The man behind the report that shook a community and found that powerful leaders at Penn State “repeatedly concealed critical facts relating to Sandusky’s child abuse” has decided to talk about it.
In a magazine article in the Aug. 12 issue of Fortune magazine titled “Louis Freeh, Private Eye,” Freeh opens up about the investigation into university officials and how they dealt with the actions of Jerry Sandusky, former defensive coordinator for Nittany Lions football who was convicted of 45 counts of sexual abuse last year.
The edited transcript of Freeh’s responses to Fortune’s questions about Penn State and the investigation is available online. Here are just a few questions and answers from the interview:
Fortune: “What compelled you to issue a response to the Paterno family’s response?
Louis Freeh: “My practice has always been not to have press conferences, not to defend what we did or explain it. It’s just not my nature. The exception at Penn State was it was the former Attorney General of the United States [Dick Thornburgh]. They were fairly serious allegations, and we respectfully but factually just put down a response to that. But that was a very unusual exception to my normal rule.”
F: “Some of the criticism has been that you were too fast. Can you talk about that?”
LF: “It’s a truism that you can investigate anything forever … We do thorough work, but we also do what’s necessary and sufficient to be thorough, but not excessive. And we complete it.
Many times we finish things early. The Penn State investigation, we decided when it was completed. Part of our goal was we wanted to complete it thoroughly, but we also wanted to complete it before the school year started. We wanted the report done, to the board, before thousands of young men and women came back to school.
Could we have done another 50 interviews? Of course. Could we have done another six months of work? Yes. But we felt we had all the necessary facts that the board needed to make their decisions. We had our recommendations — some of which we had already given the board much earlier and are already being implemented.”
F: “And what about the criticism of the Penn State report specifically?”
LF: What I was very pleased about with respect to our Penn State report is although there was criticism, there was not one disputed fact. There was criticism about the interpretations, but nobody said, “You missed this email, or this fact is wrong.” That for us was the most important result.
F: “On a personal level, has the criticism bothered you?”
LF: “Not really. No. I mean, if I put myself in the shoes of the family, I’ve got six kids, I can imagine how they would feel if their father was criticized or alleged to have done certain things … I don’t take it personal.”
