Hello! Welcome to your Thursday FOIAball. Let’s dive right in.
Way back in 2011, I was working one of those desk jobs where you didn’t have to produce any actual work. I managed the company’s website, which was never updated, and ran its social channels, where it never posted.
In my third week there, I got locked out of the Twitter account and never told anyone. No one noticed for two years.
What I’m saying is I had a lot of time on my hands. And I spent it obsessively following the Penn State-Jerry Sandusky scandal, which broke that March. The depravity of the crime, the prestige of the brand, the legacy of the coach, I could not get enough.
Fifteen years, though, is a long time in the sports world. Most people, right or wrong, have moved on.
Apparently not Penn State, though. Apparently, its most ardent backers have been lying in wait, ready to spring a rehabilitation campaign upon us when the moment was just right.
Which, apparently, is this week.
I’ll be honest. This post comes from a place of anger. I wasn’t included on the media invite list to attend the soft opening of the Paterno Family Football Experience Room.
I’ve been working at home since 2016. I would have gladly walked through the faithful recreation of someone else’s office. I would love to know if Joe Paterno had a straight-backed chair or a swivel chair. I bet he thought swivel chairs were the devil’s magic.
Oh well. As cool as it would have been to see Paterno’s pen and inbox tray, I’m not actually upset I missed out.
I’m miffed that I can’t learn anything about how this business mausoleum came to be. Because Pennsylvania public records law has a maddening exemption for state universities.
You might already know about that.
What I’m guessing you don’t know is that the person who lobbied the legislature to shield the school was secretly working for the CIA at the time.
In 2007, Pennsylvania set out to strengthen its public records act, which was considered one of the weakest in the country. Good!
But when the amendment passed, there was an explicit carveout for four “state-related institutions”: Temple, Pitt, some school I’ve never heard of, and Penn State.
The law delineated records those schools must annually make public. Pretty much everything else is exempt.
Penn State’s 2025 report is 84 pages long. I’ve gotten bigger document dumps by accident. I’m not kidding.
And despite the state’s most prestigious university being embroiled in (this is an insane thing to write) the third-biggest child abuse scandal in college sports history, no one is trying to change that.
But we can show how fallacious the argument for exemption was.
When the law was up for debate, Penn State pushed back. In August 2007, former university president Graham Spanier testified before lawmakers. You probably remember the name. He was in charge during the Sandusky scandal. He still says he’s innocent. Court says otherwise!
Here’s a smattering of claims from his written testimony.
Spanier said that “if the school was subject to the law, it will have to operate in a way that makes us less nimble and less competitive” compared to “other major research universities in the nation.”
Wrong, false, dumb. Penn State put out a press release for hitting 26th place in the U.S. News rankings last year, despite all the freedom they get. Like patting yourself on the back for also getting votes in the AP poll.
The twenty-five schools ahead of you? All subject to records laws.
Spanier claimed that making contracts and bids public would cause the school to lose leverage with contractors, leading to increased costs. I don’t know jack about economy and I know that’s not true.
Spanier said the school wouldn’t be able to properly invest its endowment, claiming "attractive funds" wouldn’t work with them (which, no finance firm has ever turned down a billion-dollar account).
And he said that the law would serve to “feed the prurient interests of newspaper editors.”
I mean, he’s got me there.
But even if Spanier’s claims were blatantly false, there’s a better reason not to listen to him. At the time Spanier argued that a public institution shouldn’t be subject to transparency laws, he was secretly working for the CIA. He had a top-secret clearance!
According to ProPublica reporter Daniel Golden, four months after Spanier testified, he went down to Langley for a classified briefing. He was given a medal!
Spanier had been coordinating with the agency since 1995 (so technically he failed to stop Sandusky and 9/11) and served as chair of the National Security Higher Education Advisory Board, where he facilitated introductions between the CIA and university officials. This is all in his own words.
He basically claimed he’s a spy, saying he would meet with foreign heads of state and CEOs and then run back to Langley. Perhaps the legislature should, imo, reassess the merit of his testimony.
And he’s availed himself of public records. According to a review of his tell-all memoir, In The Lions’ Den, Spanier’s case for self-exoneration was built through freedom of information requests.
I didn’t read it, so I don’t know if that’s true. But on his press tour for the book, Spanier said he was going to request information on his security clearance from the FBI, which he claimed would prove his innocence. Namely, he said that the government would have rejected his top-secret clearance if he’d been guilty of covering up a pedophile ring.
Buddy, the only thing a top-secret government clearance is used for IS to cover up pedophile rings.
Spanier also said the law “would have a chilling effect” on donors “and would negatively impact our private fundraising productivity.”
If only! Because maybe then the school wouldn’t be able to get an anonymous gift to build a Paterno rehabilitation shrine.
You can probably guess by now where I fall on the Penn State scandal. You may be different. You may think Sandusky got railroaded, Paterno knew nothing, the school acted honorably.
But if you do, you better own that. You want a state institution to honor a man who you think has unquestionable morals, who didn’t turn a blind eye to sex crimes; you slap your name on that monument.
That the school let an anonymous donor fund this is ironic, to say nothing of embarrassing. That someone won’t put their name to the gift is pathetic.
Somewhere else, I might be able to figure it out. Attendee lists at the grand opening. Lifetime passes to stare at JoePa’s desk. Here, I got nothing.
I’m asking you all to help me. You work at Penn State and are grossed out by this? Hit me up. You have an inkling of who is behind it? Shoot me a message: [email protected].
This donor should not get to hide behind a blanket carveout built on a dubious facade. Especially not one that only serves to let the rot in parts of the university continue to fester.
You know I’ll publish it if I get it. So hmu.
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Thanks for reading this week! I’ll see you next week!
Nittany Lion via Isaiah Vazquez/Stringer/Getty Images
