Tangled Webs (57 page)

Read Tangled Webs Online

Authors: James B. Stewart

Tags: #History, #United States, #General, #Law, #Ethics & Professional Responsibility

“And does that mean that just in principle you would feel no shame, because everybody was doing it?”
“You know, Martin . . . the Olympic Games are a fraud. Okay? It’s almost like, what I’m here to tell you right now is that not only is there no Santa Claus, but there’s no Easter Bunny or Tooth Fairy either . . . I mean, the whole history of the Olympic Games is just full of corruption, cover-up, performance-enhancing drug use. It’s not what the world thinks it is.”
“It’s a fraud?”
“It’s a fraud.”
Conte may have considered this revelation a public service, but he also freely acknowledged distributing illegal drugs that wouldn’t show up in tests, including the “clear.”
“You were still breaking the law,” Bashir pointed out. “This was a criminal activity. Did that ever bother you?”
This was Conte’s opportunity to assert a defense, or at least proclaim his innocence. Instead, he replied, “If you’re asking me, did I know there were risks involved? Yes, I did.”
Although Conte had denied in court that he’d implicated any of his clients in his statement to Novitzky, he freely did so in an interview intended for national TV. Marion Jones: “She did the injection with me sitting right there next to her.” As for her grand jury testimony, “If she said she didn’t use drugs, then she lied.” Tim Montgomery: “If you’re asking if it [his training regimen] included illegal activity, the answer would be yes.” Bill Romanowski: “Did I help Bill in certain ways? Yes.”
And then he got to baseball and Barry Bonds:
“I did give ‘clear’ and ‘cream’ to Greg Anderson, yes,” Conte acknowledged.
“And who is Greg Anderson’s number one client?”
“His number one client is Barry Bonds.”
“So is it possible, that some of the ‘clear’ and ‘cream’ that you gave, without any strings attached, to Greg Anderson may have found its way to Barry Bonds?”
“It’s possible. I can’t say that it’s not possible.”
Bashir asked Conte about the raid on BALCO. “I knew that this was coming,” Conte said. “I knew that they were on to me. I knew that they were going to come crashing through the door like they did that day. And I almost didn’t care because I also knew that that would give me the opportunity to be sitting right here talking to you, telling the truth to the world. And the world deserves to hear the truth.”
During the week before the show aired, ABC began running promotional spots that showed excerpts of some of Conte’s more provocative comments. The spots coincided with a hearing before Judge Illston on December 1, where Conte’s lawyer, Holley, reiterated his claim that publicity and government leaks were denying Conte his right to a fair trial. “We’ve been slandered from one side of the world to the other,” Holley maintained.
When he finished, prosecutor Jeff Nedrow pointed out that Conte was about to go on national television. Judge Illston seemed incredulous. “I didn’t know until it was too late,” Holley lamely responded.
Later that month Judge Illston rejected the defendants’ motion to dismiss, stating they had presented no evidence that anyone from the government had leaked anything.
 
 
A
s Conte was being interviewed for
20/20
and writing his manifesto for ESPN, Fainaru-Wada’s source again allowed him to review grand jury transcripts and copy passages. This time he offered far more than just Montgomery, giving Fainaru-Wada access to transcripts of testimony from baseball stars Bonds, Giambi, and Sheffield. Baseball–the national pastime–was a much bigger story than track, even with stars like Jones and Montgomery involved.
It was too much material for one story. The
Chronicle
led with Giambi. “Giambi Admitted Taking Steroids” was the front-page headline in the
Chronicle
on December 2. Like Bonds, Giambi had been granted immunity for his testimony, which occurred on December 11, 2003. He acknowledged that he was already taking a steroid–Deca Durabolin–when he met Anderson during the players’ trip to Japan. “So I started to ask him: Hey, what are the things you’re doing with Barry? He’s an incredible player. I want to still be able to work out at that age and keep playing. And that’s how the conversation first started.”
The next day, December 3, it was Bonds’s and Sheffield’s turn. “What Bonds Told the Grand Jury” led the
Chronicle
’s front page: “Barry Bonds told a federal grand jury that he used a clear substance and a cream supplied by the Burlingame laboratory now enmeshed in a sports doping scandal, but he said he never thought they were steroids, the
Chronicle
has learned.” Fainaru-Wada and Williams quoted extensively from the Bonds grand jury transcript, and it was obvious they’d had direct access to it, as well as various documents Bonds had been shown during his testimony. “I never asked Greg what the products contained. When he said it was flaxseed oil, I just said, ‘Whatever,’ ” Bonds testified.
That same day, the
Chronicle
revealed a raft of other testimony before the grand jury. Another headline was “Sheffield’s Side: Slugger Testified Bonds Told Him to Use ‘the Cream’ and ‘the Clear,’ Saying, ‘Don’t Ask Any Questions, Just Trust Me.’ ” As the headline suggested, Sheffield was more ambiguous about what he knew than Giambi or Montgomery had been, but more forthcoming than Bonds. He said he’d gotten the “clear” and the “cream,” as well as pills called “red beans,” while he was staying with Bonds after the 2001 season. But Sheffield said he didn’t know they were steroids; the “cream” was something that would help his arthritis, and the “clear” and the pills were nutritional supplements to ward off injury. That, at least, was what Anderson had told him. Sheffield said he didn’t feel the substances did him much good, and Bonds proved a demanding and difficult host. They soon had a falling-out over a rental car, Sheffield said, and he left, returning to his home in Florida. But Bonds kept after him to pay Anderson. Sheffield paid the trainer about $10,000.
Without quoting directly from any grand jury transcripts, the
Chronicle
also reported that former Giants Armando Rios, Benito Santiago, and Bobby Estalella had also admitted using performance-enhancing drugs.
That afternoon, Valente’s lawyer, Troy Ellerman, had a conference call with Jeff Nedrow, the chief prosecutor, and Novitzky. Ellerman was staying at the Mirage Hotel in Las Vegas, where he was attending a professional rodeo conference. Ellerman said he wanted to apologize formally for earlier blaming Novitzky and the government for leaks in the case. Although he and Bob Holley, his cocounsel, had genuinely believed Novitzky was the source of the leak, “I know that is not the case now,” he said, according to Novitzky’s notes of the call. Ellerman said he suspected Conte himself was the source. “Victor is doing things on his own.” Ellerman added that he thought “it is our obligation as human beings to apologize to Novitzky.” Still, Ellerman and Holley neither withdrew nor amended their motion to dismiss the charges on grounds of prosecutorial misconduct.
Coming just a day after the hearing about pretrial publicity, the timing of the latest leaks couldn’t have been a greater affront to Judge Illston and her stern warnings about confidentiality. This time she wasn’t content to let Ryan’s office undertake another ineffectual inquiry. She referred the issue to the Department of Justice and called for a full-scale investigation, using all the resources of the U.S. government. The Justice Department in turn referred the matter to the U.S. Attorney in Los Angeles, since prosecutors in San Francisco were among the possible suspects. The hunt for Fainaru-Wada’s source began in earnest.
 
T
he
Chronicle
’s revelations set off a national furor. Senator John McCain called for congressional hearings and stricter testing in baseball. The revelations dominated the national media. The next day,
Washington Post
sports columnist Thomas Boswell singled out Bonds:
Bonds won four straight National League most valuable player awards, two batting titles and set the all-time single-season records for home runs, slugging percentage, on-base percentage, walks and intentional walks. All those records are now a steroid lie. Without Anderson’s illicit help, there is no reason whatsoever to believe Bonds could have approached, much less broken, any of the all-time marks for which he lusted so much that he has now ruined his name. Throw every record that Bonds has set in the past four years into the trash can that history reserves for cheats.
 
The
20/20
episode featuring Conte aired the same night as the
Chronicle
’s story on Bonds, December 3. Conte was furious about the timing, convinced that Fainaru-Wada, or more likely his source, had deliberately sabotaged his television interview. Still, Conte delivered quite a performance. He freely admitted his own guilt and implicated his clients. (In response, Jones not only reiterated that she’d never used illegal drugs, but sued Conte for libel and $25 million in damages.) Ed Williams, a lawyer representing several track stars, told the
New York Times
that Conte “has essentially pled guilty to the charges. There are no facts to be tried. All they have to do is roll the video and say, ‘Is this you?’ I don’t know what his motives are. I haven’t spoken to his psychiatrist, and he ought to have one.”
 
 
V
ictor Conte wasn’t the only person connected to the BALCO case who was talking to national television. In February 2005, Bonds’s ex-girlfriend Kimberly Bell appeared on the Fox News program
At Large with Geraldo Rivera
, accompanied by Aphrodite Jones, an author working with Bell on a book still in search of a publisher, tentatively titled
Bonds Girl
. As Bell told Rivera, she had demanded that Bonds honor his agreement to buy her the house in Arizona or pay her the two years’ salary she lost by moving there, either of which amounted to $157,000. Instead, Bonds had offered her $20,000 and wanted a confidentiality agreement, an offer she found insulting.
Did Bonds admit using steroids? Rivera asked.
“Yes, he did tell me,” Bell replied. “He told me between ’99 and 2000 that this is something that he was doing.”
Aphrodite Jones elaborated: “He told Kimberly Bell that he used steroids, because he had an arm injury, Geraldo. And he used it, in his words, not the way everybody else used it, that he wasn’t shooting anything up. Kimberly, perhaps you can say it exactly the way Barry told you.”
“The way he explained to me was that what he was using was helping him recover quicker from his injuries. And that as a result of that, it caused the muscles and then the tendons to grow at a faster [rate] than the joint could handle.”
“All right,” Rivera said. “So he never used, specifically, the word steroids?”
“Oh, no, he used the word steroids. He said this was something everybody was doing.”
“Are you a gold digger, Kimberly?”
“Absolutely not. I had a great job at this time. . . .”
“What do you think of Barry Bonds in the pursuit of the home run title?” Rivera continued. “Should it be tarnished by what you saw?”
“Absolutely.”
“Tell us.”
“There are a lot of fans out there paying a lot of their hard-earned money to go watch these players play. And to know that they are making millions off of what is essentially a lie. It’s kind of sad.”
“And as you sit there tonight, you say that Barry Bonds’s prowess as a hitter, as a slugger is a lie?”
“Some of it, yes. Everything after, I’d say, 2000.”
Shortly after the interview, Bell heard from Novitzky. On March 17, she, too, appeared before the grand jury, testifying for three hours under a grant of immunity. The government subpoenaed all her phone records, recorded messages, bank records, and correspondence with Bonds. She told the grand jury the saga of their relationship, about the financial arrangements, and the threats, the changes to his physique and sexual behavior.
 
 
T
hat same month, the quest for the elusive “Memo,” Trevor Graham’s alleged Mexican connection, brought Novitzky and another agent, Erwin Rogers, to the campus of Texas A&M University in Kingsville, a town just south of Corpus Christi. C. J. Hunter had told them Memo’s real name and spelled it for them, and knew he was at one of two universities in Texas. University police led them to Memo’s dorm room, where they intercepted Angel “Memo” Heredia when he returned from a workout at the gym. “You’re Angel,” Rogers said, introducing himself and Novitzky.

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