E-mails show NCAA, Freeh contact during Penn State probe

Louis Freeh regularly conferred with the NCAA and kept its top officials informed as his firm investigated Pennsylvania State University's handling of the Jerry Sandusky scandal, according to e-mails unearthed by critics of Freeh and the league.

What those messages meant became the subject of a heated debate Wednesday between the college athletics' governing body and the state officials suing over the crippling sanctions imposed on Penn State after Freeh's 2012 report.

"It's troubling. Clearly, there was coordination," said State Sen. Jake Corman (R., Centre), one of the officials challenging the validity of the NCAA's sanctions. "This is something that was very important to my community, it harmed a lot of people, and to think that there was a predetermined outcome is extremely troubling."

NCAA's general counsel, Donald Remy, shot back, calling Corman's characterization "irresponsible." Far from being a bombshell, he said, the e-mails reveal a cooperation that the NCAA had announced days after Penn State hired Freeh, a former FBI director and judge, in late 2011.

"The NCAA received periodic status updates from Judge Freeh's staff on the progress of the investigation," the lawyer said. "The Freeh Group investigation was completely and entirely independent from the NCAA, and these updates intentionally and purposely did not include any information regarding the substance of the investigation."

Corman and state Treasurer Rob McCord included the e-mails in filings this week in their Commonwealth Court lawsuit. The correspondence - which ranged from suggestions on interview questions to a two-hour "education session" for Freeh's investigators on NCAA policies - shed new light on the NCAA's interest in Freeh's work and reignited debates among critics who maintain the league unfairly blamed Penn State for Sandusky's crimes.

Freeh's firm, Freeh Group International, did not return calls seeking comment Wednesday.

Corman and McCord got the e-mails as part of the discovery process in their litigation. Last week, filings in the same case produced a separate set of e-mails that showed top NCAA officials had privately wondered whether they had the authority to take action against Penn State.

"The NCAA's involvement with the Freeh Group was regular and substantive and began nearly from the outset of the Freeh Group's retention by Penn State," Corman's lawyer, Matthew Haverstick, wrote in a motion filed Tuesday.

The documents included Nov. 30, 2011, correspondence in which NCAA president Mark Emmert sought to reach out to Freeh just weeks after he had been appointed by Penn State.

Days later, Freeh and his top deputies met with several NCAA officials, including Remy and Julie Roe Lach, the association's then-vice president for enforcement, for three hours at the campus' Nittany Lion Inn, another e-mail exchange shows.

In a Dec. 28 e-mail that year, Remy gave Freeh's firm a list of 32 draft questions to ask key university officials about the culture of Penn State's football program and its employees' duty to report suspected criminal activity.

Omar McNeill, a partner at Freeh's firm, thanked Remy and wrote: "I await your list of potential witnesses, database search terms, etc., you would like to provide."

The e-mails offer no evidence that the NCAA reviewed Freeh's report before it was released to university administrators or the public in July 2012. But within hours of its release, Emmert sought a face-to-face meeting with Freeh, the e-mails show.

University officials said they knew Freeh had maintained contact with the NCAA throughout his investigation and stood by the independence of his report.

"It has been public knowledge for almost three years that the university had agreed that the NCAA and the Big Ten Conference would monitor the progress of the Freeh investigation," the university said in a statement. "While the NCAA may have made suggestions to the Freeh Group with respect to its investigation, the scope of the Freeh investigation was established by the Penn State board of trustees, as set forth in the Freeh engagement letter, not by the NCAA."

Drawing on internal e-mails, secret notes, and dozens of interviews, the report concluded football coach Joe Paterno, university president Graham B. Spanier, and two other top university officials failed to act on suspicions or suggestions that Sandusky was sexually abusing boys.

Emmert cited those findings days after the Freeh report was released, when the NCAA announced sanctions, including a $60 million fine, the vacating of 13 years of football team wins, and a four-year postseason ban. (The bowl ban has since been lifted.)

At the time, Emmert said the NCAA had not conducted its own investigation and called Freeh's more comprehensive than any the association could have done.

Corman, a Penn State alum who was elected Wednesday as Senate majority leader, has pushed for the $60 million fine to be spent in Pennsylvania.

"The narrative that was presented to us was that Penn State hires Freeh to do a report, find out what happened, and give advice on best practices, and that the NCAA read that report and then levied the sanctions against Penn State," Corman said. "That's not what happened."