Penn State investigator Freeh wins praise for tough report

(Reuters) - Louis Freeh, the FBI director under Presidents Bill Clinton and George Bush who left amid criticism just before the September 11, 2001, attacks, won praise Thursday for his unflinching report on Penn State University's handling of child sex abuse by a former football coach.

Experts said Freeh pulled no punches and made no excuses. He concluded the school's leaders, including late head coach Joe Paterno and former President Graham Spanier, allowed Jerry Sandusky to prey for years with impunity on young boys.

He also took to task the Penn State board that hired him, saying it failed to hold senior leaders accountable and declined to act after a March 2011 media report about allegations against Sandusky.

While in-house investigations often whitewash the actions of their employers, Freeh was "fearlessly independent and brutally honest," said Paul Callan, a former New York City prosecutor.

Penn State "hired their own executioner, as he was highly critical of the very people who hired him," said Callan, a partner with Callan, Koster, Brady and Brennan. "He deserves great credit."

In the last year, Freeh has taken on other high profile projects including as trustee of the bankrupt former commodities broker MF Global. He undertook an investigation of cheating on the SAT college entrance examinations, and conducted an internal corruption probe for casino company Wynn Resorts.

He was hired by Penn State in November to evaluate its handling of the Sandusky scandal. Over the next eight months, his team of investigators conducted more than 430 interviews including school staff, coaches, athletes and others, and examined 3.5 million emails and documents.

Freeh did not escape criticism. Leaks of some emails used by his team in the investigation angered, among others, Paterno's family, who questioned the fairness of the report. He said none of those leaks came from his team.

"NOT A NATIONAL PRIORITY"

Freeh's tenure as the nation's top law enforcement officer at the FBI was highly controversial. Even though he had left the FBI shortly before the September 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, he was strongly criticized by the commission that investigated the al Qaeda attacks.

Under Freeh, the FBI was hampered by a resistance to change, inadequate resources and legal barriers, the September 11 commission report said. Freeh also was criticized for failing to usher the FBI into the modern, computerized age.

Testifying before the commission in 2004 about FBI counterterrorism efforts, Freeh said, "The political means and will to declare and fight this war didn't exist before September 11."

Counterterrorism "was not a national priority," he said, adding that operations were severely underfunded and understaffed, partly due to a 22-month hiring freeze imposed by Congress.

During his tenure, the FBI was plagued by several blunders that drew criticism from members of Congress.

One incident involved discovery of a spy in the FBI's own ranks. Robert Hanssen, who had been a FBI agent, pleaded guilty in 2001 to spying for Moscow for more than 15 years.

Another involved misplaced FBI files from its investigation into the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing. The discovery of thousands of pages of documents that were not turned over to defense lawyers led to a one-month delay in the 2001 execution of Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh.

A third involved its investigation of nuclear scientist Wen Ho Lee, who was suspected of espionage at the Los Alamos nuclear laboratory. He pleaded guilty in 2000 to a less severe charge when the case against him collapsed.

A graduate of Rutgers Law School in New Jersey, Freeh joined the FBI and served as a special agent from 1975 to 1981 in the New York City field office and at FBI headquarters.

As an FBI agent, he helped run the waterfront racketeering investigation that convicted more than 125 labor leaders, shipping executives and underworld figures.

He became a federal prosecutor in New York, where he headed a team that broke up a major Sicilian Mafia heroin ring in a case called the "Pizza Connection."

In 1991, Freeh was appointed a federal judge in New York. In 1993, Clinton appointed him FBI director.

In 2007 he founded Freeh Group International Solutions and he is a partner in Freeh Sporkin & Sullivan.

(Reporting by Jim Vicini and Greg McCune; Editing by Paul Thomasch and Doina Chiacu)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/penn-state-investigator-freeh-wins-praise-tough-report-014220354--nfl.html

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