NFL commissioner Roger Goodell tried to assuage the league's fans, concerned politicians, outraged domestic violence advocates and team owners in early September in regards to how the investigation and suspension of Ray Rice was handled.

The league, he told a national television audience on Sept. 9, would have been harder on Rice had its investigators obtained a full video recording of Rice assaulting his then-fiancee in a casino elevator. Goodell's investigators had asked four law enforcement agencies "for the video, we asked for anything that was pertinent, but we were never granted that opportunity."

On Sept. 10, Goodell wrote a memo to all 32 team owners -- his bosses -- and said the same, assuring them that "on multiple occasions, we asked the proper law enforcement authorities to share with us all relevant information, including any video of the incident." He cited the "New Jersey State Police, the Atlantic City Police Department, the Atlantic County Police Department and the Atlantic County Solicitor's Office."

But one day before Goodell sent that memo, the league's lead investigator on the Rice matter had actually told the league's director of security that he had never requested the inside-casino elevator video from the one law enforcement agency that actually had it, the Atlantic City Police Department: "Again, I never spoke to anyone at the casino or the police department about the tape," NFL investigator Jim Buckley wrote in a Sept. 9 email to NFL executive vice president and chief security officer Jeffrey B. Miller. The last e-mail on the chain from Buckley says: "I never contacted anyone about the tape."

The exchange is contained in a 631-page transcript of the Ray Rice suspension-appeal hearing heard in early November, a copy of which was obtained by "Outside the Lines." The arbitrator, former federal judge Barbara S. Jones, heard from eight witnesses before overturning Rice's indefinite suspension on Nov. 28, finding that Goodell's suspension of Rice on Sept. 8 was "arbitrary" and "an abuse of discretion" and that Rice had never misrepresented to Goodell and other league officials what had occurred on Feb. 15 at the Revel Casino in Atlantic City, N.J. "The commissioner needed to be fair and consistent in his imposition of discipline," Jones wrote.