University of California Gives Up ‘Attachment’ to Review of Football Assistant Coach Damon Harrington (Which Shows Little); Promises Additional Public Records ‘On a Rolling Basis’

“Explainer: How ‘Insider’ Access Made San Francisco Chronicle and Berkeley J-School Miss Real Story Behind Death of Cal Football’s Ted Agu,” https://concussioninc.net/?p=10931

Complete headline links to our Ted Agu series:

https://concussioninc.net/?p=10877

Installments to date in THE TED AGU PAPERS:

https://concussioninc.net/?p=10992

https://concussioninc.net/?=10996

https://concussioninc.net/?p=11014

https://concussioninc.net/?p=11087

https://concussioninc.net/?p=11096

https://concussioninc.net/?p=11099

https://concussioninc.net/?p=11120

https://concussioninc.net/?p=11201

by Irvin Muchnick

The episode “The Dog Ate My Homework” of the dark sitcom that is Concussion Inc.’s quest for the University of California’s public records on its controversial “review” of Cal football strength and conditioning coach Damon Harrington has reached an amiable denouement. Stay tuned for the next episode!

Late yesterday, the Berkeley campus California Public Records Act office sent me the missing attachment to the June 2014 report on Harrington to high-level administrators by Dr. Jeffrey Tanji, co-director of sports medicine at the UC Davis Medical Center. Whether this outcome had anything to do with our story yesterday, which I shared with Janet Napolitano, the UC system president, and her general counsel Charles Robinson, only their hairdressers know.

The notorious attachment (or as UC Davis lawyers apparently would have it, attachment to the attachment) is viewable at http://muchnick.net/tanjiattachment.pdf. The flat punch line is that the university’s massive redactions ultimately render of little value this spreadsheet printout of the Cal football players who were included in the interview process for Tanji’s review.

In a more important development, the Berkeley public records coordinator, Liane Ko, told me yesterday, “We are continuing our collection and review of documents for records that are responsive to your request. We will continue to provide records on a rolling basis, as they become available.” The reasonable interpretation is that the university is acknowledging that there are further disclosable documents surrounding the authorization of the Tanji report by John Wilton, a Berkeley vice chancellor, and the processing and takeaways from the report by Wilton and other administrators. (We just noticed that Wilton stepped down from this post at the end of February; according to the January announcement, he has returned to work”in the field of investment management and finance.”)

Closing another loop, public records coordinator Ko also formally declined Concussion Inc.’s request for the March 2014 campus police report on former football player Joey Mahalic’s allegation that Harrington instigated the November 1, 2013, criminal assault of teammate Fabiano Halo by another teammate, J.D. Hinnant. The grounds are that the document is exempt from public release because it comes from a law enforcement agency.

The behind-the-scenes maneuverings around disclosure of the police report are complex. We’ll cover them in depth later.

And the days continue to tick down to publication of our ebook THE TED AGU PAPERS— secret documents neither the university nor the San Francisco Chronicle will let you see, with all sales proceeds therefrom going to sickle cell trait research and education.