THE MITCHELL REPORT
Steroid.com JANUARY 25, 2008 One thing that I have questioned ever since the Mitchell Report came out was the fact that the authorities seemed to ONLY have gone DOWN the food chain. I mean…usually, when a drug dealer of any sort is caught, they ask who he was getting his supply from – not who he was selling them to. Think about it…usually, law enforcement officials like to catch the biggest possible fish, right? Isn’t that what it’s about? Going after bigger and bigger suppliers, until they arrive at the source. In Operation TKO, Gear Grinder, and Raw Deal, they targeted the source, and went up the food chain But Radomski was just a kinda low level guy…the type of gym dealer who is busted every day, and then gets grilled about where he gets his gear until he gives up the next guy higher on the food chain. And usually, his arrest is kept quiet, so law enforcement officials don’t tip off the next guy up on the chain before they snatch him up too. So why were they so eager to go down the food chain with Radomski? Among other things, he was dealing human grade growth hormone, which tells me that his source was American (and the investigators involved certainly know that, if I do). I haven’t heard of too many times when a drug dealer was caught, and then all of his customers were brought to a Congressional hearing afterwards. Thinks about it…when they catch your local coke dealer, they usually don’t go after the people he was selling to…they typically try to find the bigger bust, not the smaller one. But in this case, even though Radomski was clearly getting a decent amount of GH from a domestic dealer much bigger than him…but I didn’t see any mention in any reports of him being questioned about that guy. And by now, I would think that whomever was selling Radomski his drugs is long gone, and probably not going to get caught. Not too many drug dealers would stick around after seeing one of their customers on the front page of every major newspaper in the country…at least not much longer than it would take to pack a bag and leave the country. Interestingly (and this isn’t first hand information, so bear with me) – I heard from someone who works out in the same gym as Radomski that he was bragging about how he told the feds he’d never give up his source, and that the only reason he even gave up his customers – is that they wouldn’t be brought up on charges. And I haven’t seen any of them brought up on charges yet. Actually, I didn’t see much of anything except for headline grabbing in the Mitchell Report. So maybe Radomski’s boasting in the gym has some truth behind it. And now we’ve got a whole new round of Congressional hearings to sit through…because the last round went so well and made such a difference in cleaning up professional sports, we’ve decided to have an encore performance. And of course, parading a bunch of professional athletes in front of Congress is a great photo op for them. Catching a GH dealer who dealt to Radomski doesn’t help anyone get any publicity…but dragging Clemens’ name through the mud is a different story. Why catch drug dealers when you can catch Clemens? I’m sure there’s a funny catcher joke in there somewhere, what with Clemens being a pitcher, but it’s just not coming to me. Still, if all of this isn’t just one big publicity scam, and an effort to grab headlines, I’m at a loss at how to explain it otherwise. Especially since the people Radomski was obtaining his drugs from aren’t even MENTIONED in anything I’ve ever read. There’s dozens of cops making bigger busts, than this one every month – of drugs that actually harm society, and they aren’t going to get headlines anywhere near as big as this one…because Clemens may (?) have bought a couple grand worth of performance enhancers. Hell…I went to the DEA website and saw literally dozens of newsworthy busts (millions of dollars) that didn’t get a fraction of the media coverage. So the message is clear: Keep busting athletes for a couple of grand worth of steroids, and you’ll keep making headlines…because we just aren’t interested in some cops putting their lives on the line to shut down a meth lab that’s ruining a community. There’s plenty of blame and arrests to go around on this one…but it’s not going to go anywhere near where they should.
