Wheelmen: Lance Armstrong, the Tour De France, and the Greatest Sports Conspiracy Ever

by Reed Albergotti

  In August 2002, Novitzky and the IRS Criminal Investigation unit opened an investigation into a personal trainer believed to be distributing steroids, and the trainer’s suspected supplier, the BALCO lab. The probe began as a drug-and-money-laundering investigation, focused on BALCO’s profits from the distribution of steroids. So Novitzky ran BALCO through an IRS financial database designed to pinpoint possible money-laundering operations by tracking cash transactions larger than $10,000. When he found a $14,000 cash withdrawal, he was sure they were on to something.

  Novitzky began a weekly Monday night “trash recon,” picking through BALCO’s garbage. Legal since a Supreme Court ruling in 1988, such investigations can be done without bothering to obtain a search warrant. He found wrappers for syringes and boxes that had contained human growth hormone, testosterone, and Epogen (a prescription version of EPO). The trash in BALCO’s Dumpster also contained notes to Conte from elite track and field athletes who had obtained the drugs, documents showing that a sample of San Francisco Giants home run champion Barry Bond’s blood had been sent to a lab for steroid pretesting (to make sure the drugs would go undetected by drug testers), and FedEx receipts for drugs shipped to a professional baseball player. One of his trash runs turned up evidence that Conte was buying epitestosterone, or “Epi,” a masking agent used by doping athletes, by mail from a company in the Midwest.

  Eventually, Novitzky obtained subpoenas for Conte’s bank records and discovered that he had withdrawn more than $480,000 in cash during the course of two years. BALCO’s subpoenaed bank records also led Novitzky to Stericycle, the medical waste management company BALCO employed to pick up its used vials and needles and other detritus. He then obtained a subpoena to search the drums at Stericycle for the medical waste from seven separate pickups at BALCO labs. From December 2002 through July 2003, he combed the medical waste that came from BALCO on a monthly basis. The BALCO trash at Stericycle was, if anything, even more revealing than what he picked up at the BALCO site itself. There were empty vials of EPO, testosterone, and growth hormone, and more than sixty used syringes.

  The evidence Novitzky collected was enough to allow him to conclude that Conte’s lab was a front for a massive steroid ring that supplied athletes in Major League Baseball, the National Football League, and Olympic track and field. He obtained search warrants, and in September 2003, a group of more than two dozen agents and officials from a variety of agencies raided the lab as well as Conte’s home and three private mailboxes. Novitzky arranged for USADA’s medical director to be on hand during the raid to provide technical assistance.

  Conte spent three months in prison after pleading guilty to distributing illegal steroids and laundering money, based on the evidence that Novitzky gathered and turned over to prosecutors. The investigation also led to criminal convictions of Barry Bonds and sprinter Marion Jones, who was forced to forfeit the three gold medals and two bronzes that she won at the 2000 Sydney Olympics. In October 2007, Jones pleaded guilty to lying to Novitzky and an assistant US attorney about doping and her part in a check-cashing scheme, and was sentenced to six months in prison. In 2011, Bonds was found guilty of obstruction of justice dating back to his 2003 testimony to the grand jury investigating BALCO; he was sentenced to thirty days of home confinement, two years of probation, 250 hours of community service in youth-related activities, and a $4,000 fine.

  But Novitzky was controversial. Critics questioned the appropriateness of using the IRS to target athletes for drug use. Lawyers for some of the athletes targeted by his investigations described him as out of control, and said he sometimes put words into suspects’ mouths.

  In spring 2008, Novitzky left the IRS and joined the Food and Drug Administration’s Office of Criminal Investigations, where he felt his anti-doping zeal would be better appreciated. The FDA had responsibility for overseeing the misuse of prescription drugs, and it was because Travis Tygart knew of Novitzky’s interest in the off-label use of Epogen, the prescription form of EPO, that Tygart told him about Floyd Landis and asked if he would like to talk to him. During the first week of May, Novitzky called Floyd and set up a meeting.

  Six days later, Landis met with Novitzky and Tygart in a hotel in Marina del Rey for six hours, and for an additional two the next morning. Landis also brought along Brent Kay, because he wanted Kay to tell Novitzky of Lance’s threatening phone call. While Lance hadn’t threatened him with violence, Kay was so freaked out that he had hired an armed guard to watch his Temecula house anyway.

  During those long hours of testimony, Landis told the men everything he knew—everything he could think of—about doping on the US Postal team, and he gave them his diary, which included doping schedules that he’d written in code, in order to corroborate his account. He was worried that if anything he said was inaccurate, he could face criminal charges.

  At the meeting, Novitzky asked Landis if he would be willing to help him with an investigation, in exchange for which he would protect Landis from criminal prosecution. Landis agreed, but he also had to agree to keep quiet about his allegations. His plans to go public with his story would have to be put on hold.

  Flirting with the idea of having Landis go undercover, Novitzky told Landis that he was currently investigating a California cycling team called Rock Racing. The brainchild behind the team was Los Angeles fashion designer Michael Ball, owner of Rock & Republic jeans, who had set out to build a domestic racing team that would embody a bad-boy image. Its riders wore all black with white skulls on their chests, and many had extensive tattoos—as well as histories of suspensions for failed doping tests. The team had hired Tyler Hamilton, who had come back from his own two-year doping suspension only to fail again in an out-of-competition check in 2009, when he tested positive for dehydroepiandrosterone, or DHEA, a multifunctional steroid. Hamilton claimed it was in an herbal remedy he took after he had stopped using prescription antidepressants. Another Rock Racing rider had recently admitted to being in possession of EPO.

  Michael Ball had dark, handsome features and kept in shape. He looked about thirty-five but was actually over fifty. He acted like he was twenty-five, chasing models and partying as if it were the 1970s. Ball referred to anti-doping officials as the Gestapo and felt drug-testing was something that should be handled internally, as it is in the National Football League and Major League Baseball. “This sport is eating its young,” he told Outside magazine in May 2008. “You have to close ranks and take care of your own.”

  Novitzky believed Ball was profiting by supplying riders with EPO and other drugs, much as BALCO’s Victor Conte had. An investigation of Ball was already under way, and Novitzky hoped to gather enough evidence to obtain a search warrant for his house. He already had teamed up with officers from other agencies, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation, to gather information.

  Floyd Landis knew Ball. In fact, he had been to parties at his house where he’d seen guests snorting cocaine, and he was actually in negotiations with Ball about a spot on the Rock Racing team, which was considerably higher profile than his current squad. Novitzky asked Landis if he would wear a recording device and gather evidence.

  Floyd felt a bit of queasiness about being an informer. It was one thing for him to have outed himself and his former teammates, especially when he felt he had been so badly treated by Lance, Johan Bruyneel, and Jim Ochowicz. But it was another thing to do something that could potentially incriminate someone with whom he was in negotiations for a job and who had done him no harm. Plus, he didn’t think Ball was selling EPO, let alone profiting from it. Still he wanted Novitzky to take him seriously and had given his word that he would help. So he quieted his doubts and agreed to wear a wire.

  I am committed, he told himself.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  THE CHASE

  Just after the Tour of California began on May 16, 2010, Floyd Landis called Michael Ball to say that he was passing through Los Angeles and would like to get together. On the designated night, several a
gents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, who had been assigned to work with Novitzky on the case, met Landis in his hotel room in Marina del Rey and began strapping an audio recording device to his body, using thick elastic.

  By the time they completed the process, which took over an hour, Floyd’s torso was wrapped up like a mummy. Shortly before he was to leave, however, Ball began texting him, each time asking to push the meeting back. By midnight, six hours had passed, and Novitzky, who was monitoring the sting from San Francisco, was worried.

  “I think he’s onto us,” Novitzky told Floyd on the phone. “He’s definitely figured it out. Let’s call it off.”

  Floyd dismissed Novitzky’s concerns, telling him that Ball was probably just out on the town partying with his girlfriend. He said he’d set up another meeting with Ball for the following morning. After making a plan with the FBI agents to have the mummy-wrapping process repeated the next day, Landis went to the hotel bar and had a drink. He was nervous about what he was about to do. Not only was he wearing a wire, but the FBI had stationed agents wearing concealed guns around Ball’s condo. What had he gotten himself into? One drink led to another, then another. Pretty soon he was completely hammered.

  The next morning, after the FBI agents attached the wire to him again, Floyd crossed the street from his hotel to Ball’s high-rise. Floyd had a severe hangover—and apparently Ball did, too, because after the doorman let Landis in, he discovered that Ball was still in his bedroom, half asleep. When he emerged, still only half dressed, the two men began chatting while Ball logged on to his computer, only to see the headline: CYCLIST FLOYD LANDIS ADMITS DOPING, ALLEGES USE BY ARMSTRONG. The story went on to recount the highlights of a scoop in The Wall Street Journal about the e-mails Landis had sent to USA Cycling and others in the cycling world.

  Landis was caught completely off guard. He knew the Journal had been working on a story because Reed had recently been calling him for comments, but on the instruction of federal investigators, Landis had not returned the calls and he had figured it would take the Journal a lot longer to get aold of the e-mails and authenticate them. The story had gone online at 1:27 A.M., the morning of May 20, just about the time Landis was passing out drunk in his hotel room.

  “What’s going on with this?” Ball asked. But he didn’t seem angry. Instead, he expressed support for Floyd. His outing of himself, Lance, and other riders on the Postal team was the best thing that could happen to cycling, Ball said. “Somewhere in this country, there’s a federal investigator that will see this and open an investigation,” Ball added.

  “You think?” Floyd said.

  Floyd felt bad at that moment, but he also felt that it was too late to turn back. He had made a commitment to Novitzky and he intended to keep it. He asked Ball if he could help himself to a drink and opened Ball’s fridge.

  When Floyd opened the fridge, he saw packages of human growth hormone. Armed with a key chain video/audio recorder that the FBI agents had given him that morning, he began filming close-ups of the labels of each—video that Novitzky later used to obtain a search warrant of Ball’s apartment and to seize the drugs Floyd had seen.

  But the prosecutors never charged Ball. He was just the sponsor of a minor cycling team, and clearly not the mastermind of a doping ring. He turned out to have a prescription for HGH. The information that Landis had supplied about the US Postal team, on the other hand, pointed the way to a far bigger target. Once Novitzky and Tygart had thoroughly debriefed Landis and concluded on the basis of what he told them that there was good reason to believe that doping was going on in the highest echelons of the sport, involving cycling’s biggest star, Novitzky began planning a much more ambitious investigation—which meant getting federal prosecutors who would work with him and ultimately bring criminal charges. He was assigned to work with two prosecutors in the US Attorney’s Office at Los Angeles—Doug Miller, a methodical, thirtysomething assistant US attorney, who had a decade of experience prosecuting criminal cases, including bank frauds, and Mark Williams, a young, energetic lawyer who arrived at the office in 2008.

  Meanwhile, Armstrong, knowing nothing of the criminal investigation that was already in motion and completely blindsided by the Wall Street Journal story, which broke while he was in the middle of the Tour of California, did what he had done so many times before—denied the allegations and attacked the character of the accuser. Armstrong and his army of publicists wrote off Landis’s remarks as the nonsensical ramblings of a disgruntled teammate who was a proven liar. “Floyd lost his credibility a long time ago,” Lance told reporters outside the RadioShack team bus at the Tour of California. “This is a man who has been under oath several times and had a completely different version, wrote a book for profit with a completely different version . . . someone that took, some would say, close to $1 million from innocent people for his defense under a different premise. Now, when it’s all run out, the story changes.”

  Armstrong also accused Landis of harassing and threatening him for years. But Armstrong and his associates knew the truth: Landis’s allegations were the most detailed and damning of Armstrong’s career. If they led to a federal investigation—and if there were any doubts about that, they would have been dispelled by a second story that appeared in the Journal the next day, on the twenty-first, stating that such an investigation was indeed under way—it might prove impossible for them to control the story and the flow of information.

  On May 25, just two days after the conclusion of the Tour of California, David Zabriskie met with Doug Miller and Mark Williams to tell his story about using EPO and other drugs, which he testified that team director Johan Bruyneel had pressured him to do. Zabriskie was one of the first of many who would step forward in response to a request from Novitzky, who had begun contacting many of the key riders and people close to them, seeking interviews and proffering limited immunity—a standard legal arrangement that allows a cooperating witness to provide testimony while being guaranteed protection from prosecution based on any admissions he might make, provided he tells the truth.

  Kristin Armstrong, Sheryl Crow, Frankie and Betsy Andreu, Jonathan Vaughters and Christian Vande Velde of the Garmin-Sharp cycling team, and Levi Leipheimer of the RadioShack team, all heard from Novitzky that summer, and all accepted the proffers and agreed to talk. Potential witnesses who initially refused to talk with investigators were issued grand jury subpoenas. Those people included Armstrong’s USPS teammates George Hincapie, Tyler Hamilton, Kevin Livingston, and Yaroslav Popovych; Armstrong’s longtime friend, Oakley sunglass representative Stephanie McIlvain and her husband; and Allen Lim, a physiologist who had worked for Armstrong. That meant they would be forced to testify—without a lawyer—in front of a sitting grand jury in Los Angeles.

  Armstrong lined up his own high-powered lawyers to try to stymie the investigation. His Austin attorney, Tim Herman, flew out to California and hired Bryan Daly, a Los Angeles attorney who was a former prosecutor in the US Attorney’s Office there and understood how it worked. While in L.A., Herman called the prosecutors who were handling the case to see if he and Daly could come in to speak with them. The prosecutors turned them down, saying it was too early in the investigation for such a meeting to be productive.

  Armstrong also got a tip from Karl Rove, who lived in Austin, knew Armstrong, and wanted to help. He suggested Armstrong contact Robert D. Luskin of Patton Boggs in Washington, DC, a Democratic lawyer with connections at the US Justice Department. With his gold hoop earring, buff body, shaved head, and Ducati Monster motorcycle, the sixty-five-year-old Luskin was hardly the typical white-collar Washington, DC, lawyer. He was known around Washington as the first male attorney to wear an earring in the Supreme Court. But that hadn’t kept him from the avenues of power in that town. It was he who had represented Rove—and gotten him off—when he was accused of outing covert CIA operative Valerie Plame.

  Armstrong also hired a crisis management consultant, Mark Fabiani, a silver-haired lawyer
in San Diego who had earned the nickname the Master of Disaster when he served as special counsel to President Bill Clinton during the Whitewater investigations in the early 1990s. After that, Fabiani had acted as deputy campaign manager and spokesman for Vice President Al Gore’s presidential election bid, including Gore’s postelection challenge of Florida’s vote count. As it happened, his firm had also represented Marion Jones throughout the BALCO affair.

  And there were more: Lance retained the services of John Keker of San Francisco–based Keker & Van Nest, and his partner, Elliot Peters. Known as a confrontational bulldog in the courtroom, Keker had represented Enron Corporation’s former chief financial officer Andrew Fastow, and specialized in getting Wall Street executives off the hook for their alleged transgressions.In an effort to influence the outcome of the government’s probe, Armstrong began offering to pay for legal representation for some of his former teammates. Tyler Hamilton turned down Armstrong’s offer. Hamilton already had an attorney, Chris Manderson, and Hamilton wasn’t planning on protecting Lance. In fact, Manderson made it clear that if Hamilton lied in front of the grand jury, he would refuse to represent him. Hamilton had two choices, Manderson said: Tell the truth or risk going to prison. Hamilton was the epitome of a flawed witness. After his comeback from his positive test for a blood transfusion in 2004, he had tested positive again in 2009. Meanwhile, he had also been implicated in Operación Puerto, the raid on the Spanish doping lab that occurred in 2006. In a sport where doping was prevalent, Hamilton had been one of the most aggressive users of blood transfusions and other performance-enhancing tactics. Even Lance thought of him as a doping extremist.