Experts: Ex-PSU president Spanier could still face charges

[Omaha Steve]

Source: AP-Omaha World Herald

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — More than a month after an explosive investigative report accused Penn State’s ousted president of burying child sex abuse allegations against Jerry Sandusky, Graham Spanier has so far avoided criminal charges — unlike two of his former subordinates.

That doesn’t mean he’s in the clear, according to legal experts.

As attorneys for Athletic Director Tim Curley and retired Vice President Gary Schultz urged a Dauphin County judge Thursday to dismiss the case against them, Spanier remains vulnerable to criminal charges over his alleged role in a scandal that has shaken Penn State to its core, outside lawyers said.

Former FBI Director Louis Freeh’s university-commissioned report that accused the ex-president — along with Curley, Schultz and football coach Joe Paterno — of covering up a 2001 allegation against Sandusky could help lay the groundwork for a prosecution.

FULL story at link.


Read more: http://www.omaha.com/article/20120816/SPORTS/708169881/1707#experts-ex-psu-president-spanier-could-still-face-charges

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Graham Spanier

[zentrum]

1. Things get weirder and weirder

Why does Spanier have a top level security clearance? What is he connected to in the government? What work was he doing? Is he one of those campus CIA guys?

[Posteritatis]

3. It specifies security consulting with the clearance anyway

As for clearances overall, they're more common than you'd expect. Sometimes they're needed just to enter a building to work there - there's places where the custodial staff would need a security clearance, even if they never ever actually look at or work with anything classified.

Of course that part doesn't apply to this guy, since it's more implied he has the clearance for the work he's doing for the government. Why him of all people is a whole other question, though.

[Beowulf]

2. What he is doing exactly with Homeland Security is secret,

however, Penn State was among the first universities to offer degrees in Homeland Security.

[DCKit]

4. What about the former AG who enabled the cover-up... y'know what's his name?

Ah, that's right, Corbett. What ever happened to that slimeball? Must be hiding in a cave somewhere, hiding his head in shame.

[Kolesar]

5. The Governor is far from an innocent bystander.

Wow. I had missed this story and googled up a doosie from "The Nation":

The Governor is far from an innocent bystander. As the state’s attorney general in 2009, Corbett headed a state investigation into accusations against the revered former coach. Although his office denies it, there are multiple confirmations that Corbett assigned no one from his office to follow up on the charges: just one state trooper, a state trooper “not authorized to bring charges against Sandusky.” In addition, when Corbett was sworn in as governor in 2011, he still had not informed Thae Second Mile Foundation that their founder was under investigation. Instead, as a candidate for governor, he took $650,000 in donations from members of the Second Mile’s unknowing board, even allowing their chairman to hold a fundraiser for his campaign. Upon being elected, Corbett then moved deftly from doing nothing to immediately try to deflect the entire weight of the scandal onto Joe Paterno and Penn State itself, using his recently appointed position as a member of the school’s Board of Trustees (an automatic appointment for all Pennsylvania Governors) to do so.

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http://www.thenation.com/blog/168853/shocking-truth-about-joe-paterno-penn-state-and-governor-tom-corbett#

[csziggy]

6. Ray Gricar who declined to prosecute in 1998? Disappeared in 2005

And has not been seen since.

His disappearance was strange - his car was found in a town a few miles away from the town where he lived. His laptop was later found with no hard drive in it. The hard drive was later found but even the company that recovered data from the exploded shuttle's hard drives was unable to recover the data on it. Evidence of searches on how to erase data from hard drives was found on another computer Gricar had use of.

Some think Gricar committed suicide, some think he 'disappeared' himself. No body was ever found. No evidence of any effort to set aside money for a new life was ever found.