Pennsylvania Attorney General Investigates College Threats
JOIE CHEN, CNN ANCHOR: The e-mail threats have been going on for almost two years, but intensified recently as students stepped up their calls for additions to the school's diversity programs. Federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies are already investigating the threats. Joining me now by phone with more on the investigation and his instructions to broaden the probe today is Pennsylvania Attorney General Mike Fisher. Mr. Fisher, we appreciate you're being with us. Can you explain what have you asked for your department to do in terms of investigation?</s>MIKE FISHER, PENNSYLVANIA ATTORNEY GENERAL: Well, the whole situation at Penn State University is a very, very serious one that has significant ramifications, not only for the school, and the State College community, but the entire commonwealth. We are not going to tolerate racism and these kinds of threats in Pennsylvania. What I have asked, is that, not only the head of my civil rights enforcement section stay involved in this investigation, but I have also assigned the chief of our criminal investigation's section to oversee any further activities by our office, and to try to bring all the members of law enforcement from local, state, and the federal authorities together to try to get to the bottom of this problem much quicker.</s>CHEN: All right. We've got a question for you from our live Web chat audience now talking about this. Bev asks: "Is the investigation going to include the threats against black students in 1999?"</s>FISHER: Well, that investigation is something that we have been intimately involved with. In fact, we traced those threats to a computer that ironically was located at a computer center at Temple University near Philadelphia. Unfortunately, since there was open access at that center, there was no indication of who may have used the computer to convey the threats at that time. But that investigation is ongoing, although I have to say that there are not any real live leads at this point, unless something can be tied back into what the most recent activity is.</s>CHEN: Pennsylvania's Attorney General Mike Fisher on the telephone line. Thank you; we appreciate your insight on this.