Specter not satisfied

NFL commissioner Roger Goodell believes Spygate should be history. Senator Arlen Specter does not.

The ranking Republican on the Judiciary Committee called for an outside investigation yesterday into the cheating scandal that has enveloped the three-time Super Bowl champion New England Patriots since they were caught videotaping the New York Jets’ signals in their 2007 season opener.

Lampooning the NFL’s investigation into the matter as sweeping it under the rug, Specter wants a follow-up along the lines of former Sen. George Mitchell’s probe into steroid use in Major League Baseball. If Goodell fails to follow through over the next several months, Specter said he would then ask Congress to take charge.

“After a lot of consideration, it’s my judgment that there ought to be an impartial investigation,” Specter said a day after meeting for more than two hours with former Patriots videographer Matt Walsh, who supplied tapes of opposing signals to New England’s coaches in 2000 and 2001. “What is necessary is an objective investigation.”

Specter said conflicts of interest, including the active participation of Patriots attorney Dan Goldberg in Walsh’s meeting with Goodell on Tuesday morning in the NFL offices in New York, have compromised the NFL’s handling of the matter,

“I’ve had some experience on investigations, but I’ve never heard of one where the subject of the investigation was a party to the questioning of witnesses,” Specter said. “It really strains credulity to say that sort of practice is objective or impartial.

“They say it isn’t so bad, it didn’t amount to much, whatever there was had been cleaned up,” Specter added. “It’s just ridiculous to make that kind of contention. If you know what the defense is going to do, you’re in a great position. There’s obviously a conflict of interest between what the league owners want and what the public interest is. … People [ask], ’Why look into this?’ The sports leagues have a very preferred status in our society. They have an antitrust exemption. Without [it], they wouldn’t be able to pool revenues and control the schedules.

“They’re enormous role models. If you can cheat in the NFL … They owe the public a lot more candor and a lot more credibility. If the public [loses] confidence in professional football, it will be like wrestling. They’re not going to have the [sold-out stadiums], they’re not going to have the TV.”

The NFL issued a short, terse statement early last night: “We respectfully disagree with Sen. Specter’s characterization of the investigation conducted by our office. We are following up after yesterday’s meeting with Matt Walsh.”

Specter, of Pennsylvania, complained that he and his staff had hit a stone wall when they attempted to obtain information from 24 officials from the Patriots and the NFL. The senator also mocked Goodell for trickling out the facts of Spygate in piecemeal fashion, first saying the taping only had occurred at the end of 2006 and in the 2007 opener and then saying it had begun with coach Bill Belichick’s hiring in 2000.

“We don’t know what tapes were turned over,” Specter said. “We don’t know whether [other] tapes exist.”

Specter said he’s “incensed” that Goodell destroyed the Patriots’ notes about Pittsburgh’s signals that could have aided their victory over the Steelers in the 2004 AFC Championship game. And, Specter called Goodell’s destruction of the tapes containing the Jets’ coaching signals just 11 days after being “incomprehensible.”

“The tapes are confiscated on Sept. 9,” Specter said. “The penalties [loss of a first-round pick in the 2008 draft and $750,000 in fines] are imposed on Sept. 13. The commissioner doesn’t get the tapes until Sept. 17. So he imposes the penalty before he sees the evidence. How can you do that? And then on Sept. 20, he destroys the tapes. And what’s his explanation? He didn’t want anyone else to get them and create an unlevel playing field. He couldn’t sell that in kindergarten.”

Walsh told Specter, as he had Goodell, that the Patriots hadn’t taped St. Louis’ walkthrough the day before Super Bowl XXXVI on Feb. 3, 2002. The Boston Herald, which made the report on the eve of last season’s Super Bowl, apologized to the Patriots yesterday in headlines on its front and back pages.

Walsh, who was on hand for the walkthrough, did report it to his coaches. Specter termed that a “ticklish issue,” but the Rams didn’t complain then or now about the presence of Patriots’ employees during the walkthrough.

“I remember there were lots of people in the [Superdome] when we did our walkthrough, people running cable, putting up signs, taking pictures,” Rams spokesman Rick Smith said. “This was no closed practice, by any means.”