Reg

New York Times

Posted: Friday May 16, 2008 05:06AM ET

In an interview with The New York Times on Wednesday, Matt Walsh disputed several statements given by Coach Bill Belichick, who has insisted that he misinterpreted the league's rules and described the impact of the tapes as minimal, telling The Boston Globe in February that the value of the tactics rated as a 1 on a scale of 1 to 100. Walsh's view differs from that of the Patriots, the NFL and anyone else who contends that the videotaping of opponents' signals had little effect on the Patriots' performance. His vantage point was from behind the lens, inside the Patriots' organization and further inside the small, secret circle of coaches and staff members who, Walsh said, knowingly broke NFL rules to gain advantages in future games.

"The information we were gathering was meant to help us the next time we played a team," Walsh said. "If it was 1 out of 100, we probably wouldn't have felt the need to do it as often as we did. Or go to the lengths we did to ensure getting the film."

The taping felt wrong, Walsh said, and that notion was reinforced when his supervisor, Jimmy Dee, told Walsh to keep his videotaping quiet. Walsh said Dee gave him alibis to use if suspicions arose with other teams. If someone questioned why Walsh was filming an opposing sideline, he was told to say he was shooting the chains and the down-and-distance marker. If a team asked why the Patriots needed a third videographer, Walsh was instructed to say the coaches wanted two end-zone shots or tight footage.

After filming opponents' signals, Walsh said a quarterback -- he declined to say whom -- would learn the signals, and the next time the Patriots played that team, the quarterback would relay that information to Charlie Weis, who would use the coach-to-quarterback communication system to send the information to the field.

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