Kathleen Kane promoted and granted pay raise to agent tagged in porn email probe

While publicly pushing her efforts against employees' rampantly sharing pornographic email in state offices, state Attorney General Kathleen Kane granted a 16 percent raise and a job promotion to a manager she previously suspended for sharing porn emails, sources told The Morning Call.

Kane's promotion of supervisory agent Louis C. DeTitto, a member of her executive protection detail, came last month, while she claimed good-old boys were out to get her because she broke up their government "pornography ring." Kane made the claim most recently Aug. 12 in Harrisburg during her first public appearance since she was criminally charged with leaking grand jury secrets to discredit an adversary.

Kane's promotion of DeTitto boosted his salary to $93,927 and elevated him from an "agent 4" to "agent 5" in charge of the illegal firearms task force, effective July 6, eight months after DeTitto's 10-day suspension ended, said the sources, who are former or current administrators and agents with the attorney general's office.

A month after the suspension ended, DeTitto was with Kane in December at the Pennsylvania Society Gala, the capstone gathering of the state's political movers and shakers. It's held annually at New York City's Waldorf Astoria and other venues. Attendance typically includes the governor, other Pennsylvania leaders, and luminaries as high as U.S. president and past presidents.

A photo from the event shows a smiling Kane sitting next to DeTitto at a small table with three other attendees.

DeTitto, according to a source, was among dozens who were disciplined in October and November. Others were fired. A janitor and three office administrators were fired after an internal investigation showed they had porn emails on their government computers.

DeTitto was not the worst offender of the porn email-sharing, but he was suspended because, as head of firearms training and the SWAT team, he was management, a source said.

"He wasn't the mastermind behind it by any stretch," the source said. "He was a little above the average, and his discipline reflected that."

Five former or current administrators and agents with the attorney general's office spoke to The Morning Call on condition of anonymity.

Reached Wednesday at his office in Lemoyne, Cumberland County, DeTitto declined to comment about his suspension and promotion.

"You've got to talk to the press people," said DeTitto, 57.

Kane's spokesman, Chuck Ardo, declined to comment, saying, "I can't talk about personnel matters."

For months, Kane and her legal defense team have portrayed her as a crusading female public official seeking to unmask men angry that she uncovered their involvement with porn when she reviewed their investigation of Jerry Sandusky, the former Penn State University assistant football coach in prison for sexually abusing boys.

Kane and her defense team claim that the unnamed men orchestrated a grand jury investigation under the false pretense that Kane allegedly leaked grand jury material to get back at her political and professional enemies.

"This railroad train seems to me to be driven by some men with grudges, men who are bitter and angry at being exposed and professionally embarrassed," said Kane's former crisis manager, Lanny Davis, during a January news conference where he expressed doubts about the legitimacy of the grand jury investigation into her alleged leaks.

Last week at a news conference, Kane, a Democrat, claimed the porn she exposed resulted in the perjury charge and other charges leveled against her Aug. 5 by Montgomery County District Attorney Risa Vetri Ferman, a Republican.

On Tuesday, Kane's lead defense attorney, Gerald Shargel, said in a statement the porn emails would be used as part of the defense at the preliminary hearing to be held Monday in Montgomery County Court.

Shargel did not return a call for comment for this story. His assistant, Ross Kramer, who accompanied Kane to her Aug. 8 arraignment, did not respond to email questions about DeTitto.

Despite Kane's avowed defense strategy, she has continued to fight media requests under the state Right-to-Know Law to publicly release all inappropriate emails.

On Thursday, Kane's office rejected The Morning Call's latest attempt under the law to access emails she has deemed inappropriate due to the "pornographic, racial and religiously offensive" content. In addition, Kane's office will be in Commonwealth Court on Sept. 16 for a hearing on its lawsuit trying to stop the Philadelphia Inquirer from getting the material under the law.

Kane, 49, won election in November 2012. Her landslide victory was due in part to a campaign pledge to review why it took prosecutors 32 months to arrest Sandusky during the administrations of her Republican attorney general predecessors, Tom Corbett and Linda Kelly.

Kane's Sandusky review took a year. Before she could release her report, Cambria County Judge Norman A. Krumenacker III had to review it. He supervised the Sandusky grand jury investigation and had to make sure the review did not contain grand jury secrets when it was released publicly.

As the Sandusky review continued, former state prosecutor Frank Fina, who led the Sandusky prosecution, sought a protective order from Krumenacker barring the public release of any emails examined as part of Kane's Sandusky review.

Kane's Sandusky review said "inexplicable delays" prolonged the Sandusky investigation. It found no evidence Corbett or anyone else purposely slowed it to help him win election as governor in 2010, as Kane had claimed on the campaign trail.

Kane's office fought the media's open records request despite Krumenacker's Sept. 16 ruling that she could release the emails if she wanted to under the Right-to-Know Law. On Sept. 25, Kane changed course. She let reporters view some of the sexually explicit material. All the emails her staff showed reporters were tied to eight former agency lawyers and agents who worked under Corbett, three of whom were found not to have opened, forwarded or commented on emails, according to Kane.

On Oct. 2, The Morning Call revealed that state Supreme Court Justice Seamus McCaffery, a Democrat, was the original source of some of the sexually explicit emails that were circulated in the attorney general's office.

McCaffery, a former Philadelphia police officer, sent the emails to a small group of friends, including an attorney general agent who had also been a city policeman. That agent, who has since retired, then forwarded some of McCaffery's emails to other state workers, including DeTitto, also a former Philadelphia police officer, between September 2008 and July 2009, according to email records reviewed by The Morning Call.

Kane's staff then developed a so-called "matrix" to handle discipline. Under the matrix, four sources told The Morning Call, employees who shared sexually explicit material after Kane took office in January 2013 would be subject to discipline and no one would be punished if the sharing occurred under Corbett and Kelly. The matrix also used weighted measures. Employees who received inappropriate material but were not shown to have forwarded or commented on it were given more favorable treatment than those who showed a more active participation, sources said.

On Nov.12, Kane announced she had fired four attorney general's office employees. In addition, 27 received written reprimands in their personnel files, 15 received verbal counseling, 11 were suspended without pay, two resigned before being disciplined and two will be fired after their appeals are exhausted.

Aside from the four fired employees, Kane refused to name any others, citing employee privacy and union contracts, and declined to say what sort of punishment she gave them. The agency's narcotics officers are represented by the state chapter of the Fraternal Order of Police. Other non-management jobs are part of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees.

DeTitto, a state agent since June 6, 2005, got a 10-day unpaid suspension, according to three sources familiar with the matrix process and DeTitto's case. He was allowed to serve the suspension non-concurrently due to the agency's operational needs, sources said.