Baseball slugger Barry Bonds appeared in U.S. District Court this morning in San Francisco and plead not guilty to charges of perjury and obstruction of justice. The charges stem from testimony Bonds gave before a grand jury investigating the Bay Area Lab Cooperative, a lab that designed and distributed illegal steroids.
The most surprising element of the government’s case against Barry Bonds is the mention that Bonds had failed a drug test back in 2000 while he was a client of disgraced, convicted drug-trafficker Victor Conte and his BALCO Labs. Now that Bonds is facing charges from the feds, his lawyers, legal experts and doping authorities are questioning the veracity and reliability of this drug test, which was conducted outside the workplace.
The theory follows along the lines that – supposedly - without the rigid constraints that would be in place for an official league or athletic organization authorized drug test, any test conducted by BALCO would be less than reliable because a formal, verifiable chain of custody wasn’t in place. For those who are unfamiliar with this drug test, Bonds was tested while working with BALCO and his sample, and the samples of all the other BALCO drug cheats, were sent to Quest Diagnostics laboratory for analysis.
In a story that appears on ESPN.com written by investigative reporter Michael Fish, Victor Conte the felon weighed in on the tests that BALCO ran for their clients.
According to Conte the tests were done for "research purposes only. "It had to do with determining whether there were positive test results that would come about from using certain substances," Conte said of the tests, according to Fish's story. "It had to do with, in some cases, determining whether or not things people were buying on the black market were the real deal or not. Some of this stuff on the market is phony. Another is to screen the Olympic-caliber athletes to make sure they weren't taking any tainted supplements."
If you are in a kind mood you could say that this statement is disingenuous. The “certain substances” the BALCO drug cheats were being tested for were the illegal performance-enhancing drugs that were part of the BALCO regimen. For Conte to claim that his criminal organization was concerned with tainted or ersatz over-the-counter supplements is insulting, and illustrates the contempt that Conte has for the media and general public. This is pure nonsense.
Next up is this load of baloney.
Conte goes on to say Bonds' testing "was just a part of an overall comprehensive package that went on. (BALCO VP and Conte partner) Jim Valente went in there on a Saturday and met with a whole entourage of people, including Dr.Ting (Bonds' personal physician) and Greg (Anderson, Bonds' personal trainer). And I am the one that set up all these, so we just pretty much had a whole package of tests that went out. None of them had chain of custody. Not a single one."
Article comments
1 - alessandro
Conte's little mustache makes him look even slimier.