Louis Freeh and the Sandusky Report

Standing before the podium with his reading glasses perched on his nose in a Really Serious Position, former FBI Director Louis Freeh read the summary of his damning report on what happened at Penn State University. The university, he intoned, was directly responsible for permitting Jerry Sandusky, the former football team defensive coordinator and now a convicted child molester, for preying on young "troubled" boys.

So far, the media response has been lockstep not only in its condemnation for Penn State and the late Joe Paterno, the legendary coach who won more games than any other NCAA Division I football coach in history, but also in its praise for Freeh. (I include links from the New York Times, ESPN, and CBS Sports.)

Not being familiar with the details of the report or the Sandusky case and the role of Penn State officials in trying to hide what they feared was happening, I will ask readers to judge the accuracy and tone of Freeh’s report and make their own assessments. However, before the media and legal world goes on to paint Louis Freeh in the most heroic terms, I would remind readers that probably any one of us could have written that report and made the same damning comments made by Freeh and his underlings. It hardly is heroic to come upon a situation after the fact and to write those things which apparently were obvious in hindsight.

No, I am writing in order to let readers know that this "heroic" Louis Freeh has some serious baggage of his own, baggage that includes covering up murders, whitewashing the most hideous domestic massacre since Wounded Knee, publicly making wrongful accusations, and further turning the Federal Bureau of Investigation into an entity that James Bovard accurately has called, "A Stasi for America." Louis Freeh does not deserve our praise; indeed, he does not even deserve our scorn. Instead, he deserves to be sitting in a cell at the federal Supermax Prison in Colorado, as the crimes he committed during his years at the FBI pale in comparison to anything done by Paterno, whose legacy Freeh has destroyed, or even Sandusky ever did.

Read the rest of the piece here.