The Dubious Nature of Freeh's Documents - A Pattern

Much has been made of the fact that Louis Freeh and his business seem to be for hire to write reports that fit predetermined outcomes. However in the long and complicated saga of the Jerry Sandusky scandal one possibly more interesting story is the questionable nature of several documents provided as evidence in the Freeh Report. Ray Blehar at www.notpsu.blogspot.com has covered many of these issues but I wanted to expand on the information with some of Freeh's past history regarding documentation of evidence.

Documents in question involve both the infamous "emails" which purport to prove the "conspiracy of silence", including the involvement of Coach Paterno, a letter, and also copies of handwritten notes. Forensic experts have reviewed the published materials that are in question and to date have called them suspicious but inconclusive. To determine the authenticity of the documents they would need the original files and pieces of paper to be sure. From day one of the Freeh Report of course all parties invested in the "PSU Footabll enabled Jerry Sandusky" false narrative have fought to keep records in this affair secret.

Almost immediately noted after it's release was the strange and inconsistent nature of the reported emails from PSU. Many noted inconsistent time stamps in chains, which may or may not be important. However one particular piece of code inside the single most important email "found", calls into question whether it is the original, unedited email. If you look at the email below, Exhibit 2F, you will see that after the infamous "talking it over with Joe" line the HTML code " " is seen. This code indicates a break in the text that marks the use of a double space after the end of a sentence.

What is curious is that if you look at all of Tim Curley's writing in the email this is the only time he uses a double space. Notice that Spanier is consistent in his use of double spacing.

What is also interesting about this exchange is that it seems to be one of two emails recovered by Freeh that include this code at all. Notice below that emails on 2/26/2001, exhibit 5F, contain no interspersed HTML code, then it appears in the 2/28 and 3/01 emails (5H), and then it is gone again in the 3/07/2001 email (5I). We know that PSU changed email systems, but this did not occur in this time frame so as a lay person one has to ask why the difference in these chains of emails? In order to see what's going on we need the original files, which Freeh and PSU won't produce.

The second problem that occurs in documents published in the Freeh report surrounds a phenomenon called aliasing. This is a term that describes the blurring of the edges of words in some parts of a document but not in others. You can see examples of this phenomenon in at least three places in the Freeh Report, exhibits 2H, 2I, and 3H seen below with blown up version of text in question as well. In the enhanced version I added you can see clearly how even with enhancement the differences are still evident.

Interestingly enough one of the lines which appears different is notes from Tom Harmon about how a victim was obsessed with PSU football.

Without examining the original documents and email files it is impossible to know if these were simply errors in codes or uneven scanning, or the product of something much more sinister.

In doing a little research on the topic I found that the thought of questionable documents finding their way into reports where Louis Freeh was in charge goes back quite some time. By my research this criticism goes back at least 15 years prior to the Freeh Report on PSU and continues to follow him even after his PSU work. In fact there were serious allegations made about the FBI's handling, under Freeh, of the Oklahoma City bombing at the Murrah Building, among other things at the FBI Explosive's Unit, that were investigated by the DOJ Inspector General. While many allegations were dismissed the list of some that were substantiated in this case were:

• Scientifically Flawed Testimony
• Inaccurate Testimony
• Testimony Beyond Examiner's Expertise
• Improper Preparation of Laboratory Reports
• Included alterations, omissions, improper supplementation without approval
• Insufficient Documentation of Test Reults
• Scientifically Flawed Reports
• Inadequate Record Management and Retention System
• Failures by Management

In fact as part of the review of Freeh's tenure at the FBI a task force operated in secret for nine years reviewing cases he was in charge of and keeping the results out of the public eye. The report of a new review of this information occurred just as Freeh was "investigating" PSU. That investigation determined that the FBI under Freeh used many of the same questionable tactics as he did at PSU such as only disclosing parts of the record in cases.

It has also been detailed by Michael Chertoff that Freeh used "documents that are of dubious provenance" in his report on the Wynn case. Specifically there are two documents that look suspicious in the report. The first claims to be an email but is nothing of the sort. This purported "email" authenticity leaves in doubt one major crux of the case, that Mr. Okada personally directed payments and gifts to a gaming official for favors. The second document claims to be "Aruze City Ledger Account records" when in fact it is merely a summary of such records apparently prepared specifically for the report.

Some have questioned those of us still fighting for truth in the Sandusky scandal for bringing up the possibility of falsified documentation in the Freeh report. However when you look at the history of investigations that this man has led you see a a pattern of problems with documents prepared under his watch. It is clear that Freeh has no issue using documents of dubious nature. It is possible that these are honest issues or technical glitches but we cannot know for sure without a forensic examination of the original electronic files and documents. If the Penn State Board of Trustees and Louis Freeh really wanted to get to the bottom of this matter they would produce the original files for review by independent forensic experts to answer these questions.