What if the government targeted prominent Christians and asked them about infidelity under oath? What if they prosecuted those Christians who would inevitably lie to protect their community standing and their families? After all, they did break they law – they committed perjury. Would that have been a good use of taxpayer money?

Why is it any different than the witch-hunt targeting celebrity athletes who use steroids?

Imagine if United States vs. Barry Lamar Bonds set a far-reaching precedent for the use of perjury laws to prosecute so-called role models in our society who were guilty of other “moral crimes”?

Let’s don’t stop with the selective targeting of celebrity athletes. Why don’t we subpoena identifiable minority groups like top Hollywood actors/actresses, musical superstars, politicians, business leaders, religious leaders, etc? We’ll give them immunity and ask them questions about their moral behavior…

Have they used drugs? Have they cheated on their spouses? Have they downloaded illegal porn?

Then, let’s spend million of additional dollars trying to prove some of them lied in order to build federal cases against them and ask their former friends, colleagues and mistresses to testify against them.

We can smugly say this is justified (after all, they broke the law and perjury is a serious crime) while self-righteously enjoying their humiliation and shame as the government makes an example of their immoral behavior in a court of law.

I agree that no one is above the law and that Barry Bonds should be treated like anyone else. The problem is that Bonds was NOT treated like everyone else engaged in morally-objectionable behaviors.

Photo credit: guano / flickr

Through the letter which Dwain handed to us, he has provided a detailed account of his doping programme which highlights the level of sophistication that goes these systematic regimes. It is through this sort of information that we are able to better understand both the mindset of why athletes choose that path and the network that sits behind them. It is these networks of manufacture, trafficking and supply that we need to be able to tap into if we are to get to the heart of doping in sport.

Victor Conte (in a letter to sprinter Dwain Chambers) explained how easy it is for athletes to thwart anti-doping drug testers, even without designer steroids, using short acting steroids and performance enhancing drugs. It is called the “duck and dodge” technique (“Conte’s prescription for success,” May 16).

Under federal sentencing guidelines, Thomas faces a sentence that likely would range from probation to about two or three years in federal prison for the perjury convictions.

Thomas was specifically accused of lying to the grand jury about using steroids and obtaining performance enhancing drugs from Illinois chemist Patrick Arnold, a key Balco figure who pleaded guilty to manufacturing designer steroids and providing them to elite athletes through the now-defunct Peninsula laboratory.

Tammy Thomas already received a lifetime ban from competitive cycling for doping violations several years. This effectively ended her career as a cyclist. The conviction for perjury in the government’s case against Thomas may have effectively ended the pursuit of a second career as an attorney (“Tammy Thomas found guilty of perjury,” April 4).

“I already had one career taken away from me,” she yelled. “Look me in the eye. You can’t do it.”

Thomas then turned to a prosecutor and shouted, “Look me in the eye …. You like to destroy people’s lives.”

 The government has succeeded in its unstated goal of making an example of an athlete using steroids. Is this justice served?

Thomas, whose case is the first to go to trial in the five-and-a-half-year Balco investigation, was charged with making false statements to a grand jury in 2003 about substances she is suspected of receiving from Arnold. For the jury to convict Thomas, it must conclude that her statements were false and that they were material to the government’s investigation.

I am certain that Tammy Thomas is anxiously awaiting the verdict. Not only is her freedom in jeopardy but also a future career as an attorney. She has been silent about the case and has not spoken to the media; however, she has been very outspoken in her fashion statements outside the courtroom where she was photographed wearing a San Francisco Giants baseball cap, no doubt in support of other athletes who have been targeted for perjury by this federal investigation.

The Steroid Report feels that Thomas’ defense attorney Ethan Balogh has successfully created reasonable doubt with his arguments.

The government’s case against cyclist Tammy Thomas for perjury is surprisingly weak. The government’s case is largely based on the assertion that Tammy Thomas ingested “anabolic steroids” and/or “controlled substances” and/or “banned substances” obtained from chemist Patrick Arnold and she lied about it.

The inconvenient fact is that tetrahydrogestrinone (THG) and norbolethone were NOT legally classified as “anabolic steroids” until the Anabolic Steroid Control Act of 2004 was passed; Norbolethone and THG were two of the 26 compounds added to the Controlled Substances Act with this legislation. Consequently, THG and norbolethone were NOT controlled substances until the passage of the legislation. Furthermore, THG and norbolethone were not on the WADA/IOC banned substances list at the time.

Of course, not everyone agrees. Steroid Nation feels Balogh’s statements in court in defense of Tammy Thomas were simply “ludicrous.”

It irritates this writer that a lawyer would argue that point in court without his tongue turning black and his eyes bleeding out.  As ludicrous as a woman shaving every morning, not thinking she is taking an anabolic androgenic steroid.

However, juries do not hinge deliberations on the issue of ludicrous statements.

The statements upset Dr. Gaffney because they are medically (pharmacologically) inaccurate; this is true. As I commented, his statements about THG and norbolethone may be scientifically correct, but not necessarily legally correct.

But this is a legal case and the arguments are legal arguments. THG and Norbolethone were NOT LEGALLY classified as anabolic steroids. Read the Anabolic Steroid Control Act of 1990 – THG and norbolethone are not included. Then read the Anabolic Steroid Control Act of 2004 and notice that this amendment LEGALLY CHANGED the status of THG and Norbolethone to “Anabolic Steroids.”

 Admittedly, a steroid is a steroid is a steroid. No amount of semantic bickering or legal lobbying will change that. But for better or worse, criminal justice is deliberated by rule of law (not pharmaceutical rules) and juries are instructed to base their verdicts on the law no matter how ludicrous the arbitrary legal definitions may appear to them.

As I further commented, legal definitions don’t change pharmacological definitions. But they matter in the criminal justice system.

The arbirariness of legal definitions regarding steroids is really quite silly. Over the past decade, we have learned that a pharmacologically defined (anabolic-androgenic) steroid can be legally defined as (1) a “dietary supplement”, (2) an “anabolic steroid”, and (3) an “unapproved new drug.”

The legal status obviously does nothing to change the pharmacological definition. But the legal defintion (no matter how arbitrary) has very important implications in our criminal justice system.

It will be very interesting to see if the jury accepts defense attorney Ethan Balogh’s argument, in whole or in part.

Slated for publication in September under the Skyhorse imprint, the book’s working title is “BALCO: The Straight Dope on Barry Bonds, Marion Jones and What We Can Do To Save Sports.” Conte, in conjunction with co-author Nathan Jendrick, promises to share “the dirt, the drugs, the doses, the names, dates and places, and a ‘prescription’ for a brighter future.”

He promises the “complete truth in its honest, unadulterated and raw form” and says he is “ready to tell the world everything.”

Most people will be interested in hearing “the dirt” on the various athletes allegedly involved in recent years’ doping scandals. But my attention will be on  what Conte has to say about IRS Special Agent Jeff Novitsky. As Jeff Novitsky testifies on the stand against cyclist Tammy Thomas in her perjury (doping) trial, Victor Conte is working with co-author Nathan Jendrick to pen a book that is highly critical of Novitsky. Forget about the athletes like Barry Bonds or Marion Jones that have doped; Conte has told me that Novitsky is the biggest cheater in the entire BALCO steroid scandal is Jeff Novitsky. The NY Daily News confirms that Novitsky is a target.

One of Conte’s biggest targets is likely to be Jeff Novitzky, the federal agent who sniffed out the BALCO conspiracy in 2003 and has tenaciously chased down every twist in it ever since.

Conte claims Novitzky, who is on the witness stand Monday in the government’s prosecution of cyclist Tammy Thomas (the first BALCO athlete to refuse a plea bargain and take her case to trial), fabricated a confession he says Conte gave on the day of the BALCO raid, and lied in court documents.

The more we learn about doping related events like the BALCO scandal and the Floyd Landis doping scandal, the more we realize that we live in a society where “winning at all costs” is the only standard.  This not only applies to the “dopers” but particularly to the “anti-dopers.” It’s all about winning – not about following the rules, pursuing justice, leveling the playing field, right or wrong or integrity in sports. Jeff Novitsky, WADA, USADA, etc. simply want to win and will seemingly use any unfair advantage and break the rules to do so.

Novitzky began searching through the trash behind the BALCO offices, learning when the company set garbage out and when it was collected. Each Monday night for a year, he hauled BALCO’s rubbish to a well-lit area nearby and sifted through it, he testified.

He found copies of e-mail messages and copious quantities of empty needle wrappers, he said. The latter led him to a medical-waste company where he found evidence of syringes, vials and performance-enhancing drugs that apparently originated at BALCO.

One of the “trash runs,” as he put it, yielded evidence that BALCO was buying epitestosterone from a company in the Midwest, he said.

Individuals closely involved in other federal steroid investigations have told me that evidence collected from the defendant’s trash was crucial to the prosecution’s case against the steroid dealer. The same was true with BALCO (“IRS agent: BALCO waste littered with drug evidence,” March 28).

The search of an individual (or business’) curbside trash does not require a warrant. The U.S. Supreme court has determined in California v. Greenwood that curbside trash is not subject to Fourth Amendment protections.

Court held that under the Fourth Amendment, no warrant was necessary to search the trash because Greenwood had no reasonable expectation of privacy in it. Although Greenwood had hidden the trash from view by putting in opaque plastic bags and expected it to be on the street only a short time before it would be taken to the dump, the Court believed it to be “common knowledge” that garbage at the side of the street is “readily accessible to animals, children, scavengers, snoops, and other members of the public.” Moreover, Greenwood had left the trash there expressly so that the trash collector, a stranger, could take it. Quoting Katz v. United States, the court concluded that “what a person knowingly exposes to the public, even in his own home or office, is not a subject of Fourth Amendment protection.”

The BALCO dumpster was one small thing that contributed to the downfall of the steroid distribution ring at BALCO. (That, and of course an IRS Special Agent’s obsession with BALCO that developed over the course of 20 years.)

While CNN is technically inaccurate, it is closer to the truth than Levin’s advocacy would suggest. From a consumer standpoint, I feel it is safer to assume that dietary supplements are unregulated. Most regulations are actually “post-marketing” measures i.e. very little prevents a new supplement from being sold in the marketplace.

I like the Dietary Health and Supplement Education Act (DSHEA) in principle too. But the supplement industry has abused and exploited DSHEA and utterly failed to self-regulate in the face of legislative challenges to DSHEA. It remains to be seen whether DSHEA is salvaged or systematically dismantled.

There is a reason that dozens of steroids have been and continue to be sold as dietary supplements for over a decade in the U.S.; DSHEA makes it legal. As long as supplement companies avoid certain claims and meet certain criteria well-known within the industry, the steroidal supplements can be introduced to the marketplace without “burdensome” requirements that the supplement company notify the government. This is the legacy of DSHEA.

At least one of the two most infamous designer steroids in the history of sport steroid scandals could have probably been legally sold as dietary supplements if they did not become scrutinized due to the spotlight of the BALCO steroids in baseball scandal i.e. tetrahydragestrinone aka THG aka “The Clear” and desoxymethyltestosterone aka DMT aka Madol synthesized by the convicted “father of prohormones” Patrick Arnold.

Pat Arnold’s indictment didn’t identify these so-called designer steroids as “anabolic steroids” because, legally, they were not. In response to the BALCO scandal, the FDA issued a press release on THG stating it was an “unapproved new drug” and not a “dietary supplement” to stop manufacturers who felt it met DSHEA criteria from selling it. (Actually, the latter steroid DMT was introduced into the marketplace but quickly (and voluntarily) pulled by its manufacturer shortly after the press associated it with the BALCO scandal and Patrick Arnold.)

THG and DMT did not legally become “anabolic steroids” until the passage of the Anabolic Steroid Control Act of 2004.

Several new steroid products are currently sold as dietary supplements legally and others illegally. But little is done about either due to the laissez faire regulation of the industry.

Furthermore, dietary supplements contaminated with steroids and stimulants continues to be a problem; for this reason alone I would be cautious about teenagers or children using any dietary supplement. Sadly, the supplement industry (or more accurately, several companies within the industry) are giving legislators every excuse to gut DSHEA.

Roger Clemens’ defamation lawsuit against former trainer Brian McNamee vaguely hints at impropriety by federal investigators, including Jeff Novitsky, during their interrogation of McNamee. There is a long trail of alleged investigative misconduct that has followed Jeff Novitsky since the beginning of the BALCO scandal.

Victor Conte has publicly shared his version of events that occurred at the BALCO raid. Conte and former vice president of BALCO, James Valente, both filed declarations in federal court containing regarding Novitsky’s behavior and tactics on the day of the raid. The allegations include “illegally coercing statements, improperly serving search warrants and using excessive force during the raid.”

Michael Rains, an attorney for Barry Bonds, claimed that Jeff Novitsky committed criminal misconduct.

Pitcher Jason Grimsley stopped short of making claims of coercion against Novitsky but changed his mind after federal investigators “wanted him to wear a wire to get evidence against Barry Bonds.”

And now, Clemens defamation lawsuit seems to suggest that the aggressive interrogation tactics and threats used by Notivsky et al may have manipulated the truth in McNamee’s allegations of Clemens’ steroid use and growth hormone use.

In spite of the lack of integrity, questionable ethics, and suspect motives that have been alleged against Jeff Novitsky, his interrogation tactics may still be perfectly legal.

However, it should be noted that baseball players aren’t the only “dirty players” in the doping game. The biggest cheaters in the entire major league baseball doping scandal may not be the ones with the balls and bats.

Victor Conte (owner of BALCO) bought a new silver Bentley Continental GT this year, his SNAC business is bringing in $300,000 a month, and some of his best customers are still major league baseball players.

I’ve recently discussed the role of the media and particularly the contextual internet ads from Google as having a big role in his success. Victor Conte attests to the power of contextual ads in the July 2007 issue of Muscular Development magazine:

It’s just incredible the attention BALCO is still getting. You can’t believe who calls me for interviews almost every day. And I’m making the most of it! Not only can I pick who interview me, but I have a marketing program where I can tap into keyword searches so that anytime anytime someone Googles ‘Barry Bonds,’ or ‘BALCO,’ or ‘baseball,’ or Jason Giambi or Marion Jones – or a ton of other keywords related to BALCO – an ad for SNAC pops up right next to the article…

Scientific Nutrition for Advanced Conditioning (SNAC) sales have increased 20% from 2006; Conte expects sales to improve even more in 2008.

Now that the worst of the consequences for my actions are behind me, I can openly say that the enormous publicity BALCO has received is great for my business… ZMA sales are stronger than ever. In fact, my entire SNAC System nutritional product line is doing better than ever before. I can’t even imagine what someone would have to pay for the type of international exposure my products have received…

Conte also acknowledges the role of the media in his success; no doubt the display of contextual ads featuring SNAC on CNN.com, NYTimes.com and USAToday.com contributed.

Of course, I would like to thank the media! They have basically turned BALCO into a household name. I now realize that I would never have received the international publicity without all of the adversity, pain and suffering that came with it…

Michael Arrington recently commented on this at TechCrunch:

The problem with automated advertising on news sites has always been the placing of inappropriate ads next to serious news issues.

Many news/media websites posted editorials complaining about the dangers of anabolic steroids and the role of the internet in facilitating steroid sales only to provide links for consumers to buy steroids (and receive payment from Google for displaying those links).

Most of the ads shown recently are not for real pharmaceutical anabolic steroids (although some ads still slip through) but OTC supplements with names that sound like steroids. Google has actually made efforts to prevent advertisers from selling steroids using their service that seem to more effective that efforts at YouTube at preventing piracy.

Victor Conte of BALCO likely made millions promoting ZMA through Google Ads. Mainstream news services published countless stories about his involvement in the recent sports steroids scandals not to mention stories about his star client, Barry Bonds. The countless stories surely provided considerable ad revenue for news sites offering coverage of the BALCO scandal courtesy Victor Conte (via Google Ads).

Another example of how all publicity is good publicity (and very profitable in some cases).