Specter

WASHINGTON — Sen. Arlen Specter called yesterday for a “transparent and independent” investigation into the New England Patriots’ illicit videotaping of opposing teams, asserting that the National Football League’s probe “has not been objective.”

The Pennsylvania Republican said the NFL should conduct an outside probe along the lines of former Sen. George Mitchell’s investigation of the use of steroids and other drugs to boost the performance of Major League Baseball players.

“If you cheat in the NFL, you can cheat in college, you can cheat in high school, you can cheat on your grade school math test. There’s no limit,” said Specter, a former prosecutor who is the ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Thus after separate meetings Tuesday with former Patriots video assistant Matt Walsh, Specter and NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell came to starkly different conclusions about the state of the so-called Spygate affair.

“I don’t know where else I would turn” for more information, Goodell said Tuesday in New York after his meeting with Walsh.

Goodell said Walsh affirmed that he does not have, nor did he make, a tape of the St. Louis Rams’ final walk-through before Super Bowl XXXVI, in 2002, and the information Walsh provided “was consistent with what we disciplined the Patriots for last fall; that essentially they were taping coaches’ signals, against NFL policy.”

But Specter concluded after his three-hour meeting with Walsh that a full-scale outside investigation is needed.

By asking Walsh questions that the NFL failed to ask, Specter said he learned new details about how the Patriots sought advantage over opponents over the course of eight years by videotaping and in some cases observing and taking notes on other teams’ signals during games and practice sessions.

On the matter of the Rams’ Super Bowl walk-through, Specter said that even though Walsh did no videotaping, he disclosed to Specter that he and three or four other Patriots employees had observed and taken notes on the Rams’ session.

Late yesterday, the league issued the following response to Specter’s remarks:

“We respectfully disagree with Senator Specter’s characterization of the investigation conducted by our office. We are following up after yesterday’s [Tuesday’s] meeting with Matt Walsh.”

The Patriots declined comment.

In a statement that he put into the Congressional Record and during his midday news conference in the Capitol, Specter detailed how he understands the Patriots taping “had a significant impact on the game.”

For example, Specter recounted this incident described to him by Walsh:

During a preseason game against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in 2000, Walsh first filmed an opponent’s signals, permitting a Patriots coaching assistant to match signals to specific plays.

Some days before a regular-season game against Tampa Bay that September, a former offensive player for the Patriots told Walsh that Coach Bill Belichick and then-offensive coordinator Charlie Weis had instructed him on how to exploit the taped defensive signals.

By Walsh’s account to Specter, the offensive player would memorize the signals, watch for Tampa Bay’s defensive calls during the game and pass them along to Weis, “who would give instructions to the quarterback on the field.”

Walsh said the offensive player told him later that the tapes had enabled the Patriots “to anticipate 75 percent of the plays called by the opposing team.” The exercise let the Patriots use a “no-huddle” offense, according to Specter, preventing the Bucs from making adjustments.

Specter detailed several other specific games in which, he suggested, the Patriots may have made improper use of stolen opposition signals. One was the 2002 American Football Conference championship game, in which the Pats markedly bettered their regular-season performance against the Pittsburgh Steelers, defeating them 41 to 27. Specter quoted Steelers players to the effect that they had suspected signal-stealing at the time.

Specter also said that he got to the bottom of a gap in the public record about Patriots taping between 2003 and 2005 — years when Walsh did not perform the impermissible videotaping for the team. (Walsh had acknowledged taping from 2000 to 2002. Others had done taping in the 2006 and 2007 seasons.)

The senator said Walsh disclosed to him Tuesday that he had seen Steve Scarnecchia, son of Pats offensive line coach Dante Scarnecchia, videotape a number of games during the 2003, 2004 and 2005 seasons. Walsh was fired by the team in 2003 but told Specter he witnessed this taping as a season-ticket holder.

Specter portrayed these details as discoveries that the NFL’s “piecemeal” disclosures about Spygate have failed to put on the public record. Specter also criticized Goodell for destroying the first significant evidence in the case, tapes that the Patriots surrendered last September after the disclosure that they had videotaped New York Jets defensive signals during a game.

The NFL owners “absolutely” have a big stake in seeing the Patriots taping episode go away, Specter said. “They share revenues. They have a gigantic economic interest. The core of their game is integrity.”

Specter added that there is “obviously a conflict of interest between what the league owners want and what the public interest is.” Among other criticisms, Specter said the Patriots had an attorney, Dan Goldberg, at yesterday’s session with Walsh. Specter, a onetime district attorney in Philadelphia, compared this to investigators permitting an accused person to sit in on interviews of a witness.

Specter, in response to a reporter’s question, rebutted the suggestion in some sports news coverage that his interest in Spygate is tied to campaign contributions by employees of Comcast Corp., the cable television company, which has had disagreements with the league about television issues.

“They have been campaign contributors, along with 50,000 other people,” Specter said of donors who work for Comcast. “I’ve been at this line of work for a long time. No one’s ever questioned my integrity.”

According to the Center for Responsive Politics, a Washington campaign watchdog group, individuals connected to Comcast donated $103,600 to Specter’s reelection fund during his latest campaign cycle. All told, Specter spent more than $22 million during the cycle. Comcast-related donors were his second-largest source of contributions.

Specter acknowledged his interest in the fortunes of the Philadelphia Eagles and the Pittsburgh Steelers and said he had been angered by what may have been unfair Patriots tactics against the Steelers.

But he cited other facts as his principal reasons for looking into the Patriots affair. First, he said, “Sports and the NFL have a very profound status in our society,” with players acting as role models for the young. Second, he alluded to the NFL’s congressionally approved exemption from anti-trust law that helps it reap large television profits.

Specter said the NFL should set about having Spygate investigated impartially. If that does not happen, he said Congress could become involved.

The chairman of the Judiciary Committee, Sen. Patrick J. Leahy, a Vermont Democrat, offered no reaction to Specter’s call for an investigation. But according to the majority staff for the panel, Specter has not approached Leahy about any kind of investigation. Specter has been exploring the issue but the committee as a whole has not taken any action, according to a Democratic staffer.

Specter suggested that there is more to be learned about the Patriots behavior in Spygate. “Most things if not everything have a way of surfacing in our society,” Specter said.

Journal Sports Writer Shalise Manza Young contributed to this report.

jmulligan@belo-dc.com