your opponent still feels there was a conspiracy, tell him/her to look at the State College Police and/or The Second Mile. This is where JS was allowed to get away with things and who, if any, covered it up.
THIS is a conspiracy theory.
 
Because they didn't ask to have the fine rescinded.
They admitted guilt and the sanction was not rescinded as you asserted. And I can't admit when I'm wrong? LOL
You obviously can, because they did.
No they didn't
That report is trash BTW
The page that doesn't mention the word Infractions? Strong logic there, Ginger.
Violating a rule is an infraction which you cannot have sanctions without an infraction Rooster.
 
Let's walk this dog.

Why not? They were the perpetrators of the coverup

He DID see something and it was Sandusky molesting a child. He freaked out and that was attested by Dranov and his father. Further he testified to what he saw in court. Twice.

He told them the night it happened but because he was freaked out didn't tell them all of what he saw. Neither Dranov nor MM's dad were mandatory reporters under those conditions and the law at that time.

Joe's testimony belies that. He told the OAG investigator that he was told by MM that he saw Sandusky doing something "sexually inappropriate" with a child. Definitely reportable to the police.

Still Joe knew about it and yet participated in the decision not to report Sandusky. That allowed another victim to be abused on PSU campus 6 months later.

Joe DID NOT do that. It was not reported outside of the AD and Curley handled the whole thing. Joe then was part of the decision NOT to report Sandusky.

This is a conspiracy theory.

Joe lied to the GJ about his knowledge of 1998. The other part is a conspiracy theory.

EWOC is not minor and they all (CSS) served time in jail. Well deserved and just.
Curley and Schultz, in lengthy colloquies with current case prosecutors Laura Ditka and Patrick Schulte, acknowledged receiving McQueary's report and interfering with or preventing its transmission to police and child welfare officials. They conceded a legal duty to do that and as a result of that inaction, the men admitted, prosecutors could show Sandusky continued to have access to boys and, in fact, abused another boy in Penn State's football facilities before his eventual arrest in 2011.

Here's what one juror said: “It didn’t feel like they were conspiring to endanger children,” Ms. Navazio said. “They were conspiring to protect Penn State.” and the Foreman said this: "They did that," Black said of Spanier, Curley and Schultz. "They were more interested in protecting the brand than in protecting the children."

You mean the licensed Psychologist that said in 1998 that Sandusky was a likely pedophile and gave the report to PSU police?

No charges doesn't mean no issue. The DA didn't want to try a Pillar of the Community based on one report. But Dr. Chambers saw what he was and told PSU. She was right but PSU ignored her.

See above about Dr. Chambers report

This is not unusual for prosecuting a beloved figure like Sandusky. It's hard to do. That's why they had to find other victims of his as just one wouldn't be enough. See Michael Jackson

They knew about 1998 and 2001

TSM did not know about 1998 and the police did not know about 2001.

THIS is a conspiracy theory.
You lied in the first section so I am not wasting my time reading the rest
 
Not at all. A much higher authority. You may be able to figure it out. OJ was cleared of murder charges but was convicted for a much less punitive civil lawsuit. Spanier was cleared from from everything but a misdemeanor slap on the wrist that amounted to next to nothing. Absent politics, it would have been nothing. I made no comments on emails.
True, but more involved than that.

What if the only two officials at PSU who ever spoke directly to former PSU President Graham Spanier about that incident really did describe it as just "horseplay" and not sex?

And what if the guy advancing this contrarian story line was not some crackpot conspiracy theorist, but a decorated U.S. special agent? A guy who had already done a top-secret federal investigation five years ago into the so-called Penn State scandal but nobody knew about it until now?

There would be no pedophilia scandal at Penn State to cover up. And no trio of top PSU officials to convict of child endangerment. The whole lurid saga starring a naked Jerry Sandusky sexually abusing little boys in the shower would be fake news. A hoax foisted on the public by an unholy trio of overzealous prosecutors, lazy and gullible reporters, and greedy plaintiff's lawyers.


Yesterday, on veteran TV reporter John Ziegler's podcast, John Snedden, a former NCIS agent who is a special agent for the Federal Investigative Services, talked about his six-month top secret investigation of Graham Spanier and PSU.

Back in 2012, at a time when nobody at Penn State was talking, Snedden showed up in Happy Valley and interviewed everybody that mattered.

Because Snedden was on a mission of the highest importance on behalf of the federal government. Special Agent Snedden had to decide whether Graham Spanier's high-level security clearance should be renewed amid widespread public accusations of a coverup.

And what did Snedden find?

"There was no coverup," Snedden flatly declared on Ziegler's podcast. "There was no conspiracy. There was nothing to cover up."

The whole world could have already known by now about John Snedden's top secret investigation of Spanier and PSU. That's because Snedden was scheduled to be the star witness at the trial last week of former Penn State President Graham Spanier.

But at the last minute, Spanier's legal team decided that the government's case was so lame that they didn't even have to put on a defense. Spanier's defense team didn't call one witness before resting their case.

On Ziegler's podcast, "The World According To Zig," the reporter raged about that decision, calling Spanier's lawyers "a bunch of wussies" who set their client up for a fall.

Indeed, the defenseless Spanier was convicted by a Dauphin County jury on just one misdemeanor count of endangering the welfare of a child. But the jury also found Spanier not guilty on two felony counts. Yesterday, I asked Samuel W. Silver, the Philadelphia lawyer who was Spanier's lead defender, why they decided not to put Snedden on the stand.

"No, cannot share that," he responded in an email. "Sorry."

On Ziegler's podcast, Snedden, who was on the witness list for the Spanier trial, expressed his disappointment about not getting a chance to testify.

"I tried to contact the legal team the night before," Snedden said. "They were going to call me back. I subsequently got an email [saying] that they chose not to use my testimony that day."


When Snedden called Spanier's lawyers back, Snedden said on the podcast, the lawyers told him he
wasn't going to be called as a witness "not today or not ever. They indicated that they had chosen to go a minimalistic route," Snedden said.

What may have been behind the lawyers' decision, Snedden said, was some legal "intel" -- namely that jurors in the Mike McQueary libel case against Penn State, which resulted in a disasterous $12 million verdict against the university, supposedly "didn't like Spanier at all."

"The sad part is that if I were to have testified all the interviews I did would have gone in" as evidence, Snedden said. "And I certainly think the jury should have heard all of that."

So what happened with Spanier's high-level clearance which was above top-secret -- [SCI -- Sensitive Compartmented Information] -- Ziegler asked Snedden.

"It was renewed," Snedden said, after he put Spanier under oath and questioned him for eight hours.

In his analysis of what actually happened at Penn State, Snedden said, there was "some degree of political maneuvering there."

"The governor took an active role," Snedden said, referring to former Gov. Tom Corbett. "He had not previously done so," Snedden said, "until this occurred."

As the special agent wrote in his 110-page report:

"In March 2011 [Gov.] Corbett proposed a 52 percent cut in PSU funding," Snedden wrote. "Spanier fought back," publicly declaring the governor's proposed cutback "the largest ever proposed and that it would be devastating" to Penn State.

At his trial last week, Graham Spanier didn't take the witness stand. But under oath while talking to Snedden back in 2012, Spanier had plenty to say.

"[Spanier] feels that his departure from the position as PSU president was retribution by Gov. Corbett against [Spanier] for having spoken out about the proposed PSU budget cuts," Snedden wrote.

"[Spanier] believes that the governor pressured the PSU BOT [Board of Trustees] to have [Spanier] leave. And the governor's motivation was the governor's displeasure that [Spanier] and [former Penn State football coach Joe] Paterno were more popular with the people of Pennylvania than was the governor."

As far as Snedden was concerned, a political battle between Spanier and Gov. Corbett, and unfounded accusations of a coverup, did not warrant revoking Spanier's high-level security clearance. The special agent concluded his six-month investigation of the PSU scandal by renewing the clearance and giving Spanier a ringing endorsement.

"The circumstances surrounding subject's departure from his position as PSU president do not cast doubt on subject's current reliability, trustworthiness or good judgment and do not cast doubt on his ability to properly safeguard national security information," Snedden wrote about Spanier.


At the time Snedden interviewed the key people at Penn State, former athletic director Tim Curley and former PSU VP Gary Schultz were already under indictment.

Spanier was next in the sights of prosecutors from the attorney general's office. And former FBI Director Louie Freeh was about to release his report that said there was a coverup at Penn State masterminded by Spanier, Curley and Schultz, with an assist from Joe Paterno.

Snedden, however, wasn't buying into Freeh's conspiracy theory that reigns today in the mainstream media, the court of public opinion, and in the minds of jurors in the Spanier case.

"I did not find any indication of any coverup," Snedden told Ziegler on the podcast. He added that he did not find "any indication of any conspiracy, or anything to cover up."

Snedden also said that Cynthia Baldwin, Penn State's former general counsel, "provided information to me inconsistent to what she provided to the state." Baldwin told Snedden that "Gov. Corbett was very unhappy" with Spanier because he "took the lead in fighting the governor's proposed budget cuts to PSU."

That, of course, was before the prosecutors turned Baldwin into a cooperating witness. The attorney-client privilege went out the window. And Baldwin began testifying against Spanier, Curley and Schultz.

But as far as Snedden was concerned, "Dr. Spanier was very forthcoming, he wanted to get everything out," Snedden said.

"Isn't possible that he just duped you," Ziegler asked.

"No," Snedden deadpanned. "I can pretty well determine which way we're going on an interview." Even though he was a Penn State alumni, Snedden said, his mission was to find the truth.

"I am a Navy veteran," Snedden said. "You're talking about a potential risk to national security" if Spanier was deemed untrustworthy. Instead, "He was very forthcoming," Snedden said of Spanier. "He answered every question."

On the podcast, Ziegler asked Snedden if he turned up any evidence during his investigation that Jerry Sandusky was a pedophile.

"It was not sexual," Snedden said about what Mike McQueary allegedly heard and saw in the Penn State showers, before the prosecutors got through hyping the story, with the full cooperation of the media. "It was not sexual," Snedden insisted. "Nothing at all relative to a sexual circumstance. Nothing."

About PSU's top administrators, Snedden said, "They had no information that would make a person believe" that Sandusky was a pedophile.


"Gary Schultz was pretty clear as to what he was told and what he wasn't told," Snedden said. "What he was told was nothing was of a sexual nature."

As for Joe Paterno, Snedden said, "His involvement was very minimal in passing it [McQueary's account of the shower incident] to the people he reported to," meaning Schultz and Curley.

Spanier, 68, who was born in Cape Town, South Africa, became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1955. When Snedden interviewed Spanier, he couldn't recall the exact date that he was approached by Curley and Schultz with the news about the shower incident supposedly witnessed by McQueary.

It was "approximately in the early 2000 decade," Snedden wrote, when Spanier recalled being approached by Schultz and Curley in between university meetings. The two PSU administrators told Spanier they wanted to give him a "head's up" about a report they had received from Joe Paterno.

"A staff member," Snedden wrote, "had seen Jerry Sandusky in the locker room after a work out showering with one of his Second Mile kids. [Spanier] knew at the time that Jerry Sandusky was very involved with the Second Mile charity," Snedden wrote. "And, at that time, [Spanier] believed that it only involved high school kids. [Spanier] has since learned that the charity involves younger disadvantaged children."

Because it was Spanier's "understanding at that time that the charity only involved high school kids it did not send off any alarms," Snedden wrote. Then the prosecutors and their friends in the media went to work.

"Curley and Schultz said that the person who had given the report was not sure what he had seen but that they were concerned about the situation with the kid in the shower," Snedden wrote.

Curley and Schultz told Spanier that the person who had given the report "was not sure what he saw because it was around the corner and that what he has reported was described as "horse play" or "horsing around." In his report, Snedden said that Spanier "assumed the terminology of horse play or horsing around came from Joe Paterno."

"They all agreed that Curley would talk to Jerry Sandusky, tell him not to bring kids into the locker room facilities," Snedden wrote. "And Curley was to tell the Second Mile management that it was not good for any of the Second Mile kids to come to the athletic locker room facilities, and that they should suspend that practice."

Spanier, Snedden wrote, never was told "who the person was who made the report. But "nothing was described as a sexual or criminal in any way," Snedden wrote.

The initial conversation between Spanier, Curley and Schultz about the Sandusky shower incident lasted 10 minutes, Snedden wrote. A few days later, Curley told Spanier "in person that the discussion had taken place and that everything went well."

"The issue never came up again with Curley, Schultz, Paterno, Sandusky, or anyone," Snedden wrote. "It did not appear very significant to anyone at the time."


Gary Schultz corroborated Spanier's account. Schultz told Snedden that back in February 2001, Tim Curley told him "something to the effect that Jerry Sandusky had been in the shower with a kid horsing around and wrestling. And Mike McQueary or a graduate assistant walked in and observed it. And McQueary or the graduate assistant was concerned."

Schultz believed the source of Curley's information was Joe Paterno, and that the conduct involved was horseplay.

"McQueary did not say anything of a sexual nature took place," Snedden wrote after interviewing Schultz. "McQueary did not say anything indicative of an incident of a serious sexual nature."

While Snedden was investigating Spanier, Louie Freeh was writing his overpriced $8.3 million report where he came to the opposite conclusion that Snedden did, that there was a coverup at Penn State. Only Louie Freeh didn't talk to Curley, Schultz, Paterno, McQueary or Sandusky. Freeh only talked to Spanier relatively briefly, at the end of his investigation, when he had presumably already come to his conclusions.

Ironically, one of the things Spanier told Freeh was that Snedden was also investigating what happened at Penn State. But that didn't seem to effect the conclusions of the Louie Freeh report, Snedden said. He wondered why.

He also wondered why his report had no effect on the attorney general's office, which had already indicted Curley and Schultz, and was planning to indict Spanier.

"I certainly think that if the powers that be . . . knew what was in his report, Snedden said, "They would certainly have to take a hard look at what they were doing."

Freeh and the AG, Snedden said, should have wanted to know "who was interviewed [by Sneddedn] and what did they say. I mean this is kind of pertinent to what we're doing," Snedden said of the investigations conducted by Freeh and the AG.

"If your goal in any investigation is to determine the facts of the case period, the circumstance should have been hey, we'll be happy to obtain any and all facts," Snedden said.

Snedden said he understood, however, why Freeh was uninterested in his report.

"It doesn't fit the narrative that he's [Louie Freeh] going for," Snedden said.

Freeh was on a tight deadline, Ziegler reminded Snedden. Freeh had to get his report out at a highly-anticipated press conference. And the Freeh report had to come out before the start of the football season. So the NCAA could drop the hammer on Penn State.

"He [Freeh] doesn't have time to read a hundred page report," Snedden said. He agreed with Ziegler that the whole disclosure of the Freeh report was "orchestrated" to come out right before the football season started.

It may have been good timing for the news media and the NCAA, Snedden said about the release of the Louie Freeh report. But it didn't make much sense from an investigator's point of view.


"I just don't understand why," Snedden told Ziegler, "why would you ignore more evidence. Either side that it lands on, why would you ignore it?"

Good question.

Snedden was aghast about the cost of the Louie Freeh report. His six-month federal investigation, Snedden said, "probably cost the federal government and the taxpayers $50,000 at the most. And he [Freeh] spent $8.3 million," Snedden said. "Unbelievable."

In a statement released March 24th, Freeh hailed the conviction of Spanier as having confirmed and verified "all the findings and facts" of the Freeh report. On Ziegler's podcast, however, Snedden was dismissive of Freeh's statement.

"It's like a preemptive strike to divert people's attention from the actual conviction for a misdemeanor," Snedden said about Freeh. Along with the fact that he jury found "no cover up no conspiracy," Snedden said.

"In a rational world Louie Freeh is completely discredited," Ziegler said. "The Freeh report is a joke." On the podcast, Ziegler ripped the "mainstream media morons" who said that the jury verdict vindicated Freeh.

"Which is horrendous," Snedden added.

Ziegler asked Snedden if he had any doubt that an innocent man was convicted last week.

"That's what I believe, one hundred percent," Snedden said about the "insane jury verdict."

About the Penn State scandal, Snedden said, "I've got to say it needs to be examined thoroughly and it needs to be examined by a competent law enforcement authority." And that's a law enforcement authority that "doesn't have any political connections with anybody on the boards of trustees when this thing hit the fan."

As for Snedden, he left the Penn State campus thinking, "Where is the crime?"

"This case has been all about emotion," Ziegler said. "It was never about facts."

"Exactly," Snedden said.

As someone who has spent the past five years investigating the "Billy Doe" case, I can testify that when the subject is sex abuse, and the media is involved, the next stop is the Twilight Zone. Where hysteria reigns, and logic and common sense go out the window.

Earlier in the podcast, Ziegler talked about the "dog and pony show" put on by the prosecution at the Spanier trial. It's a good example of what happens once you've entered the Twilight Zone.


At the Spanier trial, the 28-year-old known as Victim No. 5 was sworn in as a witness in the judge's chambers. When the jury came out, they were surprised to see Victim No. 5 already seated on the witness stand.

As extra sheriff's deputies patrolled the courtroom, the judge announced to the jury that the next witness would be referred to as "John Doe."

I was in the courtroom that day, and I thought the hoopla over Victim No. 5's appearance was bizarre and prejudicial to the case. In several sex abuse trials that I have covered in Philadelphia, the victim's real name was always used in court, starting from the moment when he or she was sworn in in the courtroom as a witness.

The judges and the prosecutors could always count on the media to censor itself, by not printing the real names of alleged victims out of some misguided social justice policy that borders on lunacy. At the exact same time they're hanging the defendants out to dry.

Talk about rigging a contest by what's supposed to be an impartial media.

At the Spanier trial, the prosecutor proceeded to place a box of Kleenex next to the witness stand. John Doe seemed composed until the prosecutor asked if he had ever been sexually abused. Right on cue, the witness started whimpering.

"Yes," he said.

By whom, the prosecutor asked.

By Jerry Sandusky, John Doe said, continuing to whimper.

The actual details of the alleged sex abuse were never explained. The jury could have left the courtroom believing that Victim No. 5 had been sexually assaulted or raped.

But the sexual abuse Victim No. 5 was allegedly subjected to was that Sandusky allegedly soaped the boy up in the shower and may have touched his penis.

For that alleged abuse, Victim No. 5 collected $8 million.


I kid you not.

There was also much confusion over the date of the abuse.

First, John Doe said that the abuse took place when he was 10 years old, back in 1998. Then, the victim changed his story to say he was abused the first time he met Sandusky, back when he was 12 or 13 years old, in 2000 or 2001, but definitely before 9/11, because he could never forget 9/11. Next, the victim said that he was abused after 9/11, when he would have been 14.

At the Spanier trial, the prosecution used "John Doe" or Victim No. 5 for one main purpose: to prove to the jury that he had been abused after the infamous Mike McQueary shower incident of February, 2001. To show the jury that more victims were abused after Spanier, Curley and Schultz had decided to initiate their alleged coverup following the February 2001 shower incident.

But there was only one problem. To prove John Doe had a relationship with Sandusky, the prosecution introduced as an exhibit a photo taken of the victim with Sandusky.

Keep in mind it was John Doe/Victim No. 5's previous testimony that Sandusky abused him at their first meeting. The only problem, as Ziegler disclosed on his podcast, was the photo of Victim No. 5 was taken from a book, "Touched, The Jerry Sandusky Story," by Jerry Sandusky. And according to Amazon, that book was published on Nov. 17, 2000.

Three months before the alleged shower incident witnessed by Mike McQueary. Meaning that in a real world where facts matter, John Doe/Victim No. 5 was totally irrelevant to the case.

It was the kind of thing that a defense lawyer would typically jump on during cross-examination, confusion over the date of the abuse. Excuse me, Mr. Doe, we all know you have suffered terribly, but when did the abuse happen? Was it in 1998, or was it 2000, or 2001 or even 2002? And hey, what's the deal with that photo?

But the Spanier trial was conducted in the Twilight Zone. Spanier's lawyers chose not to ask a single question of John Doe. As Samuel W. Silver explained why to the jury in his closing statement: he did not want to add to the suffering of a sainted victim of sex abuse by subjecting him to cross-examination. Like you would have done with any normal human being when the freedom of your client was at stake.

That left Spanier in the Twilight Zone, where he was convicted by a jury on one count of endangering the welfare of a child.

To add to the curious nature of the conviction, the statute of limitations for endangering the welfare of a child is two years. But the incident that Spanier, Schultz and Curley were accused of covering up, the infamous Mike McQueary shower incident, happened back in 2001.

At the Spanier trial, the prosecution was only able to try the defendant on a charge that had long ago expired by throwing in a conspiracy charge. In theory, that meant that the defendant and his co-conspirators could still be prosecuted, because they'd allegedly been engaging in a pattern of illegal conduct over sixteen years -- the coverup that never happened --- which kept the original child endangerment charge on artificial respiration until the jury could decide the issue.


But the jury found Spanier not guilty on the conspiracy charge. And they also found Spanier not guilty of engaging in a continuing course of [criminal] conduct.

That means that Spanier was convicted on a single misdemeanor charge of endangering the welfare of a child, dating back to 2001. A crime that the statute of limitations had long ago expired on.

On this issue, Silver was willing to express an opinion.

"We certainly will be pursuing the statute of limitations as one of our post-trial issues," he wrote in an email.

Meanwhile, Graham Spanier remains a prisoner in the Twilight Zone. And until there's a credible investigation of what really happened, all of Penn State nation remains trapped in there with him.
 
Can someone else please step in here and tell this Nole bozo that the most likely explanation here is not that I've spent time faking obscure government paperwork, but that I am actually who I say I am?

Jesus...
Why do you F ing care what he thinks? Your a loon and he’s jerking your chain like a pro. He’s like an expert fisherman, sets the hook , and goes to town.
I don’t give a crap about what you do, you’re an obsessed weirdo chasing “truths” that don’t exist . “Truths” no one cares about. You realize this month long thread was about an ESPN special that you and others thought would somehow move public opinion and bring these “facts” to light. Nope, it will never happen.
But I bet you’ll be arguing with some guy online in 5,10 or more years saying any day now….
 
  • Like
Reactions: WHCANole
Why do you F ing care what he thinks? Your a loon and he’s jerking your chain like a pro. He’s like an expert fisherman, sets the hook , and goes to town.
I don’t give a crap about what you do, you’re an obsessed weirdo chasing “truths” that don’t exist . “Truths” no one cares about. You realize this month long thread was about an ESPN special that you and others thought would somehow move public opinion and bring these “facts” to light. Nope, it will never happen.
But I bet you’ll be arguing with some guy online in 5,10 or more years saying any day now….
I am like catnip to this nut. He wants to meet me!!!! Who but a mental case wants to “meet” a chat board adversary? He’s obsessed and can’t stand it that I won’t acknowledge his fake persona. He is a sick puppy and you’re right, I’m playing him like a fiddle 🤣. He’ll tell you it entertains him but his constant anger and telling me to STFU and wanting to meet me just shows his obsession. As you can see, I am the one being entertained. And it is fun. Plus his insanity hurts Ziegler’s BS narrative. Which is my goal.
 
  • Haha
Reactions: bourbon n blues
I am like catnip to this nut. He wants to meet me!!!! He’s obsessed and can’t stand it that I won’t acknowledge his fake persona. He is a sick puppy and you’re right, I’m playing him like a fiddle 🤣. He’ll tell you it entertains him but his constant anger and telling me to STFU and wanting to meet me just shows his obsession. As you can see, I am the one being entertained. And it is fun. Plus his insanity hurts Ziegler’s BS narrative. Which is my goal.
I'd volunteer to meet him with my friend, but he had enough of these loons. They're like Moonies or Jehovah's Witnesses.
 
I'd volunteer to meet him with my friend, but he had enough of these loons. They're like Moonies or Jehovah's Witnesses.
He would never show. He’s afraid his fraud would be uncovered. A keyboard commando. I’d say he’s more like that those NXIVM folk.
 
Very good question/point.. Mark Parker then CEO NIKE and Penn State Alumni made the decision to take Joe’s name off of the Child daycare ? Center building after the Freeh report was released …Paterno and I believe Lance Armstrong have been the only two figures where NIKE buildings have been renamed after recognizing them years earlier.

certainly the controversy around Paterno and having a childrens building named after him creates an awkward situation .. it just does .

Even Penn State has done zero to address the wrongdoing done to Joe…I can’t fault NIKE for taking his name off of a Childrens center …maybe another building but unfortunately not a Childrens center.
Nike?
Huh?

What if that infamous locker room incident that Mike McQueary supposedly witnessed 16 years ago -- featuring a naked Jerry Sandusky cavorting in the showers with an underage boy -- had nothing to do with sex? And what if the only two officials at PSU who ever spoke directly to former PSU President Graham Spanier about that incident really did describe it as just "horseplay" and not sex?

And what if the guy advancing this contrarian story line was not some crackpot conspiracy theorist, but a decorated U.S. special agent? A guy who had already done a top-secret federal investigation five years ago into the so-called Penn State scandal but nobody knew about it until now?

There would be no pedophilia scandal at Penn State to cover up. And no trio of top PSU officials to convict of child endangerment. The whole lurid saga starring a naked Jerry Sandusky sexually abusing little boys in the shower would be fake news. A hoax foisted on the public by an unholy trio of overzealous prosecutors, lazy and gullible reporters, and greedy plaintiff's lawyers.


Yesterday, on veteran TV reporter John Ziegler's podcast, John Snedden, a former NCIS agent who is a special agent for the Federal Investigative Services, talked about his six-month top secret investigation of Graham Spanier and PSU.

Back in 2012, at a time when nobody at Penn State was talking, Snedden showed up in Happy Valley and interviewed everybody that mattered.

Because Snedden was on a mission of the highest importance on behalf of the federal government. Special Agent Snedden had to decide whether Graham Spanier's high-level security clearance should be renewed amid widespread public accusations of a coverup.

And what did Snedden find?

"There was no coverup," Snedden flatly declared on Ziegler's podcast. "There was no conspiracy. There was nothing to cover up."

The whole world could have already known by now about John Snedden's top secret investigation of Spanier and PSU. That's because Snedden was scheduled to be the star witness at the trial last week of former Penn State President Graham Spanier.

But at the last minute, Spanier's legal team decided that the government's case was so lame that they didn't even have to put on a defense. Spanier's defense team didn't call one witness before resting their case.

On Ziegler's podcast, "The World According To Zig," the reporter raged about that decision, calling Spanier's lawyers "a bunch of wussies" who set their client up for a fall.

Indeed, the defenseless Spanier was convicted by a Dauphin County jury on just one misdemeanor count of endangering the welfare of a child. But the jury also found Spanier not guilty on two felony counts. Yesterday, I asked Samuel W. Silver, the Philadelphia lawyer who was Spanier's lead defender, why they decided not to put Snedden on the stand.

"No, cannot share that," he responded in an email. "Sorry."

On Ziegler's podcast, Snedden, who was on the witness list for the Spanier trial, expressed his disappointment about not getting a chance to testify.

"I tried to contact the legal team the night before," Snedden said. "They were going to call me back. I subsequently got an email [saying] that they chose not to use my testimony that day."


When Snedden called Spanier's lawyers back, Snedden said on the podcast, the lawyers told him he
wasn't going to be called as a witness "not today or not ever. They indicated that they had chosen to go a minimalistic route," Snedden said.

What may have been behind the lawyers' decision, Snedden said, was some legal "intel" -- namely that jurors in the Mike McQueary libel case against Penn State, which resulted in a disasterous $12 million verdict against the university, supposedly "didn't like Spanier at all."

"The sad part is that if I were to have testified all the interviews I did would have gone in" as evidence, Snedden said. "And I certainly think the jury should have heard all of that."



So what happened with Spanier's high-level clearance which was above top-secret -- [SCI -- Sensitive Compartmented Information] -- Ziegler asked Snedden.

"It was renewed," Snedden said, after he put Spanier under oath and questioned him for eight hours.

In his analysis of what actually happened at Penn State, Snedden said, there was "some degree of political maneuvering there."

"The governor took an active role," Snedden said, referring to former Gov. Tom Corbett. "He had not previously done so," Snedden said, "until this occurred."

As the special agent wrote in his 110-page report:

"In March 2011 [Gov.] Corbett proposed a 52 percent cut in PSU funding," Snedden wrote. "Spanier fought back," publicly declaring the governor's proposed cutback "the largest ever proposed and that it would be devastating" to Penn State.

At his trial last week, Graham Spanier didn't take the witness stand. But under oath while talking to Snedden back in 2012, Spanier had plenty to say.

"[Spanier] feels that his departure from the position as PSU president was retribution by Gov. Corbett against [Spanier] for having spoken out about the proposed PSU budget cuts," Snedden wrote.

"[Spanier] believes that the governor pressured the PSU BOT [Board of Trustees] to have [Spanier] leave. And the governor's motivation was the governor's displeasure that [Spanier] and [former Penn State football coach Joe] Paterno were more popular with the people of Pennylvania than was the governor."

As far as Snedden was concerned, a political battle between Spanier and Gov. Corbett, and unfounded accusations of a coverup, did not warrant revoking Spanier's high-level security clearance. The special agent concluded his six-month investigation of the PSU scandal by renewing the clearance and giving Spanier a ringing endorsement.

"The circumstances surrounding subject's departure from his position as PSU president do not cast doubt on subject's current reliability, trustworthiness or good judgment and do not cast doubt on his ability to properly safeguard national security information," Snedden wrote about Spanier.


At the time Snedden interviewed the key people at Penn State, former athletic director Tim Curley and former PSU VP Gary Schultz were already under indictment.

Spanier was next in the sights of prosecutors from the attorney general's office. And former FBI Director Louie Freeh was about to release his report that said there was a coverup at Penn State masterminded by Spanier, Curley and Schultz, with an assist from Joe Paterno.

Snedden, however, wasn't buying into Freeh's conspiracy theory that reigns today in the mainstream media, the court of public opinion, and in the minds of jurors in the Spanier case.

"I did not find any indication of any coverup," Snedden told Ziegler on the podcast. He added that he did not find "any indication of any conspiracy, or anything to cover up."

Snedden also said that Cynthia Baldwin, Penn State's former general counsel, "provided information to me inconsistent to what she provided to the state." Baldwin told Snedden that "Gov. Corbett was very unhappy" with Spanier because he "took the lead in fighting the governor's proposed budget cuts to PSU."

That, of course, was before the prosecutors turned Baldwin into a cooperating witness. The attorney-client privilege went out the window. And Baldwin began testifying against Spanier, Curley and Schultz.

But as far as Snedden was concerned, "Dr. Spanier was very forthcoming, he wanted to get everything out," Snedden said.

"Isn't possible that he just duped you," Ziegler asked.

"No," Snedden deadpanned. "I can pretty well determine which way we're going on an interview." Even though he was a Penn State alumni, Snedden said, his mission was to find the truth.

"I am a Navy veteran," Snedden said. "You're talking about a potential risk to national security" if Spanier was deemed untrustworthy. Instead, "He was very forthcoming," Snedden said of Spanier. "He answered every question."

On the podcast, Ziegler asked Snedden if he turned up any evidence during his investigation that Jerry Sandusky was a pedophile.

"It was not sexual," Snedden said about what Mike McQueary allegedly heard and saw in the Penn State showers, before the prosecutors got through hyping the story, with the full cooperation of the media. "It was not sexual," Snedden insisted. "Nothing at all relative to a sexual circumstance. Nothing."

About PSU's top administrators, Snedden said, "They had no information that would make a person believe" that Sandusky was a pedophile.


"Gary Schultz was pretty clear as to what he was told and what he wasn't told," Snedden said. "What he was told was nothing was of a sexual nature."

As for Joe Paterno, Snedden said, "His involvement was very minimal in passing it [McQueary's account of the shower incident] to the people he reported to," meaning Schultz and Curley.

Spanier, 68, who was born in Cape Town, South Africa, became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1955. When Snedden interviewed Spanier, he couldn't recall the exact date that he was approached by Curley and Schultz with the news about the shower incident supposedly witnessed by McQueary.

It was "approximately in the early 2000 decade," Snedden wrote, when Spanier recalled being approached by Schultz and Curley in between university meetings. The two PSU administrators told Spanier they wanted to give him a "head's up" about a report they had received from Joe Paterno.

"A staff member," Snedden wrote, "had seen Jerry Sandusky in the locker room after a work out showering with one of his Second Mile kids. [Spanier] knew at the time that Jerry Sandusky was very involved with the Second Mile charity," Snedden wrote. "And, at that time, [Spanier] believed that it only involved high school kids. [Spanier] has since learned that the charity involves younger disadvantaged children."

Because it was Spanier's "understanding at that time that the charity only involved high school kids it did not send off any alarms," Snedden wrote. Then the prosecutors and their friends in the media went to work.

"Curley and Schultz said that the person who had given the report was not sure what he had seen but that they were concerned about the situation with the kid in the shower," Snedden wrote.

Curley and Schultz told Spanier that the person who had given the report "was not sure what he saw because it was around the corner and that what he has reported was described as "horse play" or "horsing around." In his report, Snedden said that Spanier "assumed the terminology of horse play or horsing around came from Joe Paterno."

"They all agreed that Curley would talk to Jerry Sandusky, tell him not to bring kids into the locker room facilities," Snedden wrote. "And Curley was to tell the Second Mile management that it was not good for any of the Second Mile kids to come to the athletic locker room facilities, and that they should suspend that practice."

Spanier, Snedden wrote, never was told "who the person was who made the report. But "nothing was described as a sexual or criminal in any way," Snedden wrote.

The initial conversation between Spanier, Curley and Schultz about the Sandusky shower incident lasted 10 minutes, Snedden wrote. A few days later, Curley told Spanier "in person that the discussion had taken place and that everything went well."

"The issue never came up again with Curley, Schultz, Paterno, Sandusky, or anyone," Snedden wrote. "It did not appear very significant to anyone at the time."


Gary Schultz corroborated Spanier's account. Schultz told Snedden that back in February 2001, Tim Curley told him "something to the effect that Jerry Sandusky had been in the shower with a kid horsing around and wrestling. And Mike McQueary or a graduate assistant walked in and observed it. And McQueary or the graduate assistant was concerned."

Schultz believed the source of Curley's information was Joe Paterno, and that the conduct involved was horseplay.

"McQueary did not say anything of a sexual nature took place," Snedden wrote after interviewing Schultz. "McQueary did not say anything indicative of an incident of a serious sexual nature."

While Snedden was investigating Spanier, Louie Freeh was writing his overpriced $8.3 million report where he came to the opposite conclusion that Snedden did, that there was a coverup at Penn State. Only Louie Freeh didn't talk to Curley, Schultz, Paterno, McQueary or Sandusky. Freeh only talked to Spanier relatively briefly, at the end of his investigation, when he had presumably already come to his conclusions.

Ironically, one of the things Spanier told Freeh was that Snedden was also investigating what happened at Penn State. But that didn't seem to effect the conclusions of the Louie Freeh report, Snedden said. He wondered why.

He also wondered why his report had no effect on the attorney general's office, which had already indicted Curley and Schultz, and was planning to indict Spanier.

"I certainly think that if the powers that be . . . knew what was in his report, Snedden said, "They would certainly have to take a hard look at what they were doing."

Freeh and the AG, Snedden said, should have wanted to know "who was interviewed [by Sneddedn] and what did they say. I mean this is kind of pertinent to what we're doing," Snedden said of the investigations conducted by Freeh and the AG.

"If your goal in any investigation is to determine the facts of the case period, the circumstance should have been hey, we'll be happy to obtain any and all facts," Snedden said.

Snedden said he understood, however, why Freeh was uninterested in his report.

"It doesn't fit the narrative that he's [Louie Freeh] going for," Snedden said.

Freeh was on a tight deadline, Ziegler reminded Snedden. Freeh had to get his report out at a highly-anticipated press conference. And the Freeh report had to come out before the start of the football season. So the NCAA could drop the hammer on Penn State.

"He [Freeh] doesn't have time to read a hundred page report," Snedden said. He agreed with Ziegler that the whole disclosure of the Freeh report was "orchestrated" to come out right before the football season started.

It may have been good timing for the news media and the NCAA, Snedden said about the release of the Louie Freeh report. But it didn't make much sense from an investigator's point of view.


"I just don't understand why," Snedden told Ziegler, "why would you ignore more evidence. Either side that it lands on, why would you ignore it?"

Good question.

Snedden was aghast about the cost of the Louie Freeh report. His six-month federal investigation, Snedden said, "probably cost the federal government and the taxpayers $50,000 at the most. And he [Freeh] spent $8.3 million," Snedden said. "Unbelievable."

In a statement released March 24th, Freeh hailed the conviction of Spanier as having confirmed and verified "all the findings and facts" of the Freeh report. On Ziegler's podcast, however, Snedden was dismissive of Freeh's statement.

"It's like a preemptive strike to divert people's attention from the actual conviction for a misdemeanor," Snedden said about Freeh. Along with the fact that he jury found "no cover up no conspiracy," Snedden said.

"In a rational world Louie Freeh is completely discredited," Ziegler said. "The Freeh report is a joke." On the podcast, Ziegler ripped the "mainstream media morons" who said that the jury verdict vindicated Freeh.

"Which is horrendous," Snedden added.

Ziegler asked Snedden if he had any doubt that an innocent man was convicted last week.

"That's what I believe, one hundred percent," Snedden said about the "insane jury verdict."

About the Penn State scandal, Snedden said, "I've got to say it needs to be examined thoroughly and it needs to be examined by a competent law enforcement authority." And that's a law enforcement authority that "doesn't have any political connections with anybody on the boards of trustees when this thing hit the fan."

As for Snedden, he left the Penn State campus thinking, "Where is the crime?"

"This case has been all about emotion," Ziegler said. "It was never about facts."

"Exactly," Snedden said.

As someone who has spent the past five years investigating the "Billy Doe" case, I can testify that when the subject is sex abuse, and the media is involved, the next stop is the Twilight Zone. Where hysteria reigns, and logic and common sense go out the window.

Earlier in the podcast, Ziegler talked about the "dog and pony show" put on by the prosecution at the Spanier trial. It's a good example of what happens once you've entered the Twilight Zone.


At the Spanier trial, the 28-year-old known as Victim No. 5 was sworn in as a witness in the judge's chambers. When the jury came out, they were surprised to see Victim No. 5 already seated on the witness stand.

As extra sheriff's deputies patrolled the courtroom, the judge announced to the jury that the next witness would be referred to as "John Doe."

I was in the courtroom that day, and I thought the hoopla over Victim No. 5's appearance was bizarre and prejudicial to the case. In several sex abuse trials that I have covered in Philadelphia, the victim's real name was always used in court, starting from the moment when he or she was sworn in in the courtroom as a witness.

The judges and the prosecutors could always count on the media to censor itself, by not printing the real names of alleged victims out of some misguided social justice policy that borders on lunacy. At the exact same time they're hanging the defendants out to dry.

Talk about rigging a contest by what's supposed to be an impartial media.

At the Spanier trial, the prosecutor proceeded to place a box of Kleenex next to the witness stand. John Doe seemed composed until the prosecutor asked if he had ever been sexually abused. Right on cue, the witness started whimpering.

"Yes," he said.

By whom, the prosecutor asked.

By Jerry Sandusky, John Doe said, continuing to whimper.

The actual details of the alleged sex abuse were never explained. The jury could have left the courtroom believing that Victim No. 5 had been sexually assaulted or raped.

But the sexual abuse Victim No. 5 was allegedly subjected to was that Sandusky allegedly soaped the boy up in the shower and may have touched his penis.

For that alleged abuse, Victim No. 5 collected $8 million.


I kid you not.

There was also much confusion over the date of the abuse.

First, John Doe said that the abuse took place when he was 10 years old, back in 1998. Then, the victim changed his story to say he was abused the first time he met Sandusky, back when he was 12 or 13 years old, in 2000 or 2001, but definitely before 9/11, because he could never forget 9/11. Next, the victim said that he was abused after 9/11, when he would have been 14.

At the Spanier trial, the prosecution used "John Doe" or Victim No. 5 for one main purpose: to prove to the jury that he had been abused after the infamous Mike McQueary shower incident of February, 2001. To show the jury that more victims were abused after Spanier, Curley and Schultz had decided to initiate their alleged coverup following the February 2001 shower incident.

But there was only one problem. To prove John Doe had a relationship with Sandusky, the prosecution introduced as an exhibit a photo taken of the victim with Sandusky.

Keep in mind it was John Doe/Victim No. 5's previous testimony that Sandusky abused him at their first meeting. The only problem, as Ziegler disclosed on his podcast, was the photo of Victim No. 5 was taken from a book, "Touched, The Jerry Sandusky Story," by Jerry Sandusky. And according to Amazon, that book was published on Nov. 17, 2000.

Three months before the alleged shower incident witnessed by Mike McQueary. Meaning that in a real world where facts matter, John Doe/Victim No. 5 was totally irrelevant to the case.

It was the kind of thing that a defense lawyer would typically jump on during cross-examination, confusion over the date of the abuse. Excuse me, Mr. Doe, we all know you have suffered terribly, but when did the abuse happen? Was it in 1998, or was it 2000, or 2001 or even 2002? And hey, what's the deal with that photo?

But the Spanier trial was conducted in the Twilight Zone. Spanier's lawyers chose not to ask a single question of John Doe. As Samuel W. Silver explained why to the jury in his closing statement: he did not want to add to the suffering of a sainted victim of sex abuse by subjecting him to cross-examination. Like you would have done with any normal human being when the freedom of your client was at stake.

That left Spanier in the Twilight Zone, where he was convicted by a jury on one count of endangering the welfare of a child.

To add to the curious nature of the conviction, the statute of limitations for endangering the welfare of a child is two years. But the incident that Spanier, Schultz and Curley were accused of covering up, the infamous Mike McQueary shower incident, happened back in 2001.

At the Spanier trial, the prosecution was only able to try the defendant on a charge that had long ago expired by throwing in a conspiracy charge. In theory, that meant that the defendant and his co-conspirators could still be prosecuted, because they'd allegedly been engaging in a pattern of illegal conduct over sixteen years -- the coverup that never happened --- which kept the original child endangerment charge on artificial respiration until the jury could decide the issue.


But the jury found Spanier not guilty on the conspiracy charge. And they also found Spanier not guilty of engaging in a continuing course of [criminal] conduct.

That means that Spanier was convicted on a single misdemeanor charge of endangering the welfare of a child, dating back to 2001. A crime that the statute of limitations had long ago expired on.

On this issue, Silver was willing to express an opinion.

"We certainly will be pursuing the statute of limitations as one of our post-trial issues," he wrote in an email.

Meanwhile, Graham Spanier remains a prisoner in the Twilight Zone. And until there's a credible investigation of what really happened, all of Penn State nation remains trapped in there with him.
 
Nike?
Huh?

What if that infamous locker room incident that Mike McQueary supposedly witnessed 16 years ago -- featuring a naked Jerry Sandusky cavorting in the showers with an underage boy -- had nothing to do with sex? And what if the only two officials at PSU who ever spoke directly to former PSU President Graham Spanier about that incident really did describe it as just "horseplay" and not sex?

And what if the guy advancing this contrarian story line was not some crackpot conspiracy theorist, but a decorated U.S. special agent? A guy who had already done a top-secret federal investigation five years ago into the so-called Penn State scandal but nobody knew about it until now?

There would be no pedophilia scandal at Penn State to cover up. And no trio of top PSU officials to convict of child endangerment. The whole lurid saga starring a naked Jerry Sandusky sexually abusing little boys in the shower would be fake news. A hoax foisted on the public by an unholy trio of overzealous prosecutors, lazy and gullible reporters, and greedy plaintiff's lawyers.


Yesterday, on veteran TV reporter John Ziegler's podcast, John Snedden, a former NCIS agent who is a special agent for the Federal Investigative Services, talked about his six-month top secret investigation of Graham Spanier and PSU.

Back in 2012, at a time when nobody at Penn State was talking, Snedden showed up in Happy Valley and interviewed everybody that mattered.

Because Snedden was on a mission of the highest importance on behalf of the federal government. Special Agent Snedden had to decide whether Graham Spanier's high-level security clearance should be renewed amid widespread public accusations of a coverup.

And what did Snedden find?

"There was no coverup," Snedden flatly declared on Ziegler's podcast. "There was no conspiracy. There was nothing to cover up."

The whole world could have already known by now about John Snedden's top secret investigation of Spanier and PSU. That's because Snedden was scheduled to be the star witness at the trial last week of former Penn State President Graham Spanier.

But at the last minute, Spanier's legal team decided that the government's case was so lame that they didn't even have to put on a defense. Spanier's defense team didn't call one witness before resting their case.

On Ziegler's podcast, "The World According To Zig," the reporter raged about that decision, calling Spanier's lawyers "a bunch of wussies" who set their client up for a fall.

Indeed, the defenseless Spanier was convicted by a Dauphin County jury on just one misdemeanor count of endangering the welfare of a child. But the jury also found Spanier not guilty on two felony counts. Yesterday, I asked Samuel W. Silver, the Philadelphia lawyer who was Spanier's lead defender, why they decided not to put Snedden on the stand.

"No, cannot share that," he responded in an email. "Sorry."

On Ziegler's podcast, Snedden, who was on the witness list for the Spanier trial, expressed his disappointment about not getting a chance to testify.

"I tried to contact the legal team the night before," Snedden said. "They were going to call me back. I subsequently got an email [saying] that they chose not to use my testimony that day."


When Snedden called Spanier's lawyers back, Snedden said on the podcast, the lawyers told him he
wasn't going to be called as a witness "not today or not ever. They indicated that they had chosen to go a minimalistic route," Snedden said.

What may have been behind the lawyers' decision, Snedden said, was some legal "intel" -- namely that jurors in the Mike McQueary libel case against Penn State, which resulted in a disasterous $12 million verdict against the university, supposedly "didn't like Spanier at all."

"The sad part is that if I were to have testified all the interviews I did would have gone in" as evidence, Snedden said. "And I certainly think the jury should have heard all of that."



So what happened with Spanier's high-level clearance which was above top-secret -- [SCI -- Sensitive Compartmented Information] -- Ziegler asked Snedden.

"It was renewed," Snedden said, after he put Spanier under oath and questioned him for eight hours.

In his analysis of what actually happened at Penn State, Snedden said, there was "some degree of political maneuvering there."

"The governor took an active role," Snedden said, referring to former Gov. Tom Corbett. "He had not previously done so," Snedden said, "until this occurred."

As the special agent wrote in his 110-page report:

"In March 2011 [Gov.] Corbett proposed a 52 percent cut in PSU funding," Snedden wrote. "Spanier fought back," publicly declaring the governor's proposed cutback "the largest ever proposed and that it would be devastating" to Penn State.

At his trial last week, Graham Spanier didn't take the witness stand. But under oath while talking to Snedden back in 2012, Spanier had plenty to say.

"[Spanier] feels that his departure from the position as PSU president was retribution by Gov. Corbett against [Spanier] for having spoken out about the proposed PSU budget cuts," Snedden wrote.

"[Spanier] believes that the governor pressured the PSU BOT [Board of Trustees] to have [Spanier] leave. And the governor's motivation was the governor's displeasure that [Spanier] and [former Penn State football coach Joe] Paterno were more popular with the people of Pennylvania than was the governor."

As far as Snedden was concerned, a political battle between Spanier and Gov. Corbett, and unfounded accusations of a coverup, did not warrant revoking Spanier's high-level security clearance. The special agent concluded his six-month investigation of the PSU scandal by renewing the clearance and giving Spanier a ringing endorsement.

"The circumstances surrounding subject's departure from his position as PSU president do not cast doubt on subject's current reliability, trustworthiness or good judgment and do not cast doubt on his ability to properly safeguard national security information," Snedden wrote about Spanier.


At the time Snedden interviewed the key people at Penn State, former athletic director Tim Curley and former PSU VP Gary Schultz were already under indictment.

Spanier was next in the sights of prosecutors from the attorney general's office. And former FBI Director Louie Freeh was about to release his report that said there was a coverup at Penn State masterminded by Spanier, Curley and Schultz, with an assist from Joe Paterno.

Snedden, however, wasn't buying into Freeh's conspiracy theory that reigns today in the mainstream media, the court of public opinion, and in the minds of jurors in the Spanier case.

"I did not find any indication of any coverup," Snedden told Ziegler on the podcast. He added that he did not find "any indication of any conspiracy, or anything to cover up."

Snedden also said that Cynthia Baldwin, Penn State's former general counsel, "provided information to me inconsistent to what she provided to the state." Baldwin told Snedden that "Gov. Corbett was very unhappy" with Spanier because he "took the lead in fighting the governor's proposed budget cuts to PSU."

That, of course, was before the prosecutors turned Baldwin into a cooperating witness. The attorney-client privilege went out the window. And Baldwin began testifying against Spanier, Curley and Schultz.

But as far as Snedden was concerned, "Dr. Spanier was very forthcoming, he wanted to get everything out," Snedden said.

"Isn't possible that he just duped you," Ziegler asked.

"No," Snedden deadpanned. "I can pretty well determine which way we're going on an interview." Even though he was a Penn State alumni, Snedden said, his mission was to find the truth.

"I am a Navy veteran," Snedden said. "You're talking about a potential risk to national security" if Spanier was deemed untrustworthy. Instead, "He was very forthcoming," Snedden said of Spanier. "He answered every question."

On the podcast, Ziegler asked Snedden if he turned up any evidence during his investigation that Jerry Sandusky was a pedophile.

"It was not sexual," Snedden said about what Mike McQueary allegedly heard and saw in the Penn State showers, before the prosecutors got through hyping the story, with the full cooperation of the media. "It was not sexual," Snedden insisted. "Nothing at all relative to a sexual circumstance. Nothing."

About PSU's top administrators, Snedden said, "They had no information that would make a person believe" that Sandusky was a pedophile.


"Gary Schultz was pretty clear as to what he was told and what he wasn't told," Snedden said. "What he was told was nothing was of a sexual nature."

As for Joe Paterno, Snedden said, "His involvement was very minimal in passing it [McQueary's account of the shower incident] to the people he reported to," meaning Schultz and Curley.

Spanier, 68, who was born in Cape Town, South Africa, became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1955. When Snedden interviewed Spanier, he couldn't recall the exact date that he was approached by Curley and Schultz with the news about the shower incident supposedly witnessed by McQueary.

It was "approximately in the early 2000 decade," Snedden wrote, when Spanier recalled being approached by Schultz and Curley in between university meetings. The two PSU administrators told Spanier they wanted to give him a "head's up" about a report they had received from Joe Paterno.

"A staff member," Snedden wrote, "had seen Jerry Sandusky in the locker room after a work out showering with one of his Second Mile kids. [Spanier] knew at the time that Jerry Sandusky was very involved with the Second Mile charity," Snedden wrote. "And, at that time, [Spanier] believed that it only involved high school kids. [Spanier] has since learned that the charity involves younger disadvantaged children."

Because it was Spanier's "understanding at that time that the charity only involved high school kids it did not send off any alarms," Snedden wrote. Then the prosecutors and their friends in the media went to work.

"Curley and Schultz said that the person who had given the report was not sure what he had seen but that they were concerned about the situation with the kid in the shower," Snedden wrote.

Curley and Schultz told Spanier that the person who had given the report "was not sure what he saw because it was around the corner and that what he has reported was described as "horse play" or "horsing around." In his report, Snedden said that Spanier "assumed the terminology of horse play or horsing around came from Joe Paterno."

"They all agreed that Curley would talk to Jerry Sandusky, tell him not to bring kids into the locker room facilities," Snedden wrote. "And Curley was to tell the Second Mile management that it was not good for any of the Second Mile kids to come to the athletic locker room facilities, and that they should suspend that practice."

Spanier, Snedden wrote, never was told "who the person was who made the report. But "nothing was described as a sexual or criminal in any way," Snedden wrote.

The initial conversation between Spanier, Curley and Schultz about the Sandusky shower incident lasted 10 minutes, Snedden wrote. A few days later, Curley told Spanier "in person that the discussion had taken place and that everything went well."

"The issue never came up again with Curley, Schultz, Paterno, Sandusky, or anyone," Snedden wrote. "It did not appear very significant to anyone at the time."


Gary Schultz corroborated Spanier's account. Schultz told Snedden that back in February 2001, Tim Curley told him "something to the effect that Jerry Sandusky had been in the shower with a kid horsing around and wrestling. And Mike McQueary or a graduate assistant walked in and observed it. And McQueary or the graduate assistant was concerned."

Schultz believed the source of Curley's information was Joe Paterno, and that the conduct involved was horseplay.

"McQueary did not say anything of a sexual nature took place," Snedden wrote after interviewing Schultz. "McQueary did not say anything indicative of an incident of a serious sexual nature."

While Snedden was investigating Spanier, Louie Freeh was writing his overpriced $8.3 million report where he came to the opposite conclusion that Snedden did, that there was a coverup at Penn State. Only Louie Freeh didn't talk to Curley, Schultz, Paterno, McQueary or Sandusky. Freeh only talked to Spanier relatively briefly, at the end of his investigation, when he had presumably already come to his conclusions.

Ironically, one of the things Spanier told Freeh was that Snedden was also investigating what happened at Penn State. But that didn't seem to effect the conclusions of the Louie Freeh report, Snedden said. He wondered why.

He also wondered why his report had no effect on the attorney general's office, which had already indicted Curley and Schultz, and was planning to indict Spanier.

"I certainly think that if the powers that be . . . knew what was in his report, Snedden said, "They would certainly have to take a hard look at what they were doing."

Freeh and the AG, Snedden said, should have wanted to know "who was interviewed [by Sneddedn] and what did they say. I mean this is kind of pertinent to what we're doing," Snedden said of the investigations conducted by Freeh and the AG.

"If your goal in any investigation is to determine the facts of the case period, the circumstance should have been hey, we'll be happy to obtain any and all facts," Snedden said.

Snedden said he understood, however, why Freeh was uninterested in his report.

"It doesn't fit the narrative that he's [Louie Freeh] going for," Snedden said.

Freeh was on a tight deadline, Ziegler reminded Snedden. Freeh had to get his report out at a highly-anticipated press conference. And the Freeh report had to come out before the start of the football season. So the NCAA could drop the hammer on Penn State.

"He [Freeh] doesn't have time to read a hundred page report," Snedden said. He agreed with Ziegler that the whole disclosure of the Freeh report was "orchestrated" to come out right before the football season started.

It may have been good timing for the news media and the NCAA, Snedden said about the release of the Louie Freeh report. But it didn't make much sense from an investigator's point of view.


"I just don't understand why," Snedden told Ziegler, "why would you ignore more evidence. Either side that it lands on, why would you ignore it?"

Good question.

Snedden was aghast about the cost of the Louie Freeh report. His six-month federal investigation, Snedden said, "probably cost the federal government and the taxpayers $50,000 at the most. And he [Freeh] spent $8.3 million," Snedden said. "Unbelievable."

In a statement released March 24th, Freeh hailed the conviction of Spanier as having confirmed and verified "all the findings and facts" of the Freeh report. On Ziegler's podcast, however, Snedden was dismissive of Freeh's statement.

"It's like a preemptive strike to divert people's attention from the actual conviction for a misdemeanor," Snedden said about Freeh. Along with the fact that he jury found "no cover up no conspiracy," Snedden said.

"In a rational world Louie Freeh is completely discredited," Ziegler said. "The Freeh report is a joke." On the podcast, Ziegler ripped the "mainstream media morons" who said that the jury verdict vindicated Freeh.

"Which is horrendous," Snedden added.

Ziegler asked Snedden if he had any doubt that an innocent man was convicted last week.

"That's what I believe, one hundred percent," Snedden said about the "insane jury verdict."

About the Penn State scandal, Snedden said, "I've got to say it needs to be examined thoroughly and it needs to be examined by a competent law enforcement authority." And that's a law enforcement authority that "doesn't have any political connections with anybody on the boards of trustees when this thing hit the fan."

As for Snedden, he left the Penn State campus thinking, "Where is the crime?"

"This case has been all about emotion," Ziegler said. "It was never about facts."

"Exactly," Snedden said.

As someone who has spent the past five years investigating the "Billy Doe" case, I can testify that when the subject is sex abuse, and the media is involved, the next stop is the Twilight Zone. Where hysteria reigns, and logic and common sense go out the window.

Earlier in the podcast, Ziegler talked about the "dog and pony show" put on by the prosecution at the Spanier trial. It's a good example of what happens once you've entered the Twilight Zone.


At the Spanier trial, the 28-year-old known as Victim No. 5 was sworn in as a witness in the judge's chambers. When the jury came out, they were surprised to see Victim No. 5 already seated on the witness stand.

As extra sheriff's deputies patrolled the courtroom, the judge announced to the jury that the next witness would be referred to as "John Doe."

I was in the courtroom that day, and I thought the hoopla over Victim No. 5's appearance was bizarre and prejudicial to the case. In several sex abuse trials that I have covered in Philadelphia, the victim's real name was always used in court, starting from the moment when he or she was sworn in in the courtroom as a witness.

The judges and the prosecutors could always count on the media to censor itself, by not printing the real names of alleged victims out of some misguided social justice policy that borders on lunacy. At the exact same time they're hanging the defendants out to dry.

Talk about rigging a contest by what's supposed to be an impartial media.

At the Spanier trial, the prosecutor proceeded to place a box of Kleenex next to the witness stand. John Doe seemed composed until the prosecutor asked if he had ever been sexually abused. Right on cue, the witness started whimpering.

"Yes," he said.

By whom, the prosecutor asked.

By Jerry Sandusky, John Doe said, continuing to whimper.

The actual details of the alleged sex abuse were never explained. The jury could have left the courtroom believing that Victim No. 5 had been sexually assaulted or raped.

But the sexual abuse Victim No. 5 was allegedly subjected to was that Sandusky allegedly soaped the boy up in the shower and may have touched his penis.

For that alleged abuse, Victim No. 5 collected $8 million.


I kid you not.

There was also much confusion over the date of the abuse.

First, John Doe said that the abuse took place when he was 10 years old, back in 1998. Then, the victim changed his story to say he was abused the first time he met Sandusky, back when he was 12 or 13 years old, in 2000 or 2001, but definitely before 9/11, because he could never forget 9/11. Next, the victim said that he was abused after 9/11, when he would have been 14.

At the Spanier trial, the prosecution used "John Doe" or Victim No. 5 for one main purpose: to prove to the jury that he had been abused after the infamous Mike McQueary shower incident of February, 2001. To show the jury that more victims were abused after Spanier, Curley and Schultz had decided to initiate their alleged coverup following the February 2001 shower incident.

But there was only one problem. To prove John Doe had a relationship with Sandusky, the prosecution introduced as an exhibit a photo taken of the victim with Sandusky.

Keep in mind it was John Doe/Victim No. 5's previous testimony that Sandusky abused him at their first meeting. The only problem, as Ziegler disclosed on his podcast, was the photo of Victim No. 5 was taken from a book, "Touched, The Jerry Sandusky Story," by Jerry Sandusky. And according to Amazon, that book was published on Nov. 17, 2000.

Three months before the alleged shower incident witnessed by Mike McQueary. Meaning that in a real world where facts matter, John Doe/Victim No. 5 was totally irrelevant to the case.

It was the kind of thing that a defense lawyer would typically jump on during cross-examination, confusion over the date of the abuse. Excuse me, Mr. Doe, we all know you have suffered terribly, but when did the abuse happen? Was it in 1998, or was it 2000, or 2001 or even 2002? And hey, what's the deal with that photo?

But the Spanier trial was conducted in the Twilight Zone. Spanier's lawyers chose not to ask a single question of John Doe. As Samuel W. Silver explained why to the jury in his closing statement: he did not want to add to the suffering of a sainted victim of sex abuse by subjecting him to cross-examination. Like you would have done with any normal human being when the freedom of your client was at stake.

That left Spanier in the Twilight Zone, where he was convicted by a jury on one count of endangering the welfare of a child.

To add to the curious nature of the conviction, the statute of limitations for endangering the welfare of a child is two years. But the incident that Spanier, Schultz and Curley were accused of covering up, the infamous Mike McQueary shower incident, happened back in 2001.

At the Spanier trial, the prosecution was only able to try the defendant on a charge that had long ago expired by throwing in a conspiracy charge. In theory, that meant that the defendant and his co-conspirators could still be prosecuted, because they'd allegedly been engaging in a pattern of illegal conduct over sixteen years -- the coverup that never happened --- which kept the original child endangerment charge on artificial respiration until the jury could decide the issue.


But the jury found Spanier not guilty on the conspiracy charge. And they also found Spanier not guilty of engaging in a continuing course of [criminal] conduct.

That means that Spanier was convicted on a single misdemeanor charge of endangering the welfare of a child, dating back to 2001. A crime that the statute of limitations had long ago expired on.

On this issue, Silver was willing to express an opinion.

"We certainly will be pursuing the statute of limitations as one of our post-trial issues," he wrote in an email.

Meanwhile, Graham Spanier remains a prisoner in the Twilight Zone. And until there's a credible investigation of what really happened, all of Penn State nation remains trapped in there with him.
McQ saw JS and a boy through the mirror. Mirrors distort depth perception. If you know the facility, you know how it was laid out. McQ said he slammed the locker door and then moved over to look straight into the shower. At that point, JS and the boy were separated by several feet. Bottom line is that he didn't directly see anything that was even remotely a crime. It gets even worse when you consider that McQ didn't ID the kid so there is no way to validate what McQ saw or didn't see. That is the bottom line of the McQ issue.
 
Yes you did. She did not say what you wrote. You are getting to be like your butt buddy. A liar
You cannot comprehend the written word very well.

I had already posted what she wrote in post#1048. Your asinine retort was that she wasn't reprimanded so it does not matter, or something to that effect.

My follow up was to simplify it for the dumb kids. I wrote that "she essentially said...". She/OAG intentionally lied. that is the point of the damn message. Only an obtuse asshole would question it.
 
WHCA-Hole is an acknowledged pedophile. He has dropped so many hints in this thread alone that that much should be obvious to everyone.

WHCA-Hole needs any truth about Sandusky to remain hidden, as it helps him maintain his sick lifestyle. I think he gets his jollies talking about his sick lifestyle on public message boards.
 
McQ saw JS and a boy through the mirror. Mirrors distort depth perception. If you know the facility, you know how it was laid out. McQ said he slammed the locker door and then moved over to look straight into the shower. At that point, JS and the boy were separated by several feet. Bottom line is that he didn't directly see anything that was even remotely a crime. It gets even worse when you consider that McQ didn't ID the kid so there is no way to validate what McQ saw or didn't see. That is the bottom line of the McQ issue.
That's not what MM said to CSS, Paterno, the OAG or at the trials of Spanier or Sandusky.
 
You cannot comprehend the written word very well.
Better than you it seems
I had already posted what she wrote in post#1048.
Which was not what you said she said.
Your asinine retort was that she wasn't reprimanded so it does not matter, or something to that effect.
A point you never answered.
My follow up was to simplify it for the dumb kids.
I admit you are dumb
I wrote that "she essentially said...". She/OAG intentionally lied. that is the point of the damn message. Only an obtuse asshole would question it.
Which is YOUR BIASED interpretation of what she said not what she actually said.

I'll take a moment here while conversing with a JoeBot to debunk the LIE told about the GJP by Cipriano et al.

When MM talked to the OAG investigators in 2010 he told them that based on what he witnessed in 2001 it looked like Sandusky was anally sodomizing a young boy. This makes sense based on MM's consistent testimony that he saw a naked Sandusky standing directly behind a boy with his arms around the boy whose hands were up on the wall in the men's shower room with flesh against flesh and Sandusky's hips moving.

Now, to anyone seeing that (unless you are a pervert and call it horseplay as @PSU2UNC does) it would look like anal sodomy. However, MM did not see insertion (apparently an element of the crime of deviant intercourse) because of the angle he was viewing the molestation and so he could not say FOR SURE that (anal sodomy) is what was happening but it sure looked like it to him at the time (showing why he was freaked out when he later that night spoke to Dranov and his Dad). So MM DID tell the OAG what he saw looked like anal sodomy. In the GJP if you go to page 7 it says that MM told CSS "what he believed to be" Jerry having sex with the boy. I suspect if the OAG had the opportunity to rewrite that GJP they would have added that MM saw "what appeared to be anal sodomy" earlier in the document.

You guys whole "outrage" about the "OAG lies" is nothing more than a writing mistake and nothing more. As I have said all along, replace anal rape with sexual molestation (which MM DID see) and the public outrage would be the same. The OAG should have said something like "MM observed what he believed to be anal sodomy" in the beginning narrative of Victim 2 which was indeed the truth.

Finally, Eschbach did not muzzle MM. ALL prosecutors will always ask their witnesses to refrain from talking to the media as it could create bias in the public view and jeopardize the case (that happened in the OJ murders). She could not and did NOT TELL MM (or threaten him) not to say anything but urged him not to and that is quite normal for the reasons stated.

So, the "prosecutorial misconduct" you fools rave about didn't happen and THAT is why Eschbach was not disciplined by either the OAG OR the PA Bar. She didn't commit such misconduct but in your religiously zealous minds you have created such a delusion.
 
Quite the intelligent, mature response.

It's unfortunate that so many people like you become the face of Penn State fans. In complete denial that this program had indicators for years that Sandusky was a potential issue -- but did nothing. In complete denial. And why? Because you value the reputation of your football coach more than the urgency of protecting potential victims of a man who was clearly troubled.

And thank you. I had a great night!

Yeah, maturity in short supply.


When he was investigating cold cases for NCIS, Special Agent John Snedden knew you always have to start from the beginning.

"Let's take a deep breath," he said. "And let's go back to square one, to the source of the original allegation, to determine whether it's credible."

On the Penn State campus in 2012, with national security at stake, that's just what Special Agent Snedden did on behalf of the U.S. government. And instead of finding a sex scandal or a cover-up in the cold case he was investigating in Happy Valley, Snedden said he discovered ample evidence of a "political hit job."

Back in 2012, Snedden was working as a special agent for the Federal Investigative Services. His assignment against the backdrop of the so-called Penn State sex abuse scandal was to determine whether former Penn State President Graham Spanier deserved to have his high-level national security clearance renewed.

The focus was on Spanier, but to do that investigation properly, Snedden, a PSU alum himself, had to unravel a big mess at his old alma mater. To figure out whether Spanier could be trusted with access to the most sensitive national secrets.

So Snedden began his job by starting at the beginning. By going back eleven years, to 2001, when Mike McQueary made his famous trip to the Penn State locker room. Where McQueary supposedly heard and saw a naked Jerry Sandusky cavorting in the showers with a young boy.

But there was a problem. In the beginning, Snedden said, McQueary "told people he doesn't know what he saw exactly." McQueary said he heard "rhythmic slapping sounds" in the shower, Snedden said.

"I've never had a rape case successfully prosecuted based only on sounds, and without credible victims and witnesses," Snedden said.

"I don't think you can say he's credible," Snedden said about McQueary. Why? Because he told "so many different stories," Snedden said. McQueary's stories about what he thought he saw or heard in the shower ranged from rough horseplay and/or wrestling all the way up to sex.

Which story, Snedden asked, do you want to believe?

"None of it makes any sense," Snedden said about McQueary's tale. "It's not a credible story."

Back in 2001, Snedden said, Mike McQueary was a 26-year-old, 6-foot-5, 240-pound former college quarterback used to running away from 350-pound defensive linemen.

If McQueary actually saw Jerry Sandusky raping a young boy in the shower, Snedden said, he probably would have done something to stop it.

"I think your moral compass would cause you to act and not just flee," Snedden said.

If McQueary really thought he was witnessing a sexual assault on a child, Snedden said, wouldn't he have gotten between the victim and a "wet, defenseless naked 57-year-old guy in the shower?"

Or, if McQueary decided he wasn't going to physically intervene, Snedden said, then why didn't he call the cops from the Lasch Building? The locker room where McQueary supposedly saw Sandusky with the boy in the showers.

When he was a baby NCIS agent, Snedden said, a veteran agent who was his mentor would always ask the same question.

"So John," the veteran agent would say, "Where is the crime?"

At Penn State, Snedden didn't find one.

Working on behalf of FIS, Snedden wrote a 110-page report, all in capital letters, where he catalogued the evidence that led him to conclude that McQueary wasn't a credible witness.

In his report, Snedden interviewed Thomas G. Poole, Penn State's vice president for administration. Poole told Snedden he was in Graham Spanier's office when news of the Penn State scandal broke, and Penn State's then-senior Vice President Gary Schultz came rushing in.

Schultz blurted out that "McQueary never told him this was sexual," Snedden wrote. Schultz was shocked by what McQueary told the grand jury, Snedden wrote.

"He [McQueary] told the grand jury that he reported to [Schultz] that this was sexual," Schultz told Poole and Spanier.

"While speaking, Schultz shook his head back and forth as in disbelief," Snedden wrote about Poole's observations. Poole "believes it appeared there was a lot of disbelief in the room regarding this information."
"I've never had a rape victim or a witness to a rape tell multiple stories about how it happened," Snedden said. "If it's real it's always been the same thing."

But that's not what happened with McQueary. And Snedden thinks he knows why.
"In my view, the evolution of what we saw as a result of Mike McQueary's interview with the AG's office" was the transformation of a story about rough horseplay into something sexual, Snedden said.
"I think it would be orchestrated by them," Snedden said about the AG's office, which has not responded to multiple requests for comment.

In Snedden's report, he interviewed Schuyler J. McLaughlin, Penn State's facility security officer at the university's applied research laboratory. McLaughlin, a former NCIS agent himself, as well as a lawyer, told Snedden that McQueary initially was confused by what he saw.

"What McQueary saw, apparenty it looked sexual to him and he may have been worried about what would happen to him," Snedden wrote. "Because McQueary wanted to keep his job" at Penn State.
[McLaughlin] "believes Curley and Schultz likely asked tough questions and those tough questions likely caused McQueary to question what he actually saw," Snedden wrote. McLaughlin "believes that after questioning, McQueary likely did not know what he actually saw," Snedden wrote. "And McQueary "probably realized he could not prove what he saw."

There was also confusion over the date of the alleged shower incident. At the grand jury, McQueary testified that it took place on March 1, 2002. But at the Sandusky trial, McQueary changed the date of the shower incident to Feb. 9, 2001.

There was also confusion over the identity of the boy in the showers. In 2011, the Pennsylvania State Police interviewed a man suspected of being "Victim No. 2." Allan Myers was then a 24-year-old married Marine who had been involved in Sandusky's Second Mile charity since he was a third-grader.

Myers, however, told the state police he "does not believe the allegations that have been raised" against Sandusky, and that another accuser was "only out to get some money." Myers said he used to work out with Sandusky since he was 12 or 13, and that "nothing inappropriate occurred while showering with Sandusky." Myers also told the police that Sandusky never did anything that "made him uncomfortable."

Myers even wrote a letter of support for Sandusky that was published in the Centre Daily Times, where he described Sandusky as his "best friend, tutor, workout mentor and more." Myers lived with Sandusky while he attended college. When Myers got married, he invited Jerry and Dottie Sandusky to the wedding.

Then, Myers got a lawyer and flipped, claiming that Sandusky assaulted him ten times. But at the Sandusky trial, the state attorney general's office deemed Myers an unreliable witness and did not call him to testify against Sandusky.

Instead, the prosecutor told the jury, the identity of Victim No. 2, the boy in the showers, "was known only to God."

Myers, however, eventually collected $3 million in what was supposed to be a confidential settlement with Penn State as Victim No. 2.
Mike McQueary may not have known for sure what he heard and saw in the shower. And the cops and the prosecutors may not know who Victim No. 2 really was. But John Snedden had it figured out pretty early what the source of the trouble was at Penn State.

Snedden recalled that four days into his 2012 investigation, he called his bosses to let them know that despite all the hoopla in the media, there was no sex scandal at Penn State.
"I just want to make sure you realize that this is a political hit job," Snedden recalled telling his bosses. "The whole thing is political."
Why did the Penn State situation get blown so far out of proportion?

"When I get a case, I independently investigate it," Snedden said. "It seems like that was not the case here. It wasn't an independent inquiry. It was an orchestrated effort to make the circumstances fit the alleged crime."

How did they get it so wrong at Penn State?

"To put it in a nutshell, I would say there was an exceptional rush to judgment to satisfy people," Snedden said. "So they wouldn't have to answer any more questions."

"It's a giant rush to judgement," Snedden said. "There was no debate."

"Ninety-nine percent of it is hysteria," Snedden said. Ninety-nine percent of what happened at Penn State boiled down to people running around yelling, "Oh my God, we've got to do something immediately," Snedden said.

It didn't matter that most of the people Snedden talked to at Penn State couldn't believe that Graham Spanier would have ever participated in a coverup, especially involving the abuse of a child.

Carolyn A. Dolbin, an administrative assistant to the PSU president, told Snedden that Spanier told her "that his father has physically abused him when [Spanier] was a child, and as a result [Spanier] had a broken nose and needed implants."
Spanier himself told Snedden, "He had been abused as a child and he would not stand for that," meaning a coverup, Snedden wrote.

Snedden couldn't believe the way the Penn State Board of Trustees acted the night they decided to fire both Spanier and Paterno.

There was no investigation, no determination of the facts. Instead, the officials running the show at Penn State wanted to move on as fast as possible from the scandal by sacrificing a few scapegoats.

At an executive session, the vice chairman of the PSU board, John Surma, the CEO of U.S. Steel in Pittsburgh, told his fellow PSU board members, "We need to get rid of Paterno and Spanier," Snedden said. And then Surma asked, "Does anybody disagree with that?"

"There wasn't even a vote," Snedden said. In Snedden's report, Dr. Rodney Erickson, the former PSU president, told Snedden that Spanier "is collateral damage in all of this."

Erickson didn't believe there was a coverup at Penn State, because of what Spanier had told him.

"I was told it was just horsing around in the shower," Spanier told Erickson, as recounted in Snedden's report. "How do you call the police on that?"

On the night the board of trustees fired Paterno, they kept calling Paterno's house, but there was no answer. Finally, the board sent a courier over to Paterno's house, and asked him to call Surma's cell phone.


When Paterno called, Surma was ready to tell the coach three things. But he only got to his first item.

"Surma was only able to tell Paterno that he was no longer football coach before Paterno hung up," Snedden wrote.

In Snedden's report, Spanier is quoted as telling Frances Anne Riley, a member of the board of trustees, "I was so naive."

"He means that politically," Snedden said about Spanier. "He was so naive to understand that a governor would go to that level to jam him. How a guy could be so vindictive," Snedden said, referring to the former governor, who could not be reached for comment.

When the Penn State scandal hit, "It was a convenient disaster," Snedden said. Because it gave the governor a chance "to fulfill vendettas."

The governor was angry at Spanier for vocally opposing Corbett's plan to cut Penn State's budget by 52 percent, Snedden wrote. In his report, Spanier, who was put under oath by Snedden and questioned for eight hours, stated that he had been the victim of "vindictiveness from the governor."

In Snedden's report, Spanier "explained that Gov. Corbett is an alumni of Lebanon Valley College [a private college], that Gov. Corbett is a strong supporter of the voucher system, wherein individuals can choose to utilize funding toward private eduction, as opposed to public education."
Corbett, Spanier told Snedden, "is not fond of Penn State, and is not fond of public higher education."

Spanier, Snedden wrote, "is now hearing that when the Penn State Board of Trustees was telling [Spanier] not to take action and that they [the Penn State Board of Trustees] were going to handle the situation, that the governor was actually exercising pressure on the [The Penn State Board of Trustees] to have [Spanier] leave."
The governor, Snedden said, "wants to be the most popular guy in Pennsylvania." But Spanier was fighting him politically, and Joe Paterno was a football legend.

Suddenly, the Penn State scandal came along, and Corbett could lobby the Penn State Board of Trustees to get rid of both Spanier and Paterno.

And suddenly Corbett starts showing up at Penn State Board of Trustees meetings, where the governor was a board member, but didn't usually bother to go. Only now Corbett "is the knight in shining armor," Snedden said. Because he's the guy cleaning up that horrible sex abuse scandal at Penn State.

"The wrong people are being looked at here," Snedden said about the scandal at Penn State. As far as Snedden was concerned, the board of trustees at Penn State had no reason to fire Spanier or Paterno.

""It's a political vendetta by somebody that has an epic degree of vindictiveness and will stop at nothing apparently," Snedden said about Corbett.

The whole thing is appalling," Snedden said. "It's absurd that somebody didn't professionally investigate this thing from the get-go."

As far as Snedden is concerned, the proof that the investigation was tampered with was shown in the flip-flop done by Cynthia Baldwin, Penn State's former counsel.

"You've got a clear indication that Cynthia Baldwin was doing whatever they wanted her to do," Snedden said about Baldwin's cooperation with the AG's office.

In her interview with Snedden, Baldwin called Spanier "a very smart man, a man of integrity." She told Snedden that she trusted Spanier, and trusted his judgment. This was true even during "the protected privileged period" from 2010 on, Baldwin told Snedden. While Baldwin was acting as Spanier's counsel, and, on the advice of her lawyer, wasn't supposed to discuss that so-called privileged period with Snedden.

Baldwn subsequently became a cooperating witness who testified against Spanier, Curley and Schultz.

Another aspect of the hysterical rush to judgment by Penn State: the university paid out $93 million to the alleged victims of Sandusky, without vetting anybody. None of the alleged victims were deposed by lawyers; none were examined by forensic psychiatrists.

Instead, Penn State just wrote the checks, no questions asked. The university's free-spending prompted a lawsuit from Penn State's insurance carrier, the Pennsylvania Manufacturers Association Insurance Company.

So Snedden wrote a report that called for renewing Spanier's high-level security clearance. Because Snedden didn't find any evidence of a coverup at Penn State. Because there was nothing to cover up.

"The circumstances surrounding [Spanier's] departure from his position as PSU president do not cast doubt on [Spanier's] current reliability, trustworthiness or good judgment and do not cast doubt on his ability to properly safeguard national security information," Snedden wrote.
Meanwhile, the university paid $8.3 million for a report from former FBI Director Louie Freeh, who reached the opposite conclusion that Snedden did. Freeh found that there had been a top-down coverup of a sex crime at Penn State that was allegedly orchestrated by Spanier.

What does Snedden think of the Louie Freeh report?

"It's an embarrassment to law enforcement," Snedden said.

Louie Freeh, Snedden said, is a political appointee.

"Maybe he did an investigation at one point in his life, but not on this one," Snedden said about the report Freeh wrote on Penn State.

What about the role the media played in creating an atmosphere of hysteria?

"Sadly, I think they've demonstrated that investigative journalism is dead," Snedden said.
If Jerry Sandusky was a pedophile, Snedden said, how did he survive a month-long investigation back in 1998 by the Penn State police, the State College police, the Centre County District Attorney's office, and the state Department of Child/Public Welfare?

All of those agencies investigated Sandusky, after a mother complained about Jerry taking a shower with her 11-year-old son. Were all those agencies bamboozled? None of them could catch a pedophile in action?

Another problem for people who believe that Jerry Sandusky was a pedophile: When the cops came to Sandusky's house armed with search warrants, they didn't find any porn.

Have you ever heard of a pedophilia case where large caches of pornography weren't found, I asked Snedden.

"No," he said. "Having worked child sex abuse cases before, they [pedophiles] go from the porn to actually acting it out. It's a crescendo."

"I'm more inclined" to believe the results of the 1998 investigation, Snedden said. "Because they're not politically motivated."

Snedden said he's had "minimalistic contact" with Sandusky that basically involved watching him behave at a high school football game.

"I really do think he's a big kid," Snedden said of Sandusky.

Does he believe there's any credible evidence that Sandusky is a pedophile?

"Certainly none that's come to light that wasn't susceptible to manipulation," he said.

Does Sandusky deserve a new trial?

"Without a doubt," Snedden said. Because the first time around, when he was sentenced to 30 to 60 years in jail, Sandusky didn't have a real trial, Snedden said.

"To have a real trial, you should actually have real credible witnesses and credible victims," Snedden said. "And no leaks from the grand jury."

It also would have been a fair trial, Snedden said, if the people who Sandusky would have called as defense witnesses hadn't already been indicted by the state attorney general's office.

While he was investigating Spanier, Snedden said, he had his own dust-up with the state Attorney General's office. It came in the form of an unwanted phone call from Anthony Sassano, the lead investigator in the AG's office on the Sandusky case.

Sassano didn't go through the appropriate channels when he called, Snedden said. But Sassano demanded to see Snedden's report.

Snedden said he told Sassano, sorry, but that's the property of the federal government. Sassano, Snedden said, responded by "spewing obscenities."

"It was something to the effect of I will ****ing see your ass and your ****ing report at the grand jury," Snedden recalled Sassano telling him.

Sure enough, Snedden was served with a subpoena from the state AG's office on October 22, 2012. But the feds sent the subpoena back saying they didn't have to honor it.

"The doctrine of sovereign immunity precludes a state court from compelling a federal employee, pursuant to its subpoena and contempt powers, from offering testimony contrary to his agency's instructions," the feds wrote back to the state Attorney General's office.

So what would it take to straighten out the mess at Penn State?

"The degree of political involvement in this case is so high," Snedden said.

"You need to take an assistant U.S. Attorney from Arizona or somewhere who doesn't know anything about Penn State," Snedden said. Surround him with a competent staff of investigators, and turn them loose for 30 days.
 
McQ saw JS and a boy through the mirror. Mirrors distort depth perception. If you know the facility, you know how it was laid out. McQ said he slammed the locker door and then moved over to look straight into the shower. At that point, JS and the boy were separated by several feet. Bottom line is that he didn't directly see anything that was even remotely a crime. It gets even worse when you consider that McQ didn't ID the kid so there is no way to validate what McQ saw or didn't see. That is the bottom line of the McQ issue.
This is getting silly, seriously. Think it through. Why did they wait to talk to Mike? Why wait to talk to TSM? Why not haul in jerry, get the name of the kid, and question them?
There's no issue with Mike at all, he convinced 3 juries of his story.
 
This is getting silly, seriously. Think it through. Why did they wait to talk to Mike? Why wait to talk to TSM? Why not haul in jerry, get the name of the kid, and question them?
There's no issue with Mike at all, he convinced 3 juries of his story.
First, how does any of that relate to Paterno? He was told of a watered-down story and reported it to his boss and someone outside the vertical and got out of the way. There is no evidence he interfered in any way other than to ask MM if he was OK days later.

Second, by the time C/S got the data, it was too late. There was no way to know who the kid was from JS or the second mile. What were they supposed to do? I do agree they underperformed. But that is easy to say in hindsight. They, perhaps, dragged their feet but that is a far cry from actively coving up. And that is why all the charges were dropped (after the prosecution tortured them for five years) and settled on a misdemeanor.

Back to MM, he "convinced" juries based on the volume of claims, not his alone. For example, if Deshawn Watson. If there was one accuser, nobody would care. But with 22 accusers, the idea is that something must have happened to make 22 accusers. MM never convinced a single person his story was true by itself. The prosecution even stated this....that the value was in getting several stories that we unconnected and disassociated. If anyone is to blame, it is TSM. After them, it is the police that never connected the dots.

MM is not believable, IMHO. he walked out on a kid being raped by an adult as a 26-year-old football player/coach? C'mon. If he wasn't trustworthy enough to intervene for a kid being raped, how trustworthy is his story? IMHO, he either a) walked away from a kid being raped by an adult or b) embellished his story to make him seem like he wasn't a total loser. You chose. It has to be one of those two options.
 
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It is clear who you are — a scientist who went to school at Penn State, earned his PhD and was awarded a congressional medal. Any reasonable person would accept that you are who you say you are.

The fact is that you are not dealing with a reasonable person and nothing will ever be proof enough for him and that he will never admit that he is wrong. He demonstrated to me that he was not reasonable when he was unable to articulate any closing arguments that he would make as Sandusky's defense attorney and did not want to admit that there are any serious counter arguments to the prevailing media narrative that Sandusky was a master pillar of the coummunity child molester and that Penn State administrators knowingly covered-up his crimes.

It is obvious to me that he has an agenda. I am guessing that he is an OAG troll. I am not interested in engaging him because I can't take him seriously.
I can't take him seriously because he is unwilling and unable to counter the conclusions of John Snedden, Mark Pendergrast, John Ziegler, Ralph Cipriano, Professor Fred Crews, Professor Michael Bailey, Malcolm Gladwell, Dick Anderson and a host of others without resorting to character assasinations. Their conclusions are very credible and have been adopted by thousands who have been willing to take a deep dive on this topic. On the other hand, former NCIS Special Agent of the year John Snedden is spot on with his assessment that it is in fact Mike McQueary who is clearly not a very credible witness.
 
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For those who were wondering what the reported ESPN storyline (long storyline) would be a while back, here it is on the 10th anniversary of the Sandusky scandal from ESPN.
EDIT: for those who are already upset, or not wanting to view/dignify ESPN (I understand), clique at your own risk. It’s not flattering and quite lengthy


ESPN again?




Remember, it was the Freeh Report that the NCAA relied upon in 2012 to impose draconian sanctions on Penn State, including a $60 million fine, a bowl game ban that lasted two years, the loss of 170 athletic scholarships and the elimination of 111 of Joe Paterno's wins, although the wins were subsequently restored.

On Friday, a group of 11 trustees called on the full 38-member board to release the full 200-page critique of the 267-page Freeh Report, formally renounce Freeh's findings, and try to recoup some of the $8.3 million that the university paid Freeh.

"I want to put the document in your hands so you can read it yourself, but I can't do that today," said Alice Pope, a trustee and St. John's University professor about the internal review of the source materials for the Freeh report.

But the materials that Pope and six other trustees had to sue the university to obtain are still under seal according to a 2015 court order. And the university's lawyers have recently advised the 11 minority trustees that the report they worked on for more than two years remains privileged and confidential, and out of reach of the public.

So yesterday, Pope called on the full board to release the 200-page report as early as their next meeting, on July 20th. But chances are slim and none that the board's chairman, Mark Dambly, and other majority board members will ever willingly open Pandora's box. They don't want to reveal to the public the facts that the university has spent millions of dollars in legal fees to keep buried for the past six years. Facts that will present further evidence of just how badly the trustees, Louie Freeh, and the attorney general's office thoroughly botched the Penn State investigation in a rush to judgment. Not to mention the media.

The full board of trustees, Pope noted yesterday, never voted to formally adopt the findings of the Freeh Report, which found that Penn State officials had covered up the sex crimes of Jerry Sandusky.

"Rather, the board adopted a don't act, don't look and don't tell policy" Pope said that amounted to a "tacit acceptance of the Freeh Report." A report that Pope said has resulted in "profound reputational harm to our university along with $300 million in costs so far."

In addition to the $60 million in fines, the university's board of trustees has -- while doing little or no investigating -- paid out a minimum of $118 million to 36 alleged victims of sex abuse, in addition to spending more than $80 million in legal fees, and $50 million to institute new reforms aimed at preventing future abuse.

That internal 200-page report and the materials it draws upon may still be privileged and confidential. But Big Trial has obtained a seven-page "Executive Summary of Findings" of that internal review dated Jan. 8, 2017, plus an attached 25-page synopsis of evidence gleaned from those confidential files still under court seal.

According to the executive summary, "Louis Freeh and his team disregarded the preponderance of the evidence" in concluding there was a cover up at Penn State of Jerry Sandusky's crimes.

There's more: "Louis Freeh and his team knowingly provided a false conclusion in stating that the alleged coverup was motivated by a desire to protect the football program and a false culture that overvalued football and athletics," the executive summary states.

In the executive summary, the trustees faulted Freeh and his investigators for their "willingness . . . to be led by media narratives," as well as "an over reliance on unreliable sources," such as former Penn State Counsel Cynthia Baldwin.

Freeh, the executive summary states, also relied on "deeply flawed" procedures for interviewing witnesses. The interviews conducted by Freeh's investigators weren't done under oath, or subpoenas, and they weren't tape-recorded, the executive summary states. Those faulty methods led to "biased reporting of interview data" and "inaccurate summaries" of witness testimony.

At yesterday's press conference, Pope said the 11 trustees wanted to know the degree of cooperation Freeh's team had with the NCAA and the state attorney general's office during their investigations. According to statecollege.com, state Senate Majority Leader Jake Corman has previously stated that the coordination between Freeh and the NCAA during the Penn State investigation was at best inappropriate, and at worst "two parties working together to get a predetermined outcome."

In the executive summary, the trustees cited "interference in Louis Freeh's investigation by the Pennsylvania Office of Attorney General, wherein information gathered in the criminal investigations of Penn State officials was improperly (and perhaps illegally) shared with Louis Freeh and his team."

This is a subject Big Trial will explore in a subsequent blog post. But earlier this year, I wrote to Louis Freeh, and asked if he and his team was authorized to have access to grand jury secrets in Pennsylvania. He declined comment.

At yesterday's board meeting, Pope addressed this topic, saying, "additional information has emerged in the public domain indicates cooperation between the PA Office of Attorney General and Freeh. We believed it was important to understand the degree of cooperation between the Freeh investigation and the Office of Attorney General."

Yesterday, Freeh issued a statement that ripped the minority trustees. "Since 2015," he wrote, "these misguided alumni have been fighting a rear-guard action to turn the clocks back and to resist the positive changes which the PSU students and faculty have fully embraced." He concluded that despite consistent criticism of his report by the minority trustees, in the last six years, they have produced "no report, no facts, news and no credible evidence" that have damaged the credibility of his investigation.

But in the executive summary, the trustees blasted Freeh for having an alleged conflict of interest with the NCAA, and they cited some credible evidence to prove it.

"Louis Freeh's conflict of interest in pursuing future investigative assignments with the NCAA during his contracted period of working for Penn State," the executive summary states, "provided motivation for forming conclusions consistent with the NCAA's goals to enhance their own reputation by being tough on Penn State."

In a criminal manner, such as the Jerry Sandusky pedophilia investigation, the NCAA lacked legal standing. But the NCAA justified its intervention in the case by finding that a lack of institutional control on the part of Penn State enabled the Jerry Sandusky sex scandal.

In their synopsis of evidence, the trustees relied on internal Freeh Group emails that showed that while Freeh was finishing up his investigation of Penn State, he was angling for his group to become the "go to investigators" for the NCAA.

On July 7, 2012, a week before the release of the Freeh Report on Penn State, Omar McNeill, a senior investigator for Freeh, wrote to Freeh and a partner of Freeh's. "This has opened up an opportunity to have the dialogue with [NCAA President Mark] Emmert about possibly being the go to internal investigator for the NCAA," McNeill wrote. "It appears we have Emmert's attention now."

In response, Freeh wrote back, "Let's try to meet with him and make a deal -- a very good cost contract to be the NCAA's 'go to investigators' -- we can even craft a big discounted rate given the unique importance of such a client. Most likely he will agree to a meeting -- if he does not ask for one first."

A spokesman for Freeh did not respond to a request for comment.

At yesterday's board meeting, Pope said the "NCAA knew that their own rules prevented them from punishing Penn State," but that the "NCAA decided to punish Penn State anyway in order to enhance its own reputation." She added that documents made public to date show that the "NCAA was closely involved with the Freeh investigation."

"We believed it was important to understand the degree of cooperation between the Freeh investigation and the NCAA."

At yesterday's press conference, Pope also raised the issue of a separate but concurrent federal investigation conducted on the Penn State campus in 2012 by Special Agent John Snedden. The federal investigation, made public last year, but completely ignored by the mainstream media, reached the opposite conclusion that Freeh and the attorney general did, that there was no official cover up at Penn State.

Pope stated she wanted to know more about the discrepancies between the parallel investigations that led to polar opposite conclusions.

Back in 2012, Snedden, a former NCIS special agent working as a special agent for the Federal Investigative Services [FIS], was assigned to determine whether Spanier deserved to have a high-level national security clearance renewed. During his investigation, Snedden placed Spanier under oath and questioned him for eight hours. Snedden also interviewed many other witnesses on the Penn State campus, including Cynthia Baldwin, who told him that Spanier was a "man of integrity."

About six months after Baldwin told Snedden this, she flipped, and appeared in a secret grand jury proceeding to not only testify against Spanier, but also against former Penn State Athletic Director Tim Curley, and former Penn State Vice President Gary Schultz.

Baldwin, who had previously represented Spanier, Curley and Schultz before the grand jury, testified last month before the disciplinary board of the state Supreme Court, where she has been brought up on misconduct charges for allegedly violating the attorney-client privilege.

After his investigation, Special Agent Snedden concluded in a 110-page report that Spanier had done nothing wrong, and that there was no coverup at Penn State.

That's because, according to Snedden, Mike McQueary, the alleged whistleblower in the case, was an unreliable witness who told many different conflicting stories about an alleged incident in the Penn State showers where McQueary saw Jerry Sandusky with a naked 10-year-old boy. "Which story do you believe?" Snedden told Big Trial last year.

In his grand jury testimony, McQueary said his observations of Sandusky were based on one or two "glances" in the shower that lasted only "one or two seconds," glances relating to an incident at least eight years previous. But in the hands of the attorney general's fiction writers, those glances of "one or two seconds" became an anal rape of a child, as conclusively witnessed by McQueary.

That, my friends, is what we call prosecutorial misconduct of the intentional kind, the kind that springs convicted murderers out of a Death Row jail cell. And it's a scandal that for six years, the attorney general's office has refused to address, a scandal that the mainstream media has failed to hold the AG accountable for.

On March 1, 2002, according to the 2011 grand jury presentment, [McQueary] walked into the locker room in the Lasch Building at State College and heard “rhythmic, slapping sounds.” Glancing into a mirror, he “looked into the shower . . . [and] saw a naked boy, Victim No. 2, whose age he estimated to be 10 years old, with his hands up against the wall, being subjected to anal intercourse by a naked Jerry Sandusky.”

"The graduate assistant went to his office and called his father, reporting to him what he had seen. The graduate assistant and his father decided that the graduate assistant had to promptly report what he had seen to Coach Joe Paterno . . . The next morning, a Saturday, the graduate assistant telephoned Paterno and went to Paterno's home, where he reported what he had seen."

But the alleged victim of the shower rape has never came forward, despite an avalanche of publicity, and, according to the prosecutors, his identity was known "only to God." But McQueary knew the prosecutors weren't telling the truth. Days, after the presentment, McQueary wrote in an email to the attorney general's office that they had "slightly twisted his words" and, "I cannot say 1000 percent sure that it was sodomy. I did not see insertion."

On top of that, all the witnesses that the grand jury presentment claimed that McQueary had reported to them "what he had seen," the alleged anal rape of a 10-year-old boy [plus another witness cited by McQueary, a doctor who was a longtime family friend] have all repeatedly denied in court that McQueary ever told them that he witnessed an anal rape.
"I've never had a rape case successfully prosecuted based only on sounds, and without credible victims and witnesses," Snedden told Big Trial. As for the Freeh Report, Snedden described it as "an embarrassment to law enforcement."

Snedden also told Big Trial that the real cause behind the Penn State scandal was
"a political hit job" engineered by former attorney general and Gov. Tom Corbett, who had it in for Spanier, after they feuded over drastic budget cuts proposed by the governor at Penn State. Corbett has previously denied the charges.

At the same time Snedden was investigating Penn State, former FBI Director Louis Freeh was writing his report on the Penn State scandal, a report commissioned by the university, at a staggering cost of $8.3 million.

Freeh concluded that there had been a cover up. His report found a “striking lack of empathy for child abuse victims by the most senior leaders of the university,” which included Spanier, who had repeatedly been severely beaten by his father as a child, requiring several operations as an adult. Freeh also found that Spanier, Paterno, along with Schultz, the former Penn State vice president and Curley, the school’s ex-athletic director, “repeatedly concealed critical facts relating to Sandusky’s child abuse from the authorities.”
But critics such as the minority trustees have noted that the ex-FBI director reached his sweeping conclusions without his investigators ever talking to Paterno, Schultz, Curley, McQueary or Sandusky. Freeh only talked to Spanier briefly, at the end of his investigation. And confidential records viewed by the trustees show that Freeh’s own people disagreed with his conclusions.

According to those records, Freeh's own staff reviewed a May 21, 2012 draft of the Freeh Report, which was subsequently turned over to Penn State officials. The lead paragraph of the draft said, “At the time of the alleged sexual assaults by Jerry Sandusky, there was a culture and environment in the Penn State Athletic Department that led staff members to fail to identify or act on observed inappropriate conduct by Sandusky.”
The draft report talked about an environment of fear that affected even a janitor who supposedly saw Sandusky assaulting a boy in the showers in 2002: “There existed an environment within the athletic department that led an employee to determine that the perceived threat of losing his job outweighed the necessity of reporting the violent crime of a child.”
Over that paragraph in the draft report, a handwritten note said, “NO EVIDENCE AT ALL!” Freeh, however, in his final version of his report, included that charge about the janitor who allegedly saw Sandusky assault another boy in the showers but was so fearful he didn’t report it.

But when the state police interviewed that janitor, Jim Calhoun, he stated three times that it wasn’t Sandusky he had seen sexually abusing a boy. [The state police didn’t ask Calhoun who was the alleged assailant.] At Sandusky’s trial, however, the jury convicted the ex-coach of that crime, in part because his defense lawyer never told the jury about the janitor’s interview with the state police.

In a written statement, Freeh confirmed that the person who wrote “NO EVIDENCE AT ALL!” was one of his guys.

"Throughout the review at the Pennsylvania State University, members of the Freeh team were encouraged to speak freely and to challenge any factual assertions that they believed are not supported," Freeh wrote on Jan. 10, 2018.

"Indeed the factual assertions of the report were tested and vetted over a period of many months and, as new evidence was uncovered, some of the factual assertions and conclusions evolved," he wrote. "Our staff debated, refined and reformed our views even in the final hours before the report's release."

In another handwritten note on the draft of the report, somebody wrote that there was "no evidence" to support Freeh's contention that a flawed football culture was to blame for the Sandusky sex scandal.

"Freeh knew the evidence did not support this," the executive summary says. But in his final report, Freeh wrote about "A culture of reverence for the football program that is ingrained at all levels of the campus community."
While Freeh concluded there was a coverup at Penn State, his investigators weren’t so sure, according to records cited by the trustees in their executive summary.

On March 7, 2012, in a conference call, Kathleen McChesney, a former FBI agent who was one of Freeh’s senior investigators, noted that they had found “no smoking gun to indicate [a] cover-up.”
In a written statement to this reporter, Freeh claimed that shortly after McChesney made that observation, his investigators found “the critical ‘smoking gun’ evidence” in a 2001 “email trove among Schultz, Curley and Spanier.”

In that email chain, conducted over Penn State’s own computer system, the administrators discussed confronting Sandusky about his habit of showering with children at Penn State facilities, and telling him to stop, rather than report him to officials at The Second Mile, as well as the state Department of Public Welfare.

In the email chain, Curley described the strategy as a “more humane approach” that included an offer to provide Sandusky with counseling. Spanier agreed, but wrote, “The only downside for us if the message isn’t ‘heard’ and acted upon [by Sandusky] and we then become vulnerable for not having reported it.”

Curley subsequently told Sandusky to stop bringing children into Penn State facilities, and informed officials at The Second Mile about the 2002 shower incident witnessed by McQueary, an incident that the prosecutors subsequently decided really happened in 2001. But Penn State didn’t inform the state Department of Public Welfare about Sandusky, which Freeh claimed was the smoking gun.
By definition, however, a cover-up needs a crime to hide. And Penn State’s administrators have repeatedly testified that when McQueary told them about the 2001 or 2002 shower incident, he described it as horseplay.

Also, an earlier 1998 shower incident involving Sandusky and another boy, referred to by Freeh, was also investigated by multiple authorities, who found no crime, nor any evidence of sex abuse.
Freeh, however, claimed that a trio of college administrators should have caught an alleged serial pedophile who, in that 1998 shower incident, had already been cleared by the Penn State police, the Centre County District Attorney, as well as a psychologist and an investigator from Centre County’s Department of Children and Youth Services. To buy into the conclusions of the Freeh Report, you’d also have to believe that Penn State’s top officials were dumb enough to plot a cover up on the university’s own computers.

In their executive report, the trustees refer to the allegations of a cover up as "unfounded." Freeh, however, maintained that in the six years since he issued his report, its findings have been repeatedly validated in court.

"The Freeh team's investigative interviews and fact-finding were not biased and no outcome was ever predetermined," Freeh wrote. "Their only mandate, to which they adhered, was to follow the evidenced wherever it led. The final report I issued is a reflection of this mandate."

"The accuracy and sustainability of the report is further evidenced by the criminal convictions of Spanier, Schultz, Curley," Freeh wrote. Other developments that verified the conclusions of his report, Freeh wrote, include "voluntary dismissals by the Paterno Family of their suit against the NCAA, Spanier's dismissal of his defamation suit against Freeh, the jury and court findings in the McQueary defamation and whistleblower cases, and the U.S. Department of Education's five-year investigation resulting in a record fine against Penn State."

At yesterday's board of trustees meeting, however, trustee Pope, cited public criticisms of the Freeh Report that included:

-- "On a foundation of scant evidence, the [Freeh] report adds layers of conjecture and supposition to create a portrait of fault, complicity and malfeasance that could well be at odds with the truth . . . [As] scientists and scholars, we can say with conviction that the Freeh Report fails on hits own merits as the indictment of the university that some have taken it to be. Evidence that would compel such an indictment is simply not there." -- A group of 30 past chairs of the Penn State faculty.

-- "The Freeh Report was not useful and created an 'absurd' and 'unwarranted' portrait of the University. There's no doubt in my mind, Freeh steered everything as if he were a prosecutor trying to convince a court to take the case." -- Penn State President Eric Barron.

-- "On Nov. 9th, 2011, I and my fellow Trustees, voted to fire Joe Paterno in a hastily called meeting. We had little advance notice or opportunity to discuss and consider the complex issues we faced. After 61 years of exemplary service, Coach Paterno was given no chance to respond. That was a mistake. I will always regret that my name is attached to that rush to injustice."

"Hiring Louis Freeh and the tacit acceptance of his questionable conclusions, without review, along with his broad criticism of our Penn State culture was yet another mistake. . . Those who believe we can move on without due process for all who have been damaged by unsupported accusations are not acting in Penn State's best interest . . . We have the opportunity to move forward united inner commitment to truth. I urge all who love Penn State's name to fight on." -- Resignation speech of former 18-year trustee Alvin Clemens.

-- "Louis Freeh . . . assigned motivations to people, including Paterno, which at best were unknowable, and at worst might have been irresponsible." -- reporter Bob Costas.

-- "Clearly the more we dig into this, the more troubling it gets. There clearly is a significant amount of communication between Freeh and the NCAA that goes way beyond merely providing information. I'd call int coordination . . . Cleary, Freeh was way past his mandate. He was the enforcement person for the NCAA. That's what it looks like. I don't know how you can look at it any other way. It's almost like the NCAA hired him to do their enforcement investigation on Penn State. At a minimum, it is inappropriate. At a maximum, these were two parties working together to get an outcome that was predetermined."-- State Senate majority leader Jake Corman.

In summation, Pope said, "Some have said that the university's interests are best served by putting this unfortunate chapter behind us. We think differently. We believe that the only way to move forward is from a solid foundation based on an honest appraisal of our history. How can we create effective solutions if we might be working with a fundamental misunderstanding of the problems involved?"

"Our review, which took nearly two and a half years to complete, was a serious and thorough effort," Pope said. "We look forward with sharing the results of our analysis of the Freeh Report's source material without colleagues on the board at our meeting in July."
 
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First, how does any of that relate to Paterno? He was told of a watered-down story and reported it to his boss and someone outside the vertical and got out of the way. There is no evidence he interfered in any way other than to ask MM if he was OK days later.

Second, by the time C/S got the data, it was too late. There was no way to know who the kid was from JS or the second mile. What were they supposed to do? I do agree they underperformed. But that is easy to say in hindsight. They, perhaps, dragged their feet but that is a far cry from actively coving up. And that is why all the charges were dropped (after the prosecution tortured them for five years) and settled on a misdemeanor.

Back to MM, he "convinced" juries based on the volume of claims, not his alone. For example, if Deshawn Watson. If there was one accuser, nobody would care. But with 22 accusers, the idea is that something must have happened to make 22 accusers. MM never convinced a single person his story was true by itself. The prosecution even stated this....that the value was in getting several stories that we unconnected and disassociated. If anyone is to blame, it is TSM. After them, it is the police that never connected the dots.

MM is not believable, IMHO. he walked out on a kid being raped by an adult as a 26-year-old football player/coach? C'mon. If he wasn't trustworthy enough to intervene for a kid being raped, how trustworthy is his story? IMHO, he either a) walked away from a kid being raped by an adult or b) embellished his story to make him seem like he wasn't a total loser. You chose. It has to be one of those two options.
You're drinking the Kool aid here. Take this show on the road and see how it plays. There's a reason why it doesn't leave this board. If anyone related to the case starts talking , others will talk. If these guys are so misunderstood why don't former coaches set the story straight? Why is everyone so silent these days? Why aren't joe's kids leading the charge to set things right? Why don't they come out hard fighting for Joe? Why don't they criticize MM?
Because that would not end up well for them. Because they all know.
 
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You're drinking the Kool aid here. Take this show on the road and see how it plays. There's a reason why it doesn't leave this board. If anyone related to the case starts talking , others will talk. If these guys are so misunderstood why don't former coaches set the story straight? Why is everyone so silent these days? Why aren't joe's kids leading the charge to set things right? Why don't they come out hard fighting for Joe? Why don't they criticize MM?
Because that would not end up well for them. Because they all know.
Why is police brutality the problem of Donald Trump? The feds have zero to do with the police. Why do most Americans still think two hookers peed on DT? So, let me tell you why: The media deems it so.

The media made a lot tying JVP to a pedo story. Anyone who gets in the way of that will get destroyed. Just watch the media go after Elon Musk, perhaps the greatest person on the planet in terms of advancing worldwide society.

Nobody is going to risk their careers because they will be destroyed. Having said that, we had the former CEO of Nike and Franco come out. Others did, as well, just not as visibly.
 
ESPN again?




Remember, it was the Freeh Report that the NCAA relied upon in 2012 to impose draconian sanctions on Penn State, including a $60 million fine, a bowl game ban that lasted two years, the loss of 170 athletic scholarships and the elimination of 111 of Joe Paterno's wins, although the wins were subsequently restored.

On Friday, a group of 11 trustees called on the full 38-member board to release the full 200-page critique of the 267-page Freeh Report, formally renounce Freeh's findings, and try to recoup some of the $8.3 million that the university paid Freeh.

"I want to put the document in your hands so you can read it yourself, but I can't do that today," said Alice Pope, a trustee and St. John's University professor about the internal review of the source materials for the Freeh report.

But the materials that Pope and six other trustees had to sue the university to obtain are still under seal according to a 2015 court order. And the university's lawyers have recently advised the 11 minority trustees that the report they worked on for more than two years remains privileged and confidential, and out of reach of the public.

So yesterday, Pope called on the full board to release the 200-page report as early as their next meeting, on July 20th. But chances are slim and none that the board's chairman, Mark Dambly, and other majority board members will ever willingly open Pandora's box. They don't want to reveal to the public the facts that the university has spent millions of dollars in legal fees to keep buried for the past six years. Facts that will present further evidence of just how badly the trustees, Louie Freeh, and the attorney general's office thoroughly botched the Penn State investigation in a rush to judgment. Not to mention the media.

The full board of trustees, Pope noted yesterday, never voted to formally adopt the findings of the Freeh Report, which found that Penn State officials had covered up the sex crimes of Jerry Sandusky.

"Rather, the board adopted a don't act, don't look and don't tell policy" Pope said that amounted to a "tacit acceptance of the Freeh Report." A report that Pope said has resulted in "profound reputational harm to our university along with $300 million in costs so far."

In addition to the $60 million in fines, the university's board of trustees has -- while doing little or no investigating -- paid out a minimum of $118 million to 36 alleged victims of sex abuse, in addition to spending more than $80 million in legal fees, and $50 million to institute new reforms aimed at preventing future abuse.

That internal 200-page report and the materials it draws upon may still be privileged and confidential. But Big Trial has obtained a seven-page "Executive Summary of Findings" of that internal review dated Jan. 8, 2017, plus an attached 25-page synopsis of evidence gleaned from those confidential files still under court seal.

According to the executive summary, "Louis Freeh and his team disregarded the preponderance of the evidence" in concluding there was a cover up at Penn State of Jerry Sandusky's crimes.

There's more: "Louis Freeh and his team knowingly provided a false conclusion in stating that the alleged coverup was motivated by a desire to protect the football program and a false culture that overvalued football and athletics," the executive summary states.

In the executive summary, the trustees faulted Freeh and his investigators for their "willingness . . . to be led by media narratives," as well as "an over reliance on unreliable sources," such as former Penn State Counsel Cynthia Baldwin.

Freeh, the executive summary states, also relied on "deeply flawed" procedures for interviewing witnesses. The interviews conducted by Freeh's investigators weren't done under oath, or subpoenas, and they weren't tape-recorded, the executive summary states. Those faulty methods led to "biased reporting of interview data" and "inaccurate summaries" of witness testimony.

At yesterday's press conference, Pope said the 11 trustees wanted to know the degree of cooperation Freeh's team had with the NCAA and the state attorney general's office during their investigations. According to statecollege.com, state Senate Majority Leader Jake Corman has previously stated that the coordination between Freeh and the NCAA during the Penn State investigation was at best inappropriate, and at worst "two parties working together to get a predetermined outcome."

In the executive summary, the trustees cited "interference in Louis Freeh's investigation by the Pennsylvania Office of Attorney General, wherein information gathered in the criminal investigations of Penn State officials was improperly (and perhaps illegally) shared with Louis Freeh and his team."

This is a subject Big Trial will explore in a subsequent blog post. But earlier this year, I wrote to Louis Freeh, and asked if he and his team was authorized to have access to grand jury secrets in Pennsylvania. He declined comment.

At yesterday's board meeting, Pope addressed this topic, saying, "additional information has emerged in the public domain indicates cooperation between the PA Office of Attorney General and Freeh. We believed it was important to understand the degree of cooperation between the Freeh investigation and the Office of Attorney General."

Yesterday, Freeh issued a statement that ripped the minority trustees. "Since 2015," he wrote, "these misguided alumni have been fighting a rear-guard action to turn the clocks back and to resist the positive changes which the PSU students and faculty have fully embraced." He concluded that despite consistent criticism of his report by the minority trustees, in the last six years, they have produced "no report, no facts, news and no credible evidence" that have damaged the credibility of his investigation.

But in the executive summary, the trustees blasted Freeh for having an alleged conflict of interest with the NCAA, and they cited some credible evidence to prove it.

"Louis Freeh's conflict of interest in pursuing future investigative assignments with the NCAA during his contracted period of working for Penn State," the executive summary states, "provided motivation for forming conclusions consistent with the NCAA's goals to enhance their own reputation by being tough on Penn State."

In a criminal manner, such as the Jerry Sandusky pedophilia investigation, the NCAA lacked legal standing. But the NCAA justified its intervention in the case by finding that a lack of institutional control on the part of Penn State enabled the Jerry Sandusky sex scandal.

In their synopsis of evidence, the trustees relied on internal Freeh Group emails that showed that while Freeh was finishing up his investigation of Penn State, he was angling for his group to become the "go to investigators" for the NCAA.

On July 7, 2012, a week before the release of the Freeh Report on Penn State, Omar McNeill, a senior investigator for Freeh, wrote to Freeh and a partner of Freeh's. "This has opened up an opportunity to have the dialogue with [NCAA President Mark] Emmert about possibly being the go to internal investigator for the NCAA," McNeill wrote. "It appears we have Emmert's attention now."

In response, Freeh wrote back, "Let's try to meet with him and make a deal -- a very good cost contract to be the NCAA's 'go to investigators' -- we can even craft a big discounted rate given the unique importance of such a client. Most likely he will agree to a meeting -- if he does not ask for one first."

A spokesman for Freeh did not respond to a request for comment.

At yesterday's board meeting, Pope said the "NCAA knew that their own rules prevented them from punishing Penn State," but that the "NCAA decided to punish Penn State anyway in order to enhance its own reputation." She added that documents made public to date show that the "NCAA was closely involved with the Freeh investigation."

"We believed it was important to understand the degree of cooperation between the Freeh investigation and the NCAA."

At yesterday's press conference, Pope also raised the issue of a separate but concurrent federal investigation conducted on the Penn State campus in 2012 by Special Agent John Snedden. The federal investigation, made public last year, but completely ignored by the mainstream media, reached the opposite conclusion that Freeh and the attorney general did, that there was no official cover up at Penn State.

Pope stated she wanted to know more about the discrepancies between the parallel investigations that led to polar opposite conclusions.

Back in 2012, Snedden, a former NCIS special agent working as a special agent for the Federal Investigative Services [FIS], was assigned to determine whether Spanier deserved to have a high-level national security clearance renewed. During his investigation, Snedden placed Spanier under oath and questioned him for eight hours. Snedden also interviewed many other witnesses on the Penn State campus, including Cynthia Baldwin, who told him that Spanier was a "man of integrity."

About six months after Baldwin told Snedden this, she flipped, and appeared in a secret grand jury proceeding to not only testify against Spanier, but also against former Penn State Athletic Director Tim Curley, and former Penn State Vice President Gary Schultz.

Baldwin, who had previously represented Spanier, Curley and Schultz before the grand jury, testified last month before the disciplinary board of the state Supreme Court, where she has been brought up on misconduct charges for allegedly violating the attorney-client privilege.

After his investigation, Special Agent Snedden concluded in a 110-page report that Spanier had done nothing wrong, and that there was no coverup at Penn State.

That's because, according to Snedden, Mike McQueary, the alleged whistleblower in the case, was an unreliable witness who told many different conflicting stories about an alleged incident in the Penn State showers where McQueary saw Jerry Sandusky with a naked 10-year-old boy. "Which story do you believe?" Snedden told Big Trial last year.

In his grand jury testimony, McQueary said his observations of Sandusky were based on one or two "glances" in the shower that lasted only "one or two seconds," glances relating to an incident at least eight years previous. But in the hands of the attorney general's fiction writers, those glances of "one or two seconds" became an anal rape of a child, as conclusively witnessed by McQueary.

That, my friends, is what we call prosecutorial misconduct of the intentional kind, the kind that springs convicted murderers out of a Death Row jail cell. And it's a scandal that for six years, the attorney general's office has refused to address, a scandal that the mainstream media has failed to hold the AG accountable for.

On March 1, 2002, according to the 2011 grand jury presentment, [McQueary] walked into the locker room in the Lasch Building at State College and heard “rhythmic, slapping sounds.” Glancing into a mirror, he “looked into the shower . . . [and] saw a naked boy, Victim No. 2, whose age he estimated to be 10 years old, with his hands up against the wall, being subjected to anal intercourse by a naked Jerry Sandusky.”

"The graduate assistant went to his office and called his father, reporting to him what he had seen. The graduate assistant and his father decided that the graduate assistant had to promptly report what he had seen to Coach Joe Paterno . . . The next morning, a Saturday, the graduate assistant telephoned Paterno and went to Paterno's home, where he reported what he had seen."

But the alleged victim of the shower rape has never came forward, despite an avalanche of publicity, and, according to the prosecutors, his identity was known "only to God." But McQueary knew the prosecutors weren't telling the truth. Days, after the presentment, McQueary wrote in an email to the attorney general's office that they had "slightly twisted his words" and, "I cannot say 1000 percent sure that it was sodomy. I did not see insertion."

On top of that, all the witnesses that the grand jury presentment claimed that McQueary had reported to them "what he had seen," the alleged anal rape of a 10-year-old boy [plus another witness cited by McQueary, a doctor who was a longtime family friend] have all repeatedly denied in court that McQueary ever told them that he witnessed an anal rape.
"I've never had a rape case successfully prosecuted based only on sounds, and without credible victims and witnesses," Snedden told Big Trial. As for the Freeh Report, Snedden described it as "an embarrassment to law enforcement."

Snedden also told Big Trial that the real cause behind the Penn State scandal was
"a political hit job" engineered by former attorney general and Gov. Tom Corbett, who had it in for Spanier, after they feuded over drastic budget cuts proposed by the governor at Penn State. Corbett has previously denied the charges.

At the same time Snedden was investigating Penn State, former FBI Director Louis Freeh was writing his report on the Penn State scandal, a report commissioned by the university, at a staggering cost of $8.3 million.

Freeh concluded that there had been a cover up. His report found a “striking lack of empathy for child abuse victims by the most senior leaders of the university,” which included Spanier, who had repeatedly been severely beaten by his father as a child, requiring several operations as an adult. Freeh also found that Spanier, Paterno, along with Schultz, the former Penn State vice president and Curley, the school’s ex-athletic director, “repeatedly concealed critical facts relating to Sandusky’s child abuse from the authorities.”
But critics such as the minority trustees have noted that the ex-FBI director reached his sweeping conclusions without his investigators ever talking to Paterno, Schultz, Curley, McQueary or Sandusky. Freeh only talked to Spanier briefly, at the end of his investigation. And confidential records viewed by the trustees show that Freeh’s own people disagreed with his conclusions.

According to those records, Freeh's own staff reviewed a May 21, 2012 draft of the Freeh Report, which was subsequently turned over to Penn State officials. The lead paragraph of the draft said, “At the time of the alleged sexual assaults by Jerry Sandusky, there was a culture and environment in the Penn State Athletic Department that led staff members to fail to identify or act on observed inappropriate conduct by Sandusky.”
The draft report talked about an environment of fear that affected even a janitor who supposedly saw Sandusky assaulting a boy in the showers in 2002: “There existed an environment within the athletic department that led an employee to determine that the perceived threat of losing his job outweighed the necessity of reporting the violent crime of a child.”
Over that paragraph in the draft report, a handwritten note said, “NO EVIDENCE AT ALL!” Freeh, however, in his final version of his report, included that charge about the janitor who allegedly saw Sandusky assault another boy in the showers but was so fearful he didn’t report it.

But when the state police interviewed that janitor, Jim Calhoun, he stated three times that it wasn’t Sandusky he had seen sexually abusing a boy. [The state police didn’t ask Calhoun who was the alleged assailant.] At Sandusky’s trial, however, the jury convicted the ex-coach of that crime, in part because his defense lawyer never told the jury about the janitor’s interview with the state police.

In a written statement, Freeh confirmed that the person who wrote “NO EVIDENCE AT ALL!” was one of his guys.

"Throughout the review at the Pennsylvania State University, members of the Freeh team were encouraged to speak freely and to challenge any factual assertions that they believed are not supported," Freeh wrote on Jan. 10, 2018.

"Indeed the factual assertions of the report were tested and vetted over a period of many months and, as new evidence was uncovered, some of the factual assertions and conclusions evolved," he wrote. "Our staff debated, refined and reformed our views even in the final hours before the report's release."

In another handwritten note on the draft of the report, somebody wrote that there was "no evidence" to support Freeh's contention that a flawed football culture was to blame for the Sandusky sex scandal.

"Freeh knew the evidence did not support this," the executive summary says. But in his final report, Freeh wrote about "A culture of reverence for the football program that is ingrained at all levels of the campus community."
While Freeh concluded there was a coverup at Penn State, his investigators weren’t so sure, according to records cited by the trustees in their executive summary.

On March 7, 2012, in a conference call, Kathleen McChesney, a former FBI agent who was one of Freeh’s senior investigators, noted that they had found “no smoking gun to indicate [a] cover-up.”
In a written statement to this reporter, Freeh claimed that shortly after McChesney made that observation, his investigators found “the critical ‘smoking gun’ evidence” in a 2001 “email trove among Schultz, Curley and Spanier.”

In that email chain, conducted over Penn State’s own computer system, the administrators discussed confronting Sandusky about his habit of showering with children at Penn State facilities, and telling him to stop, rather than report him to officials at The Second Mile, as well as the state Department of Public Welfare.

In the email chain, Curley described the strategy as a “more humane approach” that included an offer to provide Sandusky with counseling. Spanier agreed, but wrote, “The only downside for us if the message isn’t ‘heard’ and acted upon [by Sandusky] and we then become vulnerable for not having reported it.”

Curley subsequently told Sandusky to stop bringing children into Penn State facilities, and informed officials at The Second Mile about the 2002 shower incident witnessed by McQueary, an incident that the prosecutors subsequently decided really happened in 2001. But Penn State didn’t inform the state Department of Public Welfare about Sandusky, which Freeh claimed was the smoking gun.
By definition, however, a cover-up needs a crime to hide. And Penn State’s administrators have repeatedly testified that when McQueary told them about the 2001 or 2002 shower incident, he described it as horseplay.

Also, an earlier 1998 shower incident involving Sandusky and another boy, referred to by Freeh, was also investigated by multiple authorities, who found no crime, nor any evidence of sex abuse.
Freeh, however, claimed that a trio of college administrators should have caught an alleged serial pedophile who, in that 1998 shower incident, had already been cleared by the Penn State police, the Centre County District Attorney, as well as a psychologist and an investigator from Centre County’s Department of Children and Youth Services. To buy into the conclusions of the Freeh Report, you’d also have to believe that Penn State’s top officials were dumb enough to plot a cover up on the university’s own computers.

In their executive report, the trustees refer to the allegations of a cover up as "unfounded." Freeh, however, maintained that in the six years since he issued his report, its findings have been repeatedly validated in court.

"The Freeh team's investigative interviews and fact-finding were not biased and no outcome was ever predetermined," Freeh wrote. "Their only mandate, to which they adhered, was to follow the evidenced wherever it led. The final report I issued is a reflection of this mandate."

"The accuracy and sustainability of the report is further evidenced by the criminal convictions of Spanier, Schultz, Curley," Freeh wrote. Other developments that verified the conclusions of his report, Freeh wrote, include "voluntary dismissals by the Paterno Family of their suit against the NCAA, Spanier's dismissal of his defamation suit against Freeh, the jury and court findings in the McQueary defamation and whistleblower cases, and the U.S. Department of Education's five-year investigation resulting in a record fine against Penn State."

At yesterday's board of trustees meeting, however, trustee Pope, cited public criticisms of the Freeh Report that included:

-- "On a foundation of scant evidence, the [Freeh] report adds layers of conjecture and supposition to create a portrait of fault, complicity and malfeasance that could well be at odds with the truth . . . [As] scientists and scholars, we can say with conviction that the Freeh Report fails on hits own merits as the indictment of the university that some have taken it to be. Evidence that would compel such an indictment is simply not there." -- A group of 30 past chairs of the Penn State faculty.

-- "The Freeh Report was not useful and created an 'absurd' and 'unwarranted' portrait of the University. There's no doubt in my mind, Freeh steered everything as if he were a prosecutor trying to convince a court to take the case." -- Penn State President Eric Barron.

-- "On Nov. 9th, 2011, I and my fellow Trustees, voted to fire Joe Paterno in a hastily called meeting. We had little advance notice or opportunity to discuss and consider the complex issues we faced. After 61 years of exemplary service, Coach Paterno was given no chance to respond. That was a mistake. I will always regret that my name is attached to that rush to injustice."

"Hiring Louis Freeh and the tacit acceptance of his questionable conclusions, without review, along with his broad criticism of our Penn State culture was yet another mistake. . . Those who believe we can move on without due process for all who have been damaged by unsupported accusations are not acting in Penn State's best interest . . . We have the opportunity to move forward united inner commitment to truth. I urge all who love Penn State's name to fight on." -- Resignation speech of former 18-year trustee Alvin Clemens.

-- "Louis Freeh . . . assigned motivations to people, including Paterno, which at best were unknowable, and at worst might have been irresponsible." -- reporter Bob Costas.

-- "Clearly the more we dig into this, the more troubling it gets. There clearly is a significant amount of communication between Freeh and the NCAA that goes way beyond merely providing information. I'd call int coordination . . . Cleary, Freeh was way past his mandate. He was the enforcement person for the NCAA. That's what it looks like. I don't know how you can look at it any other way. It's almost like the NCAA hired him to do their enforcement investigation on Penn State. At a minimum, it is inappropriate. At a maximum, these were two parties working together to get an outcome that was predetermined."-- State Senate majority leader Jake Corman.

In summation, Pope said, "Some have said that the university's interests are best served by putting this unfortunate chapter behind us. We think differently. We believe that the only way to move forward is from a solid foundation based on an honest appraisal of our history. How can we create effective solutions if we might be working with a fundamental misunderstanding of the problems involved?"

"Our review, which took nearly two and a half years to complete, was a serious and thorough effort," Pope said. "We look forward with sharing the results of our analysis of the Freeh Report's source material without colleagues on the board at our meeting in July."

Bob Costas perhaps summed it up best from a media standpoint, but even he was very careful not to potentially appear to exonerate, or support Paterno too much. Way too political and the narrative was deeply established throughout

“Louis Freeh . . . assigned motivations to people, including Paterno, which at best were unknowable, and at worst might have been irresponsible." -- reporter Bob Costas.
 
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