UCI and WADA: Recuse Yourselves

There are some odd and curious developments occurring in the anti-doping realm that frankly defy description.  First, is the weird stipulation in the code that the alphabet agencies, WADA and the UCI have the discretion to appeal a case to the Court of Arbitration of Sport, to challenge a prosecutorial decree, the Reasoned Decision, if the athlete declines to take the case to arbitration.  In a normal situation of an adverse analytical finding, the normal process would be flawlessly applied, the laboratory would be deemed infallible and the test results would be deemed incontestable.  But the Lance Armstrong doping case is based upon a non-analytical positive that was generated from testimony of past teammates, the prosecution has deemed these witness statements "irrefutable evidence" even though the anti-doping test results generated by WADA support an opposite conclusion, irrefutable evidence of clean competition.

Second, overlooked by everyone is the continuing scandal of the UCI and the continuing accusations that Hein Verbruggen accepted payola in the form of bribes to falsify a positive test and to destroy the sample [thus rendering the opportunity for further testing with improved methodology obsolete] and that Hein Verbruggen and Pat McQuaid endeavored to cover up this chicanery with lies and denies.  The athlete who payed the bribes?  Lance Armstrong.  The race?  The 2001 Tour of Switzerland.  Now it should seem perfectly obvious to everyone that an agency that has the option to either challenge or waive an appeal of a prosecutorial decree to the Court of Arbitration of Sport has no business doing so, under suspicion of accepting bribes from the defendant.  The UCI executive committee should have recused themselves, appointed an independent board of impartial people [not a group of people affiliated with a WADA signatory] to examine the Reasoned Decision presented by USADA, and the entire unabridged case file, and only after a thorough examination of the evidence make a determination whether to proceed!  The fact that the UCI refused to appeal the Reasoned Decision to  the Court of Arbitration of Sport suggests an attempt by the UCI to continue the cover up by denying the prosecution the opportunity to call Hein Verbruggen and Pat McQuaid to the witness stand, to invite Hein Verbruggen and Pat McQuaid to testify truthfully under oath, and confess.  The fact that the UCI executive committee has called an emergency meeting to deal with crises, after the fact, suggesting that an independent agency investigate the UCI, [the independent agencies suggested were WADA or the Court of Arbitration of Sport; both of whom could technically be considered players who have a stake in the outcome of the proceedings, and who should therefore be disqualified from participation] to determine the fate of Pat McQuaid and Hein Verbruggen [why all the phony dramatics? why not just resign now?]

WADA should also have recused themselves from exercising their opportunity to waive the appeal of the Reasoned Decision to the Court of Arbitration of Sport.  The Lance Armstrong case has everything one hundred and eighty degrees out of phase.  With an adverse analytical finding based upon a positive test the burden of proof rests solely upon the athlete to prove that the laboratory finding was in error.  The WADA accredited laboratory and test results that it generates are considered infallible and incontestable, based upon solid science, and the tests are considered impervious from generating false positive results. But in the Lance Armstrong case WADA is forced to admit that five hundred and fifty WADA accredited laboratory negative test results are incorrect.  Lance Armstrong insists that the WADA generated test results are infallible and incontestable.   Who would of expected such a pole shift?  But people should realize that USADA, WADA, the UCI, are primarily prosecutorial entities, they were never created to defend the athlete.  Why would WADA expend money in an attempt to defend their test results as infallible in defense of Lance Armstrong, a man who they have always wanted to brand a cheater?  This cognitive mind set, the insane hatred of Lance Armstrong and the desire to be rid of him at any cost by WADA and it's signatories constitutes a conflict of interest and grounds for recusal.

You know some of the statements you read in the newspapers can't be true.  For example Bradley Wiggins, Mark Cavendish, and David Millar are all existing on continuing the myth of the infallibility of the WADA anti-doping tests, even after WADA has shamelessly fleeced the UCI and other signatories out of millions of dollars by fraudulently charging fees for service.  [The UCI has paid WADA money for anti-doping tests that do not detect the presence of prohibited substances.]  Wiggins, Cavendish, and Millar base their argument upon the following premises: 1) There no longer exists doping in the peloton and if anyone were stupid enough to dope they would be caught because there have been great improvements in the science of doping detection. [If so, what purpose would there be in a Truth and Reconciliation Committee?]  2) The UCI Biological passport can detect doping in the absence of a failed test and is the perfect stop gap measure to detect deception.  Well, we can all see the fallacy of these arguments.  1) Bury your head in the sand and you will have another U.S. Postal disaster staring you in the face, next time it might be called U.K. Postal.  2) If I were duping the fools, cheating by establishing artificial baseline scores on the worthless UCI Biological Passport by micro dosing with undetectable amounts of prohibited substances and thus allowed freely to dope during a grand tour race; then yes, I would praise the worthless WADA testing to the skies and I would succeed in getting away with everything; unless USADA pointed a gun at one of my teammates and ordered him to sing like a nightingale.

Oh yea, Quickstep dumped Levi Leipheimer.  One rat fink down, twenty to go.

Johan Bruyneel, Pat McQuaid, and the Reasoned Decision

Johan Bruyneel, apparently the last hope for the accused to present a defense in the sordid U.S. Postal doping conspiracy was terminated from team Radio Shack by mutual agreement after the overwhelming evidence presented in the USADA Reasoned Decision.  Johan Bruyneel stated that he did not want the conflict of the pending arbitration to distract the team.

This is a familiar pattern, first there is an accusation, the accused loses his job, then the arbitration process is extended for years by obstructionist prosecution tactics designed to suppress evidence from the defense.  Of course, anti-doping agencies with lavish taxpayer funded budgets have no incentive to ensure a speedy trial for the defendant.  Extended arbitration ensures favorable extended press releases for the anti-doping agencies at the expense of the defendant and serves to justify the taxpayer funded budgetary largess, even if the prosecution tactics ensures financial destitution for the defendant.  As Richard Young stated in the Bloomberg Businessweek article; if the defendant is stupid enough to proclaim his or her innocence they are "opening the door" to attack, even if this attack amounts to a USADA smear campaign, deliberate manipulation of public opinion, and to a virtual gutting of Richard Young's precious World Anti-Doping Code.

Richard Young has a strange attitude in his recommendation to the UCI not to appeal the Reasoned Decision to the Court of Arbitration of Sport, but to declare the Decision "a job well done."  Of course, the Reasoned Decision is a well done hatchet job which accuses the UCI of being complicit in a falsification of a Lance Armstrong positive test for rEPO during the 2001 Tour of Switzerland, and of accepting payola in the form of bribes from Lance Armstrong to cover up the test results.  Frankly, if the UCI were to follow the advice of Richard Young, this would be tantamount to pleading "no contest" to the accusations.  If this is the case, then Pat McQuaid should resign effective immediately.

Of course, the graft and corruption the UCI is accused of is trivial compared to the issue of the wavier of the statute of limitations that Travis Tygart has dictated from his office in a prosecutorial decree reminiscent of a state declaration by Kim Jong Il.   USADA has no legal right to waive the statute of limitations without the waiver being arbitrated. The UCI has no option but to argue against the waiver of the statute of limitations in arbitration, because to do otherwise would constitute one of the most infamous acts of legal subterfuge ever perpetrated on a free world since the arbitrary illegal actions of the French Citizen Courts during Maximilien Robespirre's  Reign of Terror.  During the Reign of Terror, French Citizen Courts ordered arbitrary executions and deportations of the aristocracy without restraint or oversight.  If Pat McQuaid is unwilling to protect cyclists against illegal arbitrary abuse of power by individual anti-doping agencies then he should resign now.







 

USADA: The Reasoned Report

Count Leo Tolstoy asked a pertinent question in his novel Resurrection.  "If the laws can be changed at random and applied arbitrarily, then of what use are the courts?"  This reflection could equally applied to the current Lance Armstrong doing investigation.  If USADA can be allowed to change the World Anti-Doping Code at random and impose these changes arbitrarily, then what use is arbitration?  USADA has waived the statute of limitations against Lance Armstrong not based upon an established precedent of perjury, but upon a newly invented notion of intimation of potential witnesses, who according to USADA would have flocked with potentially damaging information to USADA while a massive doping conspiracy was in progress, not years later when they had been convicted of multiple doping violations, denials, and attempted cover ups of their own behavior and subsequently banned, retired, and left with nothing to lose but the desire for revenge.  This idiot logic on behalf of the USADA would not be so alarming for athletes in all sport profession if not for the fact that this newly established precedent, "suppression of potential evidence through intimidation of potential witness whistle blowing," will be arrived at not through "thorough due process" but by administrative fiat, not through an arbitration award, but from a single declaration of USADA dictated by a megalomaniac prosecutor who thinks that he is Idi Amin, and thus is exempt from International Law.

Of course, the statute of limitations problem is only one of the ever expanding redefinitions that undermines the World Anti-Doping Code.  There are multiple assertion by USADA contained in an reasoned report that attempts further modifications of the World Anti-Doping Code by attempting to include "scientific proofs" that have no bases in reality, to supplement witness testimony that cannot be corroborated by a single clear and conclusive positive test result.  This adventurism by USADA was first successfully attempted in the Floyd Landis doping arbitration when USADA introduced the concept of additional carbon isotope testing in irrelevant stages of the 2006 Tour de France that could not result in additional adverse analytical findings because the test results could not be confirmed in compliance with the World Anti-Doping code; but could be used by the arbitration panel by as supplemental evidence of doping by Mr. Landis.  This concept, using unverified test results as a bases to support USADA's witness testimony, thus establishing "scientific proof " has expanded to include the 2004 research tests conducted by the WADA accredited laboratory at Chatenay-Malabry France that claims to have found perfect isoforms of recombinant EPO in several of  Lance Armstrong's 1999 Tour de France urine samples.  Even under the most dismissive argument, the research samples tested at Chatenay-Malabry France cannot be considered evidence under the existing World Anti-Doping Code because there were no existing "A" samples available for testing.  To accept these tests as valid scientific supplemental evidence to support witness testimony is unjustified, illegal, and is not supported by the World Anti-Doping code, and the Code is not subject to manipulation by USADA to establish an adverse analytical finding where none could possibly exist in reality.

This would be bad enough but USADA is attempting to undermine the therapeutic use exemption.  USADA claims that Lance Armstrong illegally used a topical cortisone cream to treat saddle sores, even though Lance Armstrong has argued that he had a doctor approved therapeutic use exemption to use the cream.  This issue is rife with controversy because some have claimed that on the initial medical declaration that riders are required to file, Lance Armstrong listed legally prescribed prohibited substances that are allowed under the therapeutic use exemption as "none."  It is alleged that the therapeutic use exemption was issued only after Lance Armstrong tested positive for trace amounts of corticosteroids.  But USADA claims that the unresolved issue of if and when Lance Armstrong obtained an therapeutic use exemption for corticosteroids has been suddenly resolved through witness testimony and therefore these witness statements constitute a validated  scientific proof of doping by Lance Armstrong.  In my opinion, this issue should have been resolved years ago, if there were any questions as to the validity of the therapeutic use exemption, then the UCI should have taken some action to resolve the issue.  Since nothing was done it is safe to assume that there was nothing inappropriate with the therapeutic use exemption and that USADA is grasping for straws.

There are other equally preposterous examples of supplemental "scientific proofs."  UCI biological passport data that cannot be explained away by any other variable except "micro dosing" with rEPO.  But I simply don't have the space to list everything.  Let us just say that there are some very curious conclusions contained within the "reasoned report" that deserve comment and perhaps at some future date I will discuss them all.

Attention dopers!  You want the shortest, sweetest suspension in history? [Even though this is in violation of the World Anti-Doping Code, that calls for a two year suspension for the first doping violation]  Sing against your teammates, baby!  You don't have to accept any responsibility for your behavior, you blame the bad guy Lance.  You learned that trick when your mother caught you with your hands in the cookie jar, you plead your mea culpa: I didn't want to take the cookie, but mean old Lance made me do it.  George Hincapie sounded the most pathetic in his confession:  Lance made me do it, he was the team leader, and if you didn't toe the line then you were not going to be a part of the team.  But then George Hincapie goes on to say that he stopped doping six years ago [what didn't you feel intimidated then George?]  It would be an interesting study to examine the power output and weight ratios of George Hincapie during all the years he rode, the doping years and the "clean" years to see if we could measure any discernible difference.  If I recall the only stage George Hincapie won during the Tour de France was when he was riding for Discovery Channel, and that would imply an increase in performance during the "clean" years, not a decrease, but then again I am thinking like a USADA prosecutor. 

Will the UCI allow USADA to dictate terms to them?  Will the UCI accept the "reasoned report" as is or will they demand that USADA turn over the entire case file?  Will the UCI appeal the USADA "reasoned report" to the Court of Arbitration of Sport? Will the UCI accept the six month sweetheart sanctions?  Will USA Cycling strip George Hincapie and David Zabriskie of their national championships?  Come on people, David Zabriskie was living with Floyd Landis, they both rode for U.S. Postal, David Zabriskie must have known that Floyd Landis was doping.

But then again nobody cares about Floyd Landis unless he is blowing the whistle.