JoePa Takes the Fall

by Bill Keisling

  As Corbett’s electioneering and paranoia intensified, the internal distractions, mismanagement and turmoil within the department caused the number of BCI agents to drop by about 15 percent, to about 63 or 64 agents.

  Other growing yet ignored management problems like those in BCI’s Norristown regional office, outside Philadelphia, plagued the office and its ability to conduct, well, actual criminal investigations.

  “There were major problems in BCI in Norristown. Personnel problems. A supervisor was crazy over there. Lots of personnel issues. Everybody was leaving.”

  The growing political nature of their work, and the obvious hypocrisy of Corbett and his front office, dispirited the AG’s office longtime professional staff.

  Even Inspector Clouseau might notice what was going on.

  Further manpower shortages adversely affected low- or no-priority cases like the Sandusky investigation. These management problems were exacerbated by the outright shoddy ethics of deputy AGs, and Corbett’s tolerance and cover-up of shoddy ethics. Simply put, they’d shoot themselves in the foot.

  The shortage of deputy AG’s was made worse, for example, when Senior Deputy AG Patrick Leonard had to be transferred to State College after he was caught withholding exculpatory evidence in a case titled U.S.A. v. Eulises Rodrigues in federal court in Philadelphia in 2003.

  Federal Judge Mary McLaughlin found Deputy AG Leonard, and others, guilty of what is called a Brady violation, or, in layman’s terms, lying and withholding evidence.

  “It is especially troublesome that Mr. Leonard told the Court during the trial that (a co-defendant and witness) Mr. Rivera was not telling the truth when it turned out that the other agents present at the sessions corroborated most of what Mr. Rivera said,” Judge McLaughlin writes. “It also appears that Mr. Leonard did not follow the instruction of the United States Attorney’s Office that he was to tell counsel for the defendant what the co-defendant said at the proffer sessions.”

  Judge McLaughlin concluded, “The Court holds that the government’s failure to disclose to the defendant what was said by the co-defendant during the proffer sessions was a violation of Brady v. Maryland, 373 U.S. 83 (1963).”

  Leonard consequently could no longer partner with the federales to represent the AG’s office in the federal Eastern District Court of Pennsylvania.

  So Deputy AG Leonard was shipped off to Happy Valley. Another deputy AG had to pick up his slack in the east. I’m told there are several disreputable deputy AG’s who’ve been found guilty of lying and/or withholding evidence in the AG’s office. All the lying scoundrels were afforded protection by Corbett and tucked away in outposts like Scranton, where they continue to practice law for the AG’s office and represent The People in court.

  “Just don’t do it here,” became a management credo in Tom Corbett’s AG’s office for people other than Jerry Sandusky.

  Later, after Corbett’s election as governor, other lying scoundrels and Corbett simpaticos would be rewarded with jobs in the governor’s press office.

  Bonus for ‘Bonusgate’ prosecutor?

  Mixing with the outright malfeasance and the incendiary atmosphere of politics in the AG’s office was a growing odor of blatant hypocrisy.

  Allegations flew that one of Corbett’s own “Bonusgate” prosecutors himself misused the services of his AG’s office secretary to help with his private work at home. “She was helping the prosecutor with his school work.”

  AG Corbett ironically in early 2006 elevated this compromised prosecutor to the newly created Public Corruption Unit.

  AG’s office staff were angered that this deputy AG, like Corbett, was prosecuting people for doing what he himself was openly accused of doing within the department: misusing his state worker staff and office resources for personal goals, private chores, champagne wishes and caviar dreams.

  I furthermore hear complaints that AG Corbett approved a $20,000 bonus (or pay raise) to this same deputy AG for the fellow’s successful prosecution of “Bonusgate” defendants leading to Corbett’s election as governor.

  I’m told one prominent “Bonusgate” prosecutor left the AG’s office in outraged indignation over this bonus payment given to another “Bonusgate” prosecutor.

  I paraphrase, with more than a crumb of irony, the Patriot-News, here:

  What is clear is the payment(s) have stung some AG office employees who were left out, and raised questions for them about whether the payments to the deputy AG were tied to work on “Bonusgate.”

  The difference I suppose between me and the Patriot-News is that I hold out very little hope that Corbett, or any other public office holder in Pennsylvania, will investigate this any time soon.

  There is no one to even take the complaint.

  The simple complaint is this: AG Tom Corbett ran for governor by prosecuting his political enemies for bonuses they had given their staff. Yet Corbett himself countenanced political work and even a fat bonus to his staff for the overtly political “Bonusgate” prosecutions, the centerpiece of his gubernatorial campaign.

  Staff members say this:

  “A deputy AG got an extra $20,000 in pay because of ‘Bonusgate’ for his help getting Corbett elected governor. The politics and hypocrisy simply smacked you in the face. Of course no one could talk about it.”

  “The main concern was the ‘Bonusgate’ stuff was to get Corbett elected. Everyone knew it but they couldn’t talk about it.”

  A laughable punch line: ‘I’m referring this matter to AG Tom Corbett’

  Everyone instead had to pretend that none of this was going on. You’d keep your tongue in your cheek, in more ways than one. The AG’s office was living a fairy tale existence while Jerry Sandusky was allowed to keep on keeping on.

  “Nobody would talk about stuff like that. They’d just try to do their job.”

  That was the case with the lonely state trooper and prosecutor assigned to the sandbagged Sandusky non-investigation. They went on to work other cases. Later, they’d have to pretend they were actually grinding away on the Sandusky case from March 2009 to October 2010.

  The AG office staff instead grumbled and laughed about the seemingly endless “arrests by new conference,” and the well-publicized TV perp walks of Mike Veon and his fellow “Bonusgate” defendants. Later on, a few over-the-hill Republicans would be tossed to the cameras on the perp walk. But AG Corbett’s ally Republicans in powerful leadership positions, particularly in the state Senate, were, like Jerry Sandusky, protected, shielded, and left untouched.

  Across the board, at every turn: no use harming Tom’s prospects at the polls. This was not just an unwritten policy in State College with Jerry Sandusky: in Republican strongholds like Harrisburg, Hershey, Altoona and York political friends and party hacks finding themselves in sticky wicket criminal straights were protected by AG Corbett leading up to his gubernatorial campaign.

  Around Pennsylvania, a new joke punch line was delivered by Republican district attorneys, a joke so funny that it knocked everybody to the floor with laughter: “I’m referring this matter to Attorney General Tom Corbett.” Everybody knew and well expected that AG Corbett wouldn’t actually do anything.

  And so when Centre County DA Michael Madeira referred his Sandusky complaint(s) to his former boss, AG Tom Corbett, in March 2009, it was, we should presume, done with the same tongue-in-cheek knowledge that Corbett would simply and safely sit on the damn complaint, and do nothing.

  Not the good shepherd

  It was all about priorities.

  Or, rather, misplaced priorities. In Jerry Sandusky’s case, the wolf was left to hound the sheep while the appointed shepherd was out glad-handing on the rubber chicken circuit, raking in cool millions in campaign contributions from Penn State-related benefactees, big wheels and alums.

  Many of Corbett’s State College political contributors, in turn, benefited directly or indirectly from the vast millions paid by the television networks for the broadcast rights to PSU football ga
mes. (Again, consider how much of this is corporate media driven.)

  Tom Corbett’s unspoken and unwritten real job in all this, as he and his cohorts see it, is not to enforce the law, but to keep the party rolling.

  “Vote for me, and you won’t have anything to worry about here,” was the not-so-subtle message, I’m told, Corbett exuded both in his 2008 reelection campaign for AG, and governor. “I’m the guy who’ll keep the lid on things.”

  When the lid finally blew off at Penn State, Corbett would hurt a lot of people.

  Tom Corbett’s first basic instinct is not to ask himself whether a given course of action is the right thing to do, or even whether it’s the lawful thing to do. He certainly doesn’t ask himself whether it’s the smart thing to do. His first most basic instinct is to ask himself, Will this hurt me or our guys?

  Tom Corbett is amoral, and is not particularly smart. You don’t have to be particularly sharp in a drawer full of spatulas.

  Part of Corbett’s problem is the great success that former Gov. Tom Ridge and Sen. Arlen Specter had in stacking up the courts and bureaucracies with GOP hacks who just go along with whatever ridiculous things fellow party hacks say and do. Corbett himself was one of Tom Ridge’s installed party hacks.

  So Corbett did not have to be particularly smart; he simply does dumb things knowing the other party hacks will cover his ass. His job, in turn, is to cover their asses.

  Dull-witted Republican Party hacks, like pigeons, nest everywhere today at Pennsylvania’s federal and state courthouses, and in all other houses and levels of government. They’ve grown used to doing dumb things that won’t stand up to scrutiny, because everybody goes along. Cronyism, party hackdom, mediocrity, and going along with the pack were Corbett’s successful spawning ground.

  Corbett’s predecessor in the governor’s chair, Ed Rendell, by comparison, is smarter than Tom Corbett. Rendell came up in the much more contentious rough and tumble of Philadelphia politics and had to sharpen himself or be eaten by others.

  Rendell’s always thinking a couple steps ahead. “Wherever there’s a fire, there’s Eddie with his bag of marshmallows,” we used to say. They don’t call him “Fast Eddie” without reason. Slow Tom, on the other hand, is always left to ruminate over the crap he’s already stepped in.

  Corbett does not understand why it is important for a governor, or even an attorney general, to be a good steward or shepherd for all the people of Pennsylvania. He doesn’t want to waste his limited energy or abilities on such concepts. He would much rather have a newspaper party hack write an article portraying him as a good shepherd, than having to himself figure out what that is, and what that means.

  The good shepherd, I’ll note here, is a parable told by Jesus as related in John 10:11-12: “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. The hired hand is not the shepherd and does not own the sheep. So when he sees the wolf coming, he abandons the sheep and runs away.”

  Tom Corbett was not a good shepherd. He allowed himself to become the hired hand of political and corporate interests. He was not about to lay down his life to protect the sheep. Hell, he wasn’t even willing to risk losing the election for the sheep, let alone his life.

  No use wrecking Tom’s election by looking into Jerry’s erection.

  Outside of TV land, in reality, there simply was no separating the “Bonusgate” prosecutions from Corbett’s campaign for governor.

  There was no separating most everything else that did and did not happen in the AG’s office from Corbett’s campaign for governor. The two became inexorably entwined.

  ‘The whole office was political’

  Tom Corbett’s gubernatorial campaign became all about his prosecutions, and his management of the AG’s office.

  It follows, though less focused upon by the public, Tom Corbett’s AG’s office was all about his campaign for governor.

  As I write this, the AG’s office website still features a healthy dollop of Tom Corbett’s campaign photo ops and videos, where he poses as a concerned and diligent prosecutor and public servant.

  In reality, he was a candidate for governor.

  In the end, Tom Corbett’s crusading “Bonusgate” political strategy paid off, at least for him, at least for a while. Corbett was elected governor in November 2010. He would become the first elected AG to make the leap to the governor’s office.

  Corbett’s election as governor would come at a great cost to the office of attorney general. The morale and simple self-respect of the AG’s office staff remain deeply harmed.

  Also harmed were the truth, Pennsylvania, and children.

  Kissing the Ring

  The AG’s office further deteriorated following Corbett’s election as governor. By the understood yet unspoken rules of the political spoils system, those who had helped Corbett naturally hoped to be repaid by a patronage appointment from him.

  “Everybody was jockeying for position for another job.”

  Corbett found himself treated with new deference. Many openly sought a promotion from him, or a job out of the AG’s office altogether.

  “Kissing the ring, we called it.”

  (“Kissing the ring,” of course, is a phrase used to describe one’s interactions with a pope or a bishop. “You can’t clean up the church if the bishop is corrupt,” an old Sicilian proverb goes, I’m told.)

  Some soon felt politically betrayed by Corbett.

  “Everybody was complaining they got him supporters and contributors but got nothing in return from Corbett.”

  Groups like the FOP (Fraternal Order of Police), for example, had supported Corbett, but he’d done little in return for many of its members who’d help him politically with their official AG’s office work.

  The moment Tom Corbett was sworn in as governor he would get to name his own successor as attorney general. The AG would once again be an appointee of the governor, a throwback to the days before the office became elective in 1980.

  Almost immediately after Corbett’s election as governor, Corbett’s First Deputy Attorney General, William Ryan, Jr., was discussed in the state press as a logical choice for AG appointment.

  The AG office’s second in command, Ryan was a career prosecutor who’d worked his way up through the ranks in the AG’s office since 1997. Under AG Mike Fisher he’d run the Criminal Law Division. Ryan understood the office, how it worked and (for cases like that of Jerry Sandusky) how it didn’t work. He was also himself deeply enmeshed in the “Bonusgate” prosecutions.

  A few days after the election, Ryan was featured prominently in a Pittsburgh Tribune-Review article written by Brad Bumsted titled, “Who’s Corbett’s pick for attorney general?”

  “A likely contender for the (AG’s) job is William H. Ryan Jr., Corbett’s first assistant and a career prosecutor,” Bumsted writes.

  Ryan was even on hand to Kiss the Ring as the polls closed on election night.

  “On election night, Ryan attended Corbett’s party for supporters at the Omni William Penn Hotel, Downtown,” Bumsted reports. “Asked about the possibility of his nomination, Ryan said he had not discussed it with Corbett.

  “’What I’d do is talk to Tom and take it from there,’ said Ryan.”

  Bumsted noted, “Jack Barbour, a Pittsburgh lawyer who co-chaired Corbett’s campaign, said numerous people tried to talk to him about appointments and ‘transition team issues,’ and he told them to wait until after the election.”

  After the election, though, Gov.-elect Corbett instead anointed Linda Kelley, a prosecutor from Pittsburgh, as AG.

  First Deputy AG Ryan would be passed over for the honor.

  One complaint to hit my ear:

  “William Ryan hoped to be the new AG. When he was passed over for Kelly, Ryan got all pissed off. He said he’s not making any major decisions until Kelly comes in. They weren’t making any promotions, or anything.”

  But it was little understood by the public that Corbett would not officially no
minate Linda Kelly for the AG job until February 8, 2011. Even less understood by the public was that Kelly would not assume office, or any of its powers, until she was confirmed by vote of the state Senate several months afterward, on May 23.

  Until then, at the moment Tom Corbett was sworn in as governor, on January 18, 2011, by writ of the Commonwealth Attorneys Act, a “pissed off” First Deputy Attorney General William Ryan became Acting Attorney General.

  Under the tenure of Acting AG Ryan, one promotion would be made.

  The investigation of Jerry Sandusky would receive a sudden and dramatic promotion in importance, resources, and priority.

  The writing on the wall

  Following Tom Corbett’s election as governor in November 2010, more troubling writing soon emerged on the wall. In this case, the electronic wall.

  In this politically charged environment, about the time of Corbett’s election as governor, AG’s Office narcotics Agent Anthony Sassano conducted a routine “toll search” in connection with a State College-area drug investigation and got a surprise hit on his PACE Explorer computer database.

  Narcotics Agent Sassano discovered that a pedophile complaint concerning Jerry Sandusky had been filed in Corbett’s office way back in early 2009. What’s up with that?

  Once the right hand was aware of what the left was not doing, other things became apparent.

  Agent Sassano quickly learned that Centre County DA Ray Gricar had investigated a pedophile complaint against Sandusky in 1998. The agent soon helped piece together another story, told in public postings in Internet chat boards, concerning Penn State assistant coach Mike McQueary.

  McQueary saw something that deeply troubled him in 2002 involving Sandusky and a boy in the PSU shower room. He’d reported it to Penn State officials, including Coach Paterno. But had those PSU officials reported anything to DA Ray Gricar?