Tag Archives: Louis Freeh

Apr 7 2013

Penn State Board of Trustees Needs Scott Kimler


Scott is one of the 6-person Executive Committee on PSU-ReBOT.org – which formed as a direct result of the Sandusky scandal. Our group mission has been to reform the Penn State Board of Trustees. We embarked on several initiatives to improve Penn State, which include:
-Supporting the Faculty Senate “BOT Vote of No Confidence” by making presenting at the January 2012 meeting and collecting more than 4,500 petition signatures
-Embarking on an ambitious research project to collect & evaluate governance metrics from 60+ land-grant and BigTen universities for peer review comparison with Penn State
-Advocate for Alumni BOT election reform, which resulted in:
-first-ever Meet and Greet during Blue/White weekend;
-first-ever 86-candidate straw poll (Scott) http://goo.gl/dG478 and
-a single, interactive web-page with candidate information for all 86 candidates “Super Table” (Scott) – http://goo.gl/NjPnc
-Work with existing Board members to advocate reform (spring 2012)
-Work with former Auditor General Jack Wagner and his staff on governance reform (summer 2012) http://goo.gl/bqfRS
-A letter-writing campaign to BOT members urging Wagner reform recommendations (Jan 2013) – http://goo.gl/76DLz
In addition to strategic planning and leadership duties on the Executive Committee, I am also responsible for PSU-ReBOT.org web properties. I designed, created and maintain the http://www.psu-rebot.org website, the Facebook page and the @psu_rebot Twitter presence. PSU Board Relevance – Demonstrated daily commitment to improving Penn State, for over a year. I didn’t wait for a seat on the Board to make a positive impact, I got involved and have applied myself to the task of improving Penn State with both purposeand resolve. Through my involvement, I am aware of the history of decisions the Board has made post-Sandusky, have made many contacts with members of the Penn State community including members of the current Board, various members and leaders of alumni groups, Penn State faculty and many students. As a Board member, I can hit the ground running and am eager to continue reform efforts in person and working with other reform-minded Trustees. My web development and social media abilities will be an asset to the ‘tip-of-the-spear’ efforts for transparency, openness and trust desperately needed within the Penn State Board of Trustees.

 

Apr 1 2013

Merck Tries To Control Frazier’s Racist Comments


On the morning of March 17, 2013 – before Frazier’s apology had run in the CDT – a user with the screen name “BroadSt Bully” restored a paragraph that had been deleted 2 days before describing Frazier’s role in hiring Louis Freeh and firing Joe Paterno.  BroadSt Bully also added a paragraph about the racially insensitive comment made by Frazier 3 days earlier:
On March 14, 2013, at a sub-committee meeting of the Penn State Board of Trustees, Frazier uttered a racist and bigoted remark at a candidate running for the Board of Trustees who criticized the Freeh narrative.
BroadSt Bully also removed the qualifier “blue ribbon” which described the Special Investigative Task Force (“commission”).  12 hours later, a user identified only by his IP address 67.165.19.29 removed both of those paragraphs.  This IP address traces back to a Comcast user in Doylestown, PA.  3 hours later, a user in the Netherlands (possibly an administrator) restored the paragraphs with the qualifying edit note:
“The previous edit deleted balancing material that provides criticism of the figure in question. Wikipedia articles are not “fluff pieces” that say only positive things”
 Approximately 14 hours later (11:54 18 March 2013), the previous user once again deleted these 2 paragraphs.  40 minutes later, they were restored by an admin in Connecticut.

Merck Corporate Works on the Cover-up

 An hour later a user identified by the IP address 155.91.28.231 once again removed those paragraphs.  However, this IP address traced back to a corporate ISP:  Merck.
General IP Information
Top of Form
IP:
155.91.28.231
Decimal:
2606439655
Hostname:
155.91.28.231
ISP:
Organization:
Merck and Co.
Services:
Type:
Assignment:
Blacklist:
Bottom of Form
Geolocation Information
Country:
United States <!–[if !vml]–><!–[endif]–>
State/Region:
New Jersey
City:
Old Bridge
Latitude:
40.3958  (40° 23′ 44.88″ N)
Longitude:
-74.3255  (74° 19′ 31.80″ W)
Area Code:
732
Postal Code:
08857
And then the internet sparks began to fly.  Over the next 3 hours, users would attempt to restore those 2 paragraphs, only to be deleted within minutes by the Merck user. 
At 14:03 user “Cornmd” restores the 2 paragraphs.  14:15 the Merck IP address deletes them.
 At 14:16 user “Ubiquity” restores the 2 paragraphs.  14:21 the Merck IP address deletes them. 
 At 14:22 user “BroadSt Bully” restores the 2 paragraphs.  14:22 the Merck IP address deletes them. 
 User “Arctic Kangaroo” tries to restore the paragraphs and within minutes, the Merck IP address deletes them.  Arctic Kangaroo restores the content at 14:25, at which point the content is temporarily removed for discussion by “Edgar181” at 14:31.
 At 14:39 BroadSt Bully restores the content with the edit note:  “Re-added sourced material. User’s IP address traces to Merck, who is Frazier’s employer”
At 14:57 BroadSt Bully adds titles to the 2 paragraphs “Jerry Sandusky sex scandal” and “Racially insensitive outburst.”
At 15:30 the Merck user deletes them.  Over the next 2 hours, the Merck user makes 5 more attempts to delete content, and add flattering career highlights for Ken Frazier, until an admin warns him that he is violating 4 different Wikipedia terms of service.  Five minutes later, the Wikipedia admins lock down edits of the Wikipedia page. Two hours later, the Merck user is blocked for one month from editing ANY web pages. 
This was not the first time this user was blocked by Wikipedia.  Here is the discipline history of 155.91.28.231 which warranted the one month penalty for “disruptive editing”:
 21:53, 18 March 2013 Ronhjones (talk | contribs) blocked 155.91.28.231 (talk) (anon. only, account creation blocked) with an expiry time of 1 month (Disruptive editing)
  22:21, 10 July 2012 Materialscientist (talk | contribs) blocked 155.91.28.231 (talk) (anon. only, account creation blocked) with an expiry time of 1 week (Copyright violations)
  20:11, 7 November 2008 RoySmith (talk | contribs) blocked 155.91.28.231 (talk) (anon. only) with an expiry time of 24 hours (Repeated reversion of text to Yak shaving contrary to prior AFD decision)
  22:13, 25 January 2006 Hall Monitor (talk | contribs) blocked 155.91.28.231 (talk) with an expiry time of 48 hours (massive content removal)
  21:00, 1 December 2005 Brian0918 (talk | contribs) blocked 155.91.28.231 (talk) with an expiry time of 24 hours (vandalisms)

Previous edit on Freeh Report entry on Frazier’s wiki page

Interesting to note Ken Frazier’s Wikipedia page had a previous edit disputed.
 On October 21, 2012, a user named “Callancc” described the Freeh report as being accepted “without review, but was reported to be riddled with conjecture, research with gaping holes, and unsubstantiated conclusions.”  It was revised on November 5, 2012 by an IP address from Boston University to say the Freeh report was accepted “and used as the basis for the NCAA sanctions against Penn State.” With the edit note:
“The last sentence was ridiculously partisan, clearly there only to attempt to discredit the Freeh report which was widely seen as fair and thoroughly done.”)
The Merck user created an account on Wikipedia on October 10, 2005 and spent most of his early time updating the Wikipedia pages of Ann Coulter and Ron Dellums (a long time member of the House of Representatives from California, who became the Mayor of Oakland in 2007).

Controlling the PSU Narrative

Ken Frazier’s comments to Bill Cluck had been widely  but they never reached a global audience until they were posted in Wikipedia.
There is a dogged determination from this Merck user to remove this content from Wikipedia.  In addition, the Merck IT team has been hard at work over the weekend to bury any negative articles circulating about Frazier on the internet and pumping up his bio and other positive articles as they appear in google searches.  Once again, it appears that Frazier is trying to control the narrative by controlling the information available to the public.
Which begs the question, what audience is he really trying to control?
Posted by at 8:20 AM
Mar 21 2013

Pennsylvania Rep Needs YOUR Help!


PA House member Scott Conklin has asked the help of everyone who cares about
Penn State and who understands that the PSU Board of Trustees needs to get
serious reform. Two House members allegedly have been lobbied by current BOT members to stall four reform bills so that they cannot reach the floor of the
House to receive a fair hearing. If the recent PA Senate hearing is to be
anything more than a distant memory, and BOT reform to avoid being buried by our status quo trustees, we need to provide serious, and I mean SERIOUS,
encouragement to those House members to stop obstructing these bills. And
encourage House leaders to assist in that effort. We need a tsunami of emails
and snail mail to the four individuals provided here. IF you are planning to write a letter, we encourage you to be short and to the point—the trick is to be clear from the beginning what you want from this person. Write your own letter, use this one, splice something short together—your call. If you’re not a resident of PA, don’t share that with them. You’re Penn State—that’s enough. Finally, feel free to mail any snail mail letter when you’re ready. However, emails should be sent on MONDAY!

Dear Representative:

I am
writing you to request that you assist in moving legislation relating to reform
of the Penn State Board of Trustees to the floor of the House so that it can
receive the hearing that it deserves. The current leadership of the Board is
attempting to offer only minor adjustments to Board practices and touting them
as major reforms. This is the same leadership which failed to respond
effectively to crises during the past sixteen months, and those failures have
done serious damage to the Commonwealth’s flagship university.

The
following bills need your cooperation and assistance:

- House Bill 299 –
Reduce the size of the Board of Trustees

- House Bill 310 – Reorganize
the voting structure of the Board
- House Bill 311 – Amend the Right-To-Know
Law to include State Related entities
- House Bill 312 – Amend the Ethics Act
to include State Related entities

We are all counting on your help to
bring the Penn State Board of Trustees into the Twenty-First century.

[name]

The Honorable Samuel H. Smith
Speaker of the
House
139 Main Capitol BuildingPO Box 202066Harrisburg, PA
17120-2066
E-mail:
shsmith@pahousegop.com
Facebook:Facebook.com/RepSamSmith

Representative
Mike Turzai
Majority Leader
110 Main Capitol BuildingPO Box
202028Harrisburg, PA 17120-2028
E-mail: mturzai@pahousegop.com
Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/RepTurzai

Representative
Daryl Metcalfe, Chairman
House State Government Committee144 Main CapitolPO
Box 202012Harrisburg, PA 17120-2012
E-mail:
dmetcalf@pahousegop.com
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/RepMetcalfe

Representative
Paul Clymer, Chairman
House Education Committee
216 Ryan Office BuildingPO
Box 202145Harrisburg, PA 17120-2145
E-mail:
pclymer@pahousegop.com
Facebook: Facebook.com/RepClymer

Mar 19 2013

Ken Frazier Quote – And He Chaired the Committee that Hired Freeh


“Tens of thousands of former Vioxx users sued Merck after it withdrew the drug, alleging Vioxx had caused them to suffer heart attacks and strokes. Frazier, then the company’s general counsel, declared Merck had done nothing wrong and refused to settle. “We’ll fight every case,” he declared, and hired top-flight law firms in several East Coast cities, in the South, in Chicago, and Los Angeles, as well as a prominent New York firm to coordinate the overall strategy.”

Mar 18 2013

Mark Battaglia Addresses Board of Trustees


Mark Battaglia was the starting center on the 1982 National Championship Football Team.  The first of Penn State’s many National Championship Teams (1968, 1969, 1973, 1986, and 1994) to be recognized as such by the AP and UPI polls.  I was fortunate enough to spend a week of fly-fishing in Montana with Mark back in 2003 and we’ve been friends ever since.
On March 15, 2013, Mark addressed the Penn State Board of Trustees at the meeting in Hershey.

Here are his words: “Thank you.  And thank you for the opportunity to address the Board today. My name is Mark Battaglia and I was fortunate enough to be on the 1982 National Championship Team.

Sadly, to date, there’s only one man who has admitted that with the benefit of hindsight that he wished he would have done more. You see Joe Paterno held us to a higher standard as players. In the classroom, in our lives, on the football field.
And we’re here today to hold you, the Board, to a higher standard.
More specifically, those who have already been held to a higher standard because they played for Joe Paterno or they had brothers or nephews who played for Joe Paterno.
They knew Joe Paterno like we knew Joe Paterno.
They were in the huddle with him when the game was on the line, they looked in his eyes, they saw the man, they knew the man.
And yet, they wouldn’t take his call. They wouldn’t make a call.
They sat around silently.
Worse yet, maybe they led the effort to fire Joe.
Was it personal? A personal disappointment?
Did they let a personal issue lead to a potentially $100 million debacle?
You know, Joe always said ‘you’re never as good as you think you are when you win and you’re never as bad as you think you are when you lose.’
The good news here is that we are losing, we didn’t lose, we are losing badly.
We need to change the strategy.
We need the leadership from those very people who played for Joe to lead us out of this thing by changing.
You painted yourself in the corner with this Freeh report. I’m sorry Mr. Frazier…
And this ‘move on’ thing…it’s not happening. The alumnus, the alumni are not buying it.
So Joe said, always said, ‘you have to believe deeply in your heart that you are destined to do great things.’
You guys can do that. There’s still time.
There are 500,000 alumni out there hoping and praying that you accept the challenge.
Thank you.”
Posted by at 11:25 PM

Mar 16 2013

Lettermen Address Penn State Board of Trustees


At a press conference afterward, Penn State Lettermen who played for Paterno  gave the board their own prescription for moving forward:

* A formal apology to legendary former head football coach Joe Paterno‘s family for his firing-by-telephone days after Sandusky’s arrest.

* Restoration of the monument outside Beaver Stadium that paid tribute to Paterno’s teams. The concrete wall was removed with Paterno’s statue last July, causing deep hurt to many of the players from Penn State’s most successful teams and their fans.

* Joining the pushback, currently led by Gov. Tom Corbett, against the four-year program of NCAA sanctions against Penn State football, a regime of penalties that the letterman said are unfairly punishing players, students and fans who had nothing to do with Sandusky.

They also seconded trustee Anthony Lubrano’s request for a board meeting with former FBI Director Louis Freeh, so that members at large can have their first opportunity to confront him with their questions.

Board members gave no indication that they are ready to act on those demands Friday – to date, only a small minority have expressed public misgivings about Freeh’s findings that Penn State’s top administrators and Paterno – gave cover for Sandusky in 2001.

Sandusky, Paterno’s longtime defensive coordinator, was convicted last year of sexually abusing 10 boys between 1994 and 2008. He has been sentenced to a minimum of 30 years in state prison.

The university, meanwhile, is now trying to negotiate civil settlements with 30 men who claim they were abused by Sandusky over the last 35 years.

Penn State letterman Philip LaPorta adresses Board of Trustees Penn State letterman Philip LaPorta adresses Board of Trustees.

Freeh’s findings have largely been echoed in a statewide grand jury presentment last fall that resulted in criminal obstruction of justice, child endangerment and other charges against former Penn State President Graham Spanier and two of his top administrators. (However, Paterno was not implicated in this presentment).

For the first time several trustees actually engaged in a direct discussion about Freeh’s findings, with Lubrano reiterating his concerns and Ken Frazier, chair of the special committee that hired Freeh, defending the report.

And after the meeting, Trustees Chairman Keith Masser said that he felt the board’s legal committee, where Frazier touched off this week’s Freeh discussion Thursday, has an obligation to consider Lubrano’s request.

“Whether it comes out of the committee (with a positive recommendation) is another question,” said Masser, who also sits on the Legal Committee. “But we can make sure that it gets addressed.”

Masser declined to offer his own opinion on whether the board should revisiting the reports. “It’s not appropriate for us to pre-empt committee discussion,” he said Friday.

The lettermen who set the tone for the public comment period, however, said afterward that in their mind, this is the only path back to respectability for this board after, in their view,  betraying Paterno and Penn State for 16 months.

“They have an opportunity for a second chance… because a new viewpoint of what happened at Penn State with Jerry Sandusky has come out,” through the Paterno-financed critique of the Freeh Report authored by former Gov. Dick Thornburgh, said former player Tom Donchez, now of Bethlehem.

“Let’s see what they do. Let’s see if they come out and do something for this university.”

The players said they are not worried that their continuing crusade against the Freeh report and the NCAA sanctions effectively validates concerns cited by NCAA President Mark Emmert and others that Penn State does have a football-first culture.

That’s because, they said, any fair examination of the record shows that Paterno himself was so much more than football.

Mickey Shuler, an East Pennsboro High School star who played for Paterno, noted the coach’s role in elevating the entire university through his fundraising, demands on the trustees and expectations of his players.

As a player, Shuler said, Paterno’s expectations were that everyone was “responsible and accountable to one another, the team and most importantly, the university… representing that university in a positive light everywhere you go.

“And that concept,” added Shuler, who now lives in Marysville, “just became contagious… His was an example that the whole university, I think, feels they have to live up to his expectations.”

Mar 16 2013

Questionable Governance Reforms for Penn State Board of Trustees


The board is considering a change to its standing orders that would allow for the removal of a trustee who violates his or her fiduciary duty or the expectations of board membership.

For instance, board members will be expected to support board decisions and not speak out against them. They will be prohibited from acting on his or her own behalf. And they will need to fulfill their donation pledges to Penn State on a timely basis.

When Lubrano heard on Friday the proposed changes, which originated in a governance committee, he asked if these were being dubbed the “Lubrano rule.”

Trustee Linda Strumpf appeared to give Lubrano a cross look, and she mouthed something at the same time as her gesture, but it was not clear what it was.

Lubrano said he wanted all the trustees held to the same standards.

Lubrano also brought up the idea of requiring trustees to go through criminal background checks, something the university implemented as one of Louis Freeh’s 119 recommendations.

The governance reforms were brought up during Friday’s board meeting for a fuller discussion by all 32 trustees. Lubrano was the only one who made comments.

James Broadhurst, the governance committee chairman, will head to Harrisburg on Monday to testify before a Senate committee hearing about the reforms.

Mar 15 2013

Ken Frazier Makes Outrageous Statement!!


“I believe that we are entitled to look at the words and contemporaneous emails and other documents that draw the conclusions that we need to draw as a university. We are not subject to the criminal beyond-a-reasonable-doubt standard, and you’re a lawyer, so you can stop pretending that you think we are. We can take employment actions, we can take corrective actions without any need to resort to the so-called due process, reasonable doubt standard, and I don’t care if they are acquitted. And you know the difference. If you cared about that, you are one of the few people in this country that looks like you who actually believes the O.J. Simpson not guilty verdict was correct. The fact of the matter is, those documents say what they say, and no amount of hand waving will ever change what those documents say.”

Outrageous!!

Mar 13 2013

Lettermen Plan to “ROAST” the Board of Trustees


Some 30 Penn State lettermen are planning to roast the university’s board of trustees at their meeting Friday afternoon in Hershey.

The lettermen have registered to speak during the public comment period during the meeting, and they plan to hold a press conference after the meeting.

“We want to look the trustees in the eyes and tell them that their actions over the last 16 months have brought great harm upon Penn State, our beloved program and the innocent players and coaches who now occupy our locker room,” Brian Masella, a tight end and punter from 1971 to 1975, said in a statement.

The meeting starts at 1:30 p.m. in Room 302 of the University Fitness and Conference Center at Penn State’s Hershey Medical Center.

The players hope to secure all 10 slots during the public comment session in the hope of persuading the trustees to reconsider the conclusions of the Freeh report and the unprecedented NCAA sanctions.

The board just began offering a public comment period this academic year, and university spokesman David La Torre said the “(b)oard looks forward to hearing from all parties who will speak.”

“Now that Sue Paterno has come forward with the exceptional and thorough work of Gov. Dick Thornburgh, FBI expert Jim Clemente and attorney Wick Sollers, we stand united with her and her family in decrying the absurd conclusions of Louis Freeh,” the players said in a news release. “He didn’t know Joe.

“We knew Joe.”

The players’ statement said the trustees should have had the courage to speak to Paterno in November 2011 before forcing him out as the coach.

Trustee and former Nittany Lion lettermen Paul Suhey disputed that Paterno was fired and said the coach was “retired three weeks early.”

Suhey said the board regrets that it was carried out by a phone call.

“People are still so hurt by that, and you know, damn it, we screwed it up,” Suhey said.

The terms are up this year for Suhey and fellow alumni trustee Stephanie Deviney, who are facing a hostile environment for re-election.

Mar 1 2013

Penn State President Rodney Erickson gets chastised for university’s tacit acceptance of Freeh Report


By Charles Thompson |

The Freeh Report reared its head at today’s Senate hearing on the state’s annual appropriation to Penn State.

Several lawmakers engaged in the fight against the NCAA penalties that flowed from its findings lightly grilled President Rodney Erickson for letting former FBI Director Louis Freeh‘s narrative stand last summer as the official word on the university’s management of the Jerry Sandusky scandal.

Freeh’s conclusions, you will remember, were that Penn State’s top leaders chose to handle a 2001 allegation against Sandusky internally rather than turn them over to police or other investigative agencies.

That act of omission, Freeh and later state prosecutors have alleged, helped set the stage for assaults on several other boys over the next seven years.

Senate Appropriations Chairman Jake Corman, R-Centre, referencing the longstanding complaints about gaps in Freeh’s work, asked Erickson if he still believes its conclusions are accurate.

Erickson ducked, arguing it is “not appropriate for me to comment on that question here in this kind of forum.”

Noting there are pending criminal and civil cases that still have to play out, Erickson said, “I think it’s appropriate that we let the investigative and the judicial process take its course Mr. Chairman, with all due respect.”

And Corman pounced.

“But when Penn State decided to release this report without any review or due diligence it already entered into the fray of these criminal trials and to the public discourse of how this matter is treated….”

Corman then acknowledged the pressures the university was under at the time, noting “there is no manual to walk yourself through this.”

But, he concluded, “I guess I wish you would have taken that same position prior to the (release of the) report, which has been used not only to punish Penn State” but to frame the public narrative of the case.

On the whole, it was a gentler version of similar critiques Erickson has already received at various alumni town halls, or that he and trustees routinely field at public board meetings these days.

But given that Corman is perhaps Penn State’s most influential ally in the state legislature, today’s back and forth was another forceful reminder that the Sandusky wounds have not yet healed.

Erickson fielded other questions during today’s hearings about the Freeh report from Sen. John Yudichak, D-Luzerne County, and inquiries about the NCAA fine from Sen. Patricia Vance, R-Cumberland County