Tangled Webs (52 page)
Authors: James B. Stewart
Tags: #History, #United States, #General, #Law, #Ethics & Professional Responsibility
Anderson said he’d grown up with Barry Bonds, and that Bonds was his first client who was a professional athlete. It was obvious Anderson owed Bonds for his entrée to the world of elite professional athletes. In addition to Bonds, Anderson said he was currently working with Gary Sheffield, Benito Santiago, catchers A. J. Pierzynski and Bobby Estalella, outfielders Marvin Benard and Armando Rios, and Jason Giambi.
At first Anderson insisted he only provided steroids to bodybuilders. Then he acknowledged he’d given them to a “few” professional athletes, but said he didn’t want to name them. He’d given them both testosterone and human growth hormone, which he sometimes mailed using Federal Express. He claimed he “didn’t really pay any attention” to the steroid distribution.
Anderson confirmed much of what Valente had told them about bringing his baseball clients to BALCO after Major League Baseball decided to initiate drug testing. He said he bought the “clear” and the “cream” from BALCO, paying cash, and he understood that the cream was a combination of testosterone and epitestosterone that would escape detection.
Novitzky pressed him to name his clients who were taking the “clear” and the “cream,” but Anderson was evasive. He said he only gave them to “my little guys,” adding that “drugs are a very minute part of my little guys.” Novitzky asked who these “little guys” might be, and Anderson named Benard, Estalella, Rios, and Santiago. He said nothing about Bonds.
Anderson said the cash in the safe was money he’d been saving for years for a down payment on a house. He acknowledged taking cash payments from his workout clients that he put in the safe and didn’t declare as income. But Novitzky doubted the cash had been accumulating for the years Anderson claimed. Would the serial numbers on the bills indicating their age bear out Anderson’s claim? Anderson replied, implausibly, that he “rotated” the bills, so most were actually new.
Then Novitzky asked specifically about Barry Bonds. Anderson said Bonds had never taken either the “clear” or the “cream.” Novitzky thought Anderson was lying, and said so. He warned him that any false statements would be taken into account in evaluating his cooperation, or lack of it.
At this juncture other agents interrupted the interview to tell Novitzky that they’d located a number of file folders, each bearing the name of a professional baseball player. Novitzky looked inside. Each file contained calendars with handwritten entries that seemed to record the dates, times, and quantities for administering performance-enhancing drugs, including the “clear” and the “cream.” One of the folders was labeled “Barry Bonds.” In addition to the calendar was a sheet labeled “Barry” and the notes “blood tests,” “G,” “depo test cyp 3 bottles off and reg. season,” “clear and cream,” and “Clomifed” (a type of steroid).
Novitzky showed Anderson the folder. Visibly nervous, Anderson said he’d better stop answering questions, because “I don’t want to go to jail.” He said he wanted to cooperate, but “didn’t want to get himself into further trouble,” Novitzky wrote in his notes of the interview. He refused to let the agents search his computer, which wasn’t covered by the warrant.
Novitzky and his agents left at about 9:00 p.m., carrying with them numerous vials, many labeled to indicate they contained steroids; envelopes containing various creams; over a hundred syringes; alcohol pads; and assorted pills. Anderson said it was all for his personal use.
Two days later, on September 5, Novitzky and his team returned, this time with a warrant to seize Anderson’s computers. They arrived at 7:25 p.m. Anderson’s SUV was in the driveway, and they could hear the TV through the front door. But no one answered. They broke open the door and discovered no one home. About thirty minutes later, Gestas’s Porsche pulled into the driveway, and she and Anderson got out. Novitzky walked outside to intercept them, and told Anderson another search was in progress. They were taking his computers because they’d discovered computer-generated invoices for steroids during the previous search. Anderson said he didn’t know what Novitzky was talking about.
I
n the wake of the Novitzky-led raid on BALCO, San Francisco U.S. Attorney Kevin Ryan, named by President Bush to the post in 2002, had an extraordinary case on his hands that threatened to blow the lid off the long-suspected but hitherto secret world of illegal performance-enhancing drug use in professional baseball, football, and track. More than a score of elite athletes were implicated, including world-record holders, Olympic medalists, and Bonds, one of the best-known athletes in the world, bent on a new all-time home run record. It was, he later said, “the case of a lifetime.” The son of an Irish immigrant, born in Alberta, Canada, Ryan was Republican, conservative, Catholic, a graduate of Dartmouth (where he played rugby) and the University of San Francisco School of Law. He’d worked as a prosecutor in Alameda County and then as a municipal court judge in San Francisco.
n the wake of the Novitzky-led raid on BALCO, San Francisco U.S. Attorney Kevin Ryan, named by President Bush to the post in 2002, had an extraordinary case on his hands that threatened to blow the lid off the long-suspected but hitherto secret world of illegal performance-enhancing drug use in professional baseball, football, and track. More than a score of elite athletes were implicated, including world-record holders, Olympic medalists, and Bonds, one of the best-known athletes in the world, bent on a new all-time home run record. It was, he later said, “the case of a lifetime.” The son of an Irish immigrant, born in Alberta, Canada, Ryan was Republican, conservative, Catholic, a graduate of Dartmouth (where he played rugby) and the University of San Francisco School of Law. He’d worked as a prosecutor in Alameda County and then as a municipal court judge in San Francisco.
The BALCO investigation also posed extraordinary risks to any prosecutor. Many of the athletes were national icons, beloved and admired by fans. The San Francisco Giants were a hometown institution. They’d just represented the city in the World Series. However controversial Bonds may have been on road trips, in San Francisco he was a star. Ryan told the
San Francisco Chronicle
he stopped attending Giants games out of fear he’d be pictured on the giant screen–and booed, or worse.
San Francisco Chronicle
he stopped attending Giants games out of fear he’d be pictured on the giant screen–and booed, or worse.
From the beginning, Ryan had decided to focus on the manufacturers and distributors of illegal steroids–the dealers–and not the end users, much as drug prosecutions often target dealers rather than users. So a grand jury was convened to investigate Conte, Valente, and Anderson–not Bonds or any other athletes identified as BALCO clients. Although Ryan later said some of the things he learned about the Giants were “hard for me to stomach,” he wanted to keep their names confidential and avoid any public disclosure.
In mid-September the grand jury issued subpoenas to about three dozen athletes named in BALCO documents, including Bonds.
Ten days after the raid on BALCO, Victor Conte had hired Sacramento defense lawyer Troy Ellerman, a lawyer who had handled a speeding ticket for his daughter. Ellerman was an unusual choice for a high-profile criminal case in San Francisco; he was better known in rodeo than legal circles. Ellerman was a former professional rodeo cowboy who still habitually wore a cowboy hat over his shaved head. He came from a rodeo family–they appeared professionally as the Flying Cossacks–and had been riding bulls since he was six. He’d served as a stunt double for Paul Hogan (“Crocodile Dundee”) in the 1994 film
Lightning Jack
. In addition to his work as a lawyer, Ellerman was chairman of the board of the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association.
Lightning Jack
. In addition to his work as a lawyer, Ellerman was chairman of the board of the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association.
Now, over the phone, Conte went on at length about the day’s raid, offering a far more dramatic and colorful version than anything described in Novitzky’s report. He’d repeatedly asked for a lawyer (at least ten times, he later said), but Novitzky had brushed aside his requests and simply moved to the next question. He hadn’t been shown a search warrant until the raid was over. He insisted he hadn’t named names of drug users; he’d only told Novitzky the names of some of his clients. Novitzky had asked him to wear a wire, and he’d said, “Absolutely not.” He said he’d take responsibility for his own actions, but wouldn’t cooperate in any way. Later, Conte said he was shocked by the inaccuracies he found in Novitzky’s written report of the raid and said, “The government has not been truthful.”
Ellerman brought in another more experienced lawyer from Sacramento, Robert Holley, to help out, someone he thought might impress a jury with his maturity and gravitas. The two had worked well together before, and Holley became the attorney of record for Conte, while Ellerman represented Valente. But as time passed, Conte began to wonder if his lawyers were adequate for such a complex, high-profile case in federal court in San Francisco. He called Ellerman and Holley his “hillbilly lawyers from Sacramento.”
In the wake of Hoskins’s ouster from his inner circle, Bonds had been relying increasingly for advice on one of his bodyguards, Daniel Molieri. As a former San Francisco police officer, Molieri knew Michael Rains, a criminal defense lawyer based in the East Bay who’d made his reputation defending accused cops. But defending police officers was far different from guiding a star of Bonds’s magnitude through the maze of the BALCO investigation. Rains, in turn, lined up a friend of his to represent Anderson.
Rains responded to Bonds’s subpoena by telling the prosecutors his star client would invoke the Fifth Amendment and refuse to testify. And, like Ari Fleischer in the Libby case, Bonds was offered immunity in return. It was an extraordinary grant, one for which Ryan was subsequently harshly criticized, and which provoked disagreement among the government lawyers and investigators. After all, Novitzky had already amassed what seemed compelling evidence that Bonds had used illegal controlled substances. Bonds had also introduced other professional athletes to BALCO and to Anderson, who in turn used the drugs. Bonds was the biggest name in the investigation, a national role model, and prosecuting him for illegal steroid use would be a huge deterrent for other potential steroid users. But Ryan stood by the decision, and the assistant attorney general in Washington approved Ryan’s request for immunity for Bonds.
C
elebrated track coach Trevor Graham’s was a distinctly American story of triumph over adversity. He was born in Jamaica, the eighth of nine children, and his parents had no choice but to leave him behind when they moved to the United States. He shuttled among relatives and struggled to find food before eventually joining his parents in Brooklyn.
elebrated track coach Trevor Graham’s was a distinctly American story of triumph over adversity. He was born in Jamaica, the eighth of nine children, and his parents had no choice but to leave him behind when they moved to the United States. He shuttled among relatives and struggled to find food before eventually joining his parents in Brooklyn.
Graham had excelled as a scholarship track star at St. Augustine’s College in North Carolina, and won a silver medal for Jamaica at the 1988 Seoul Olympics. He was best known for his elite track club, Sprint Capitol USA, which he operated on the campus of North Carolina State University in Raleigh. His coaching was eagerly sought after by top runners, including Marion Jones, winner of five medals at the Sydney Olympics, arguably the most famous female athlete in the world. He was one of the few coaches with his own endorsement deal for Nike.
Earlier that summer, Novitzky had found a letter in the trash from Conte to the USADA. The letter detailed the once-close relationship between Conte and Trevor Graham and their falling-out. Graham had played a key role in introducing Conte to some of the world’s top track stars, long before Greg Anderson brought Bonds to Conte. But during the spring of 2001, Conte became furious when he heard reports that Graham was siphoning off supplies of the “cream,” the “clear,” and other performance-enhancing drugs for use with other clients. The two had several bitter arguments, and Conte put Graham and Graham’s clients on strict allocations, demanding an accounting of how the drugs were disbursed, further angering Graham.
“Trevor Graham, former coach of Marion Jones, is giving his IAAF and USATF athletes oral testosterone undecanoate from Mexico,” Conte’s letter began.
Trevor is having a friend . . . purchase this substance from his group in Mexico . . . he routinely goes over the border to Mexico to make the purchases. Oral testosterone undecanoate will clear the body and be undetectable in urine in less than a week. . . . If a urine sample was collected from any of Trevor’s athletes within two days after a competition, they would likely test positive for T/E ratio . . . If USADA or IAAF would be willing to collect a urine sample from any of the athletes listed below, a positive test result would be likely.
Conte evidently had second thoughts, considering that he was one of Graham’s sources for illegal steroids. He never sent the letter, and threw it in the trash.
W
hile Conte fumed, Graham was presiding over a veritable soap opera in
hile Conte fumed, Graham was presiding over a veritable soap opera in
North Carolina. In March 2001, after the Sydney Olympics, a nearly distraught Jones had confided in Graham that she was separating from her husband, shot-put champion C.J. Hunter. Hunter had tested positive for steroids and had withdrawn from the Sydney Olympics, which dragged Jones into the steroids scandal and had caused strains in their marriage. Then Hunter started “sleeping with” another of Graham’s runners, Jones alleged.
The next year Jones started dating sprinter Tim Montgomery, another of Graham’s track star athletes. Montgomery had won a gold medal in Sydney as part of the United States’ 4x100 relay team. Jones and Montgomery moved in together and continued training with Graham. In June, Jones gave birth to a boy, Tim Montgomery Jr.
That same summer, Tim Montgomery, who was so slight his nickname was “Tiny Tim,” had visibly gained muscle. His stamina and strength also surged. In Paris in September, he set a new world record in the hundred-meter. During his victory lap, Graham joined him on the track to congratulate him. But Montgomery had spurned him, saying Graham had “nothing to do” with his victory, which he credited to another coach who was working closely with Conte. Stunned, Graham had responded, “I hope you pass the drug test.”
“I’ll pass with flying colors,” Montgomery replied.
Afterward, Graham called Montgomery and said he was releasing him from the camp. “Who doesn’t want to coach the world’s fastest man?” Montgomery asked.
“I don’t,” Graham replied.
Soon after, Graham and Jones argued about various training issues, and she sent Graham an e-mail terminating their contract.
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