In regards to Novitzky’s new job, Dwight Sparlin, a retired I.R.S. manager who led the San Francisco office when the Balco case started nearly six years ago, said he had been hearing for two weeks that Novitzky was going to the F.D.A. to continue focusing on drug cases.
“I think it would give him more exposure to just doing that type of work,” Sparlin said by telephone Tuesday. He added: “For Jeff to go as far as he did in Balco was a stretch for the I.R.S., too. I think he was allowed to go a lot further than he would otherwise because of the impact.”
Jeff Novitsky has been involved in almost every aspect of the BALCO steroid scandal and steroids in baseball investigation.
After corresponding with sources involved in the Tammy Thomas doping trial and reading reports from the trial, I am convinced that the likelihood of an acquittal is very high. 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.
IRS Special Agent Jeff Novitsky testified against cyclist Tammy Thomas at her perjury trial yesterday. Novitsky is a popular (and controversial) figure in the entire steroids in sports investigation. Thus, many observers were interested in his testimony. Reviewing the published accounts of Novitsky’s testimony, I found it particularly interesting how much incriminating evidence federal investigators found in BALCO’s trash.
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.
Much has been made of the lack of integrity in professional sports, most recently in baseball’s Mitchell Report, with revelations of widespread use of anabolic steroids, testosterone, and growth hormone. But few reporters seem to be interested in investigating the alleged improprieties of federal investigators involved in the crusade against doping in sports.
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. Read the rest of this entry
Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is once again going to be confronted with his own admitted use of anabolic steroids as a former professional bodybuilder with his promotion of the 2008 Arnold Classic Bodybuilding contest in Columbus next month. This has become an annual ritual with the steroid-addicted media and it is sure to continue as long as Arnold is in politics and continues his involvement in the sport of professional bodybuilding.
But there may be further attention given to Schwarzenegger and his relationship, past and present, with anabolic steroids. Sources tell the Steroid Report that the steroid documentary “Bigger, Stronger, Faster”, premiering at the Sundance Film Festival this month, will be highly critical of his conflicted positions on anabolic steroids. Read the rest of this entry