Ex-Pats video asst. to meet with Goodell, Specter

[May 13, 2008]  NEW YORK (AP) -- Former Patriots video assistant Matt Walsh will meet separately with NFL commissioner Roger Goodell and Sen. Arlen Specter on Tuesday to discuss New England's videotaping of opposing coaches' playcalling signals in violation of league rules.

Walsh is scheduled to meet with Goodell at the NFL offices in New York at 7:30 a.m. Afterward, he will travel to Washington to meet with Specter. Specter, the senior Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, has been critical of the NFL's handling of the investigation.

Goodell and Specter each plan to hold a news conference after meeting with Walsh.

Patriots coach Bill Belichick was fined $500,000, while the team was fined $250,000 and forced to forfeit its 2008 first-round draft choice. The Spygate investigation began after the NFL confiscated tapes from a New England employee who recorded the New York Jets' defensive signals from the sideline during the 2007 opener.

Last week, Walsh sent the NFL eight videotapes that showed the Patriots recording playcalling signals. The tapes included signals by coaches of five opponents in six games from 2000-02.

The league said the tapes were consistent with what it already knew.

Walsh worked for New England from 1997 to 2003. His name surfaced just before this year's Super Bowl, nearly five months after the Patriots were sanctioned.

After more than two months of negotiations, lawyers for the league and Walsh finally agreed April 23 to terms that would allow him to talk with Goodell. They include an agreement by the Patriots not to sue Walsh and to pay his legal expenses and his airfare to New York from Hawaii, where he is now a golf pro.

Goodell has said that the Patriots could be subject to further sanctions if new information about previously unknown infractions arises.

Specter, from Pennsylvania, met with Goodell in February after raising the possibility of congressional hearings if he wasn't satisfied with the commissioner's answers about the handling of the investigation.

Earlier that month, the Boston Herald reported that an unnamed Patriots employee illegally taped the Rams' final walkthrough before the 2002 Super Bowl, when New England, a two-touchdown underdog, upset St. Louis 20-17.

Walsh's lawyer, Michael Levy of McKee Nelson LLP, said Walsh has never claimed to have a tape of the walkthrough and was not the source for the report.

[Associated Press; By RACHEL COHEN]

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