Specter mum after meeting on pro football’s ‘Spygate’

A three-hour-plus meeting Tuesday between Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) and a former New England Patriots video assistant brought no resolution  — or comment — on the Spygate scandal involving the professional football team.

Specter and Matt Walsh met in the former’s office in the Hart Senate Office Building, but Walsh left without speaking to reporters and Specter canceled a news conference until Wednesday. At one point, Specter and Walsh walked out into the office’s glass-walled lobby and shook hands for photographers, but took no questions from reporters.

{mosads}Walsh was meeting with Specter after an earlier three-and-a-half-hour meeting with NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell, after which Goodell told reporters there were no new allegations against the team and the matter appeared to be closed.

But Specter, who is up for reelection in 2010, has complained loudly about the issue. The Pittsburgh Steelers, from Specter’s home state, are among the teams whose signals the Patriots are alleged to have videotaped between 2000 and 2002.

The Boston Herald last week reported that Walsh gave the NFL eight tapes that cover six games, including a 2002 playoff between the Patriots and Steelers.

Specter, the ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, has criticized the NFL for taking a lax approach to the issue, such as not preserving the Patriots’ tapes, and has threatened to bring Goodell before the committee to explore the league’s exemption from federal antitrust laws.

Specter’s Pennsylvania colleague, Sen. Bob Casey Jr. (D), last week told The Hill he would follow Specter’s lead.
NFL officials already penalized the Patriots for filming the New York Jets last year by eliminating a first-round draft choice the team had for 2008.