‘JoePa’ Takes the Fall
Copyright © 2012 Bill Keisling
All rights reserved.
ISBN 978-1-882611-34-8
FIRST EDITION, epub edition
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Contents
Title page
Copyright page
Epigram
1. Narcotics agent nabs Jerry Sandusky
2. ‘JoePa’ takes the fall: a slow Tom Corbett throws Joe Paterno under the bus
3. The Magic Moment: Six decades of Pennsylvania Governors, AGs, and the state Republican Party: The appointed years 1950 to 1980
4. The appointed years 1980 to 1995
“In every big transaction… there is a magic moment during which a man has surrendered a treasure, and during which the man who is due to receive it has not yet done so. An alert lawyer will make that moment his own.”
-- Kurt Vonnegut, God Bless You Mr. Rosewater
1
Narcotics agent nabs Jerry Sandusky
Pennsylvania Attorney General Tom Corbett made it clear to his staff that he did not want to pursue the pedophile case against former Penn State football coach Jerry Sandusky, associates of Corbett’s say. At the time, AG Corbett was running for governor of Pennsylvania.
The case finally was investigated in depth, and brought to court, only after Corbett’s election as governor in November 2010. A separate investigation by an attorney general’s office narcotics agent brought a renewed emphasis to the Sandusky case.
‘Tom didn’t want to do it’
Centre County District Attorney Michael Madeira referred the Sandusky pedophile investigation to Attorney General Tom Corbett in March 2009. DA Maderia cited a personal conflict of interest between himself and Sandusky.
AG Corbett told key members of his staff that he did not want to actively pursue the Sandusky case.
“Tom didn’t want to do it,” one Corbett associate explains.
The case, per standard procedure, was assigned to a state trooper, and a prosecutor. Nevertheless, without Corbett’s approval, and without the active shepherding of the AG, the investigation went nowhere.
At the time the pedophile case was first received by the AG’s office in 2009, particulars of the case were, by routine procedure, entered into the Office of Attorney General’s PACE computer system database. PACE is an acronym for Police Automated Computer Entry.
The PACE system is a computerized indexing and intelligence system. It allows law enforcement personnel to discover if a potential target is under investigation by other law enforcement officers or agencies.
Steroids?
A separate investigation involving AG office narcotics Agent Anthony Sassano in November 2010 finally broke the Corbett-imposed logjam in the Sandusky case. By late 2010, AG Tom Corbett had been elected governor of Pennsylvania. Corbett was engaged in his transition to the governor’s office and was no longer was an obstacle to the Sandusky investigation.
Also in late 2010, Narcotics Agent Anthony Sassano, of the state Attorney General’s Office Bureau of Narcotics Investigation and Drug Control, was working on a separate narcotics investigation. Sassano’s investigation involved, among other allegations, the use of steroids in the State College area, we have been told. Steroids are used by athletes to enhance performance. Agent Sassano, among other official duties, has served as the Blair County Drug Task Force coordinator.
At the start of Agent Sassano’s investigation, the narcotics agent conducted what’s called a “toll search.” A toll search involves the search of phone calls made by criminal suspects.
In the standard course of such an investigation, a narcotics agent such as Sassano must file an affidavit of probable cause with a court to receive the suspects’ phone records. The object is to discover the parties who are talking to an alleged drug distributor or user, the frequency and duration of the calls, who is talking to whom, and so forth.
Following standard procedure, Agent Sassano then entered information about those involved in his narcotics investigation into the PACE cross-indexing and intelligence system.
Agent Sassano got a hit on Sandusky and discovered that the former football coach was also under investigation for a pedophile complaint by Corbett’s heretofore-inactive state trooper, and prosecutor.
Narcotics agent brings renewed life to pedophile case
Pedophile cases, such as the Sandusky case, for diverse social or political reasons, can languish for years, experts say. Not so narcotics cases.
From the moment Sassano made this indexing hit, in November 2010, the case against Sandusky took on new life.
The grand jury presentment that netted Sandusky states, on page 5, without elaboration:
“Office of Attorney General Narcotics Agent Anthony Sassano testified concerning phone records that establish 61 phone calls from Sandusky’s home phone to Victim 1’s home phone between January 2008 and July 2009. In that same time, there were 57 calls from Sandusky’s cell phone to Victim 1’s home phone. There were four calls made from Victim 1’s home phone to Sandusky’s cell phone and one call from Victim 1’s mother’s cell phone to Sandusky’s cell phone. There were no calls made to Sandusky’s home phone by Victim 1 during that time period.”
Narcotics Agent Sassano personally testified at the preliminary hearing against Penn State officials Tim Curley and Gary Schultz on December 16, 2011. Agent Sassano was asked only about when, and what, he learned of the 2002 shower room incident involving Sandusky.
“When did you learn about the incident?” a defense attorney asks agent Sassano.
“I believe it was November 2010,” Sassano answers.
Sassano nevertheless was not asked at the hearing the key questions of how, and why, he came to be involved in the Sandusky investigation.
Controlled substances firewall: AG’s Office Bureau of Narcotics Investigation and Drug Control
A Police Criminal Complaint filed against Sandusky on December 7, 2011, lists the three individuals who ultimately brought the charges against the former football coach and founder of the Second Mile charity.
The first listed in the complaint is Jonelle H. Eshbach, a Deputy Attorney General in the state AG’s office. Eshbach is the prosecutor.
The second name listed in the criminal complaint is Pennsylvania State Police Trooper Robert Yakicic.
The third name listed on the criminal complaint is AG’s office Bureau of Narcotics Investigation and Drug Control Agent Anthony Sassano. Sassano is a long-time narcotics agent in the AG’s office.
The Attorney General’s Bureau of Narcotics Investigation and Control evolved from the Controlled Substance, Drug, Device and Cosmetic Act of 1972, passed by the Pennsylvania legislature in that year.
In the act was a Schedule of Controlled Substances, including anabolic steroids.
The administration and enforcement of the act was originally assigned to the state Department of Health. But a reorganization plan adopted in 1973 transferred the enforcement powers and duties to the Department of Justice and the state attorney general.
Working under the attorney general to enforce these controlled substances are the agents, like Sassano, in the Bureau of Narcotics Investigation and Drug Control.
A narcotics agent like Sassano is empowered by, and gets his law enforcement authority from, the Commonwealth Drug Device Safety and Cosmetic Act of 1972.
Diverse internal rules and labor agreements in the AG’s office prohibit a narcotics agent from participating in investigations unrelated to narcotics
conducted by the AG office’s other bureaus, such as the criminal investigations conducted by the Bureau of Criminal Investigations (BCI), or the Child Predator Unit.
There is a firewall between these divisions and, usually, the twain never meets.
“Years back there was a big blow up about using BCI guys to do drug work, and drug agents doing BCI work,” one observer explains.
The full story behind Sassano’s investigation won’t be known until, and unless, Sassano’s affidavit of probable cause is unsealed at trial. What is known is that Agent Sassano’s narcotics division investigates the distribution of controlled substances. The involvement of Sandusky, Second Mile, and Penn State’s football program in the investigation is as yet unknown.
2
‘JoePa’ takes the fall
A slow Tom Corbett throws Joe Paterno under the bus
“What counts in sports is not the victory, but the magnificence of the struggle,” Penn State Coach Joe Paterno for years was fond of saying. It’s a variation of the phrase, “It’s not whether you win or lose, but how you play the game.”
This ethos of fair play, honesty, doing the right thing, abiding by the same rules as everyone else, hard work, proper preparation, and decency in all our endeavors is lost on Pennsylvania Governor Tom Corbett.
Insiders at the state attorney general’s office speak of moral bankruptcy, blatant hypocrisy and raw politics in the AG’s office under Corbett.
Tom Corbett misused the office of attorney general to win the Pennsylvania governor’s office at any and all cost, by any means necessary, those around him say. Part of the great cost paid, we now see in the Jerry Sandusky case, included the safety, dignity and well-being of children.
As governor, Corbett then attempted to distract public attention away from his own mounting failures, political machinations and dishonesties by making a fall guy of Joe Paterno.
Tom Corbett’s lack of sense of decency or character, his fundamental dishonesty, and basic incompetence were magnified by the political nature of the elected attorney general’s office. This gives cause to pose plenty of troubling questions about the stalled legal case against Jerry Sandusky.
Look at the wreckage in Corbett’s wake. The reputations of Coach Joe Paterno, Penn State, and its football program, are all in tatters and ruin. Like a scandalized widow, Penn State would contemplate changing its name. Penn State’s once-proud football team, for decades among the finest in the nation, suffered a fall from grace, deep disgrace, and was in jeopardy of disbandment.
The moral authority and integrity of the governor’s office and its predecessor -- once occupied by great, sincere and hard-working men like Benjamin Franklin, Andrew Curtin, and Gifford Pinchot -- has also taken a devastating hit.
Pennsylvania and some of its most hallowed institutions would be discredited and become the butt of national jokes and disbelief. All that has been much discussed.
Not so clearly seen and spoken about is that Corbett, on his political run to the governor’s office, would leave in tatters the Pennsylvania Office of Attorney General, and potentially the careers and reputations of the many good and dedicated people who work there.
But that’s only part of the unseen story.
‘Don’t do it here’
Jerry Sandusky’s kid glove treatment at the hands of diverse Pennsylvania institutions, from 1998 until late 2010, reveals a classic pattern of looking the other way. From at least 2009 onward, AG Tom Corbett would be the lead player in this culture of cover-up, shielding and confidentiality.
In March 2009, a former Corbett underling, Centre County District Attorney Michael Madeira, referred several Sandusky pedophile complaints to AG Corbett. Madeira was a former deputy AG, and a drug prosecutor, under Corbett. He’d been elected Centre County DA following the strange disappearance of Ray Gricar in 2005. Passing the case along to AG Corbett, Madeira cited a personal conflict of interest with a relative.
DA Madeira himself hadn’t done much with these Sandusky complaints while they were in his office. The complaints, after all, had been referred to Madeira the previous year, in 2008. Neither would AG Corbett do much with them.
After the Sandusky scandal became public, speculation arose as to possible motivations behind Corbett’s reluctance to take action. His concern that he’d be perceived as having impeded or obstructed the investigation. His fear of offending major contributors. Fear of backlash from alumni and friends of Penn State.
While certainly there are issues of politics, largesse (Marcellus Shale, for example) and patronage deserving keen public scrutiny to help explain Corbett’s misconduct, we must consider an obvious harsh reality:
Sandusky’s protection by Corbett, and others, mirrors a pattern that is all too familiar to those who’ve investigated or studied other long-running pedophile crimes, I’ve been told repeatedly by experts.
Sandusky’s treatment by superiors at PSU and the law enforcement community in Pennsylvania is little different from that received by Catholic priests in this and other countries. This familiar pattern of non-investigation -- amounting to shielding and protection -- would later scandalize the Roman Catholic Church.
Pedophile priests for years would simply be told to go to a different town and parish.
“Just don’t do it here,” became the bottom line. Like it or not, culturally and socially, for decades, this is how pedophile cases curiously have been handled by church and state authority figures alike, here and abroad.
This happened with Jerry Sandusky. Complaints from victims and their families would be given lip service by school officials, charity overseers, and law enforcement -- including Attorney General Tom Corbett. Any complaints filed, and any supposed investigations, would be allowed to languish in the dark for years. And Sandusky would remain free to carry on.
Jerry Sandusky would simply be told, again and again: Don’t do it here. Don’t do it in the shower room. Don’t do it at Penn State.
The current pope, Benedict XVI, was himself notably engulfed in very similar church pedophile cover-up scandals. Before he became pope, as a cardinal, Benedict took referrals and complaints of pedophilia from his subordinate church officials. These referrals simply and clearly were not acted upon in a timely, responsible fashion, or any fashion at all.
It comes down to a matter of priorities. Protecting an entrenched institution, its reputation and that of its members -- and protecting its God Almighty cash flow -- become more important than protecting children.
“The abuse cases of two priests in Arizona have cast further doubt on the Catholic church’s insistence that Pope Benedict XVI played no role in shielding pedophiles before he became pope,” the Associated Press, for example, found in April 2010.
“Documents reviewed by The Associated Press show that as a Vatican cardinal, the future pope took over the abuse case of the Rev. Michael Teta of Tucson, Ariz., then let it languish at the Vatican for years despite repeated pleas from the bishop for the man to be removed from the priesthood.
“In another Tucson case, that of Msgr. Robert Trupia, the bishop wrote to then-Cardinal Ratzinger, who would become pope in 2005. Bishop Manuel Moreno called Trupia ‘a major risk factor to the children, adolescents and adults that he many have contact with.’ There is no indication in the case files that Cardinal Ratzinger even responded.
“The details of the two cases come as other allegations emerge that Benedict – as a Vatican cardinal – was part of a culture of cover-up and confidentiality.”
And so it was with Pennsylvania Attorney General Corbett’s shielding and protecting former assistant Penn State football coach Jerry Sandusky, Penn State, and the formerly well-respected Second Mile charity.
The assistant football coach would receive a similar hands-off treatment for more than a decade, not only from his overseers at Penn State, and his associates at The Second Mile charity, but also from the District Attorney’s office in Centre County, and, central to this essay, from the Pennsylvania Office o
f Attorney General, occupied since 2005 by Tom Corbett.
Corbett, like the Pope, would become the most visible and prominent part of a culture of cover-up and confidentiality, shielding and protection of an alleged predator.
It’s worth pointing out, I think, that Corbett, Paterno, and many of the other players in this tragedy were, like myself, raised Catholic. A weak defense would be that they were merely following the example of the earthly leader of the church, the Pontiff.
The founder of the church, Jesus of Nazareth, had a decidedly different view about the treatment of children. We’re told that Jesus loved the little children, and spoke of their innocence and purity as a parable of the Kingdom of God. The Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke all relate this story:
“And they brought young children to him ... and his disciples rebuked those that brought them. But when Jesus saw it, he was much displeased, and said unto them, ‘Suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid them not: for of such is the kingdom of God’... And he took them up in his arms, put his hands upon them, and blessed them.” see Mark 10:13-16, Matthew 19:14, Luke 18:15-17.
Much like those questionable disciples, AG Corbett would keep the children from the supposed safe harbor and long arms of the law.
There would be an investigation of Sandusky in name only, and opportunities to prosecute Sandusky for pedophilia would be avoided time and again.
It would come down to matters of priorities and political expediencies, Corbett’s associates say.
Corbett, for his part, has doubtfully explained his failure to prosecute Sandusky. It was the fault of a “slow grand jury,” Corbett explains. Very slow indeed.
He would say he wanted to make sure there was enough evidence before bringing a case. But he did little to collect more evidence, and stymied the investigation. Corbett in fact did next to nothing from early 2009 onward, when the Centre County DA Michael Madeira referred the case to him. It was Tom who was slow.
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