Penn State trustee Anthony Lubrano said Sunday he wants his fellow board members to try to recoup at least some of the millions paid to former FBI director Louis Freeh's firm for its analysis of the causes and conditions behind the Jerry Sandusky child sex scandal.
Penn State alumni trustee Anthony Lubrano.
Lubrano, an alumni trustee who cruised to election last spring on a wave of outrage over what some consider to be university leadership's hasty acceptance of institutional blame for the longtime assistant football coach's actions, said he was speaking out based on the findings presented earlier this month by a panel of experts commissioned by the late Joe Paterno's family to critique Freeh's findings.
Their analysis savaged Freeh's conclusions that senior leadership at Penn State helped create a shadowy environment in which Sandusky could prey on boys, and argued many of Freeh's conclusions are no more than suppositions based on an incomplete factual record.
The Paternos' analysis did not in itself fill in any of those evidentiary gaps, but the holes exposed, Lubrano said today, are enough for him to demand board-level discussion of seeking a refund.
Lubrano noted that when hired in November 2011, Freeh's charge was to “perform an independent, full and complete investigation ...
“We now know that this did not happen,” Lubrano said in a statement emailed to various reporters, referencing findings by former Pennsylvania Gov. Dick Thornburgh that - either by request of prosecutors or refusals of the subjects themselves - at least 14 key players in the Sandusky saga were never interviewed.
“Putting aside its inaccuracy and unfairness, the Freeh Report is far from complete and as a result, I believe Penn State is entitled to a refund,” Lubrano's statement said.
As of Nov. 30, Penn State said that it spent $13.1 million on internal investigations and public relations efforts. Payments to Freeh's law firm are contained within that bucket, though exact costs of the investigation were not immediately available.
In a telephone interview Sunday night, Lubrano conceded there may value to Penn State in some of the 119 recommendations the Freeh Report contained to help the university tighten policies and procedures and improve governance.
"But I'd like to see as least a partial refund," he said, "because there's no question that he [Freeh] didn't deliver on the scope of the engagement."
Efforts to reach Board of Trustees Chairman Keith Masser for this report were not successful, but Lubrano will have an uphill fight in making his case with the current board - most of which hired Freeh and have overseen major efforts to implement his team's recommendations.
To date, only four of the 31 sitting trustees have spoken publicly in favor of the Paterno experts' findings.
But Lubrano said he intends to demand an open discussion of his request at the board's March meeting, if for no other reason than to demonstrate to his fellow board members that they have to be accountable to the many alumni who still feel the university has been unfairly made a scapegoat for Sandusky's actions.