Very interesting search warrant podcast interview with John Zimmerman who was indicted by Tom Corbett/Frank Fina in the Computergate scandal. He didn't do anything wrong and charges were dropped after he was prevented from being a witness in other cases. He believes that he was targeted because he worked for John Perzel, a Republican rival of Tom Corbett who was looking at running for Governor against Corbett. Zimmerman had no love lost for Fina and said that Fina's first question to him when he was interviewed after he was indicted was about what he knew of the sex room in the capital building and it seemed to him that Fina was obsessed by sex.
Zimmerman said he was naive in believing that criminal cases should be decided by the facts in the case and not the prosecutor's political agenda. He said that some grand jury information was ignored. He said that Fina manipulated the public which was influencing the future jury pool.
Snedden pointed out the similarities with the Computergate case Penn State case included that Corbett wanted Perzel out of the way and also wanted Spanier out of the way and that charges were filed against Zimmerman to prevent him from being a witness when charges were filed against Curley and Schultz to prevent them from being witnesses. In addition both cases were motivated by a political agenda as opposed to finding the truth. Zimmerman said the public should be concerned as he stated that "What they [the OAG] did to me, they could do to anyone."
Snedden pointed out that the OAG has become a politically weaponized arm of state government and that the OAG is incapable of policing themselves. He said that what is needed is an investigation by an independent arm of the federal government.
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podca...sodeGuid=5d5886b9-d440-4c03-942d-ff6c20b3fa14
Snedden didn't know OAG from PAG.
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."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.
