In a damning report that confirms what many suspected, an independent investigation, led by ex-FBI Director Louis Freeh found that top leaders at Pennsylvania State University, including legendary football coach Joe Paterno, tried covering up Jerry Sandusky’s sexual abuse of children for 14 years.

The findings of the panel’s 162-page report was released Thursday.

“The most powerful men at Penn State failed to take any steps for 14 years to protect the children who Sandusky victimized,” Freeh commented on Thursday, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer.

Freeh concluded that PSU leaders “never demonstrated, through actions or words, any concern for the safety and well-being of Sandusky’s victims until after Sandusky’s arrest.”

In fact, Paterno and top PSU officials offered Sandusky a job indefinitely in 1999, a year after they were informed of him groping an 11-year-old boy in the shower, according to DeadSpin.com.

Freeh also faults Penn State’s sports culture, saying witnesses and victims feared the power of the football program and its coaches, the LA Times reported.

Read the report

Louis Freeh

The Inquirer reported that Freeh’s appointment was announced Monday morning by Ken Frazier, president and CEO of Merck and Co. who is the chair of the special investigative committee created by the Penn State Board of Trustees.

“The scope of our probe will be broad, covering a lengthy period of time,” said Freeh, promising to “leave no stone unturned” to get to the root of the scandal, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported.

Freeh will review the university’s policies and internal controls, the paper reported. Freeh said he has put together a team of investigators which includes former FBI agents and fed prosecutors.

“The allegations that have been raised and the charges that have been brought are extraordinarily serious,” said Freeh, according to the Inquirer.

Louis J. Freeh/adl photo

As FBI Director Louie Freeh oversaw some of the biggest investigations in the nation including the Oklahoma bombing and the 1998 bombings of American embassies in Africa.

Now as a private lawyer and consultant, he’s being asked to tackle a task with a little less world import.

The New York Times reported that the College Board is hiring Freeh to review its security involving SAT tests.

The move comes in wake of a scandal involving seven Long Island teenagers who were arrested for cheating.

The Times reported that Nassau County prosecutors filed criminal charges on Sept. 27 against Samuel Eshaghoff, 19, who is accused of taking payments to take the SAT tests for six former and current students at Great Neck North High School.

The Times reported that scandal still has potential to get bigger and involve more students.

Louis Freeh

Ex-FBI Director Louis Freeh and Tom Ridge, former Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security.

Angels protecting us from evil, or just hired guns for the gambling industry?

If you read the press release by FairPlayUSA, you’d think they were here to save us from the evil.

FairPlayUSA announced that Freeh and Ridge have joined its board to help legalize online poker and toughen the ambiguous U.S. laws on the issue.

The website pressofAtlanticCity posted a story saying the two joined the board as part of a campaign launched this summer to build support to legalize online poker. The site reported that start up money came from Caesars Entertainment Inc. and MGM Resorts International.

The Sept. 15 release from FairPlayUSA said:

“Former FBI Director Louis Freeh and former Pennsylvania Governor Tom Ridge, today, announced they have joined the Advisory Board of FairPlayUSA, a new coalition of law enforcement officials, consumer protection experts and others concerned about the failures in current law to put illegal Internet gambling operators out of business, the need to better protect consumers and the need to impose a strict regulatory framework for online poker.”

Tom Ridge

The release added that “millions of Americans regularly engage in Internet gambling on offshore websites that operate in direct violation of federal and state laws, and they play online poker on sites that fail to provide necessary consumer protections. Current laws that attempt to prohibit Internet gambling have failed to stop the illegal Internet gambling market…”

Freeh said in the release: “Current federal laws fail to provide U.S. law enforcement vital tools to address illegal internet gambling, enabling a ‘wild-west’ atmosphere. I am joining FairPlayUSA to improve this environment by clarifying these laws, better empowering law enforcement agencies to crack down on violators and using licensing and regulation to ensure safe and legal online poker.”

Ridge said in the release: “States and tribes have rights that must be protected by authorizing them to decide for themselves whether to accept or prohibit online poker and make use of sophisticated technologies already in use in other industries to enforce those decisions.”