Bonds' trainer won't testify in perjury probe, By: Lance Williams & Mark Fainaru-Wada
Steroid dealer faces contempt of court hearing next week
June 30, 2006
Greg Anderson, the Peninsula steroid dealer who was Barry Bonds' personal weight trainer, refused to testify Thursday before a federal grand jury investigating the baseball star for perjury.
A judge said he would hold a hearing next week on whether Anderson should be found in contempt of court for refusing to testify against his childhood friend, thus facing a possible return to prison.
Anderson's attorney, Mark Geragos, argued that the personal trainer should not have to testify because he was the victim of an illegal government wiretap that Geragos said resulted in a recording of Anderson saying he provided Bonds with "undetectable" drugs to help him beat baseball's steroid testing program in 2003.
The recording was first revealed in an October 2004 Chronicle story after a copy was provided to the newspaper by a confidential news source.
At an unusual hearing in U.S. District Court in San Francisco on Thursday, prosecutors revealed that they have obtained that recording. Federal Judge William Alsup, who closed the hearing to the public on three separate occasions, ruled that the recording was "not a wiretap, but a privately recorded conversation with a witness."
There was no legal reason why Anderson shouldn't testify before the grand jury, Alsup ruled.
The panel is probing whether Bonds committed perjury when he told another grand jury in 2003 that he had never knowingly used banned drugs.
After less than half an hour in the grand jury room, Anderson went back to the judge, who again closed the courtroom, then re-opened it to say he would convene a hearing Wednesday on whether Anderson should be held in civil contempt of court.
Under contempt proceedings, a recalcitrant witness can be jailed to coerce him to testify. Anderson already served three months in prison and three months of home confinement after pleading guilty to steroid dealing last year in the BALCO case.
Also Thursday, the grand jury heard the testimony of Dr. Larry Bowers, medical director of the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency, which aided the government in its investigation of the Burlingame-based Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative, which provided undetectable steroids to elite athletes. Bowers accompanied federal agents on the September 2003 raid on BALCO and is familiar with documents seized in the raid that described athletes' drug use.
Dr. Don Catlin, UCLA's renowned sports doping expert, also testified.
After the BALCO raid, more than 27 athletes from Olympic track and field, the National Football League and major-league baseball were subpoenaed to testify before a grand jury investigating BALCO. Offered immunity from prosecution in exchange for truthful testimony, most of the athletes admitted using banned BALCO drugs, a review of the testimony indicates.
Bonds denied drug use, conceding that he took substances that resembled the BALCO drugs known as "the cream" and "the clear," but saying that he thought he was using only a legal arthritis balm and flaxseed oil, a nutritional supplement.
Starting last year, prosecutors began building a perjury case against him. Witnesses have included his former girlfriend, Kimberly Bell, who has said that Bonds admitted to her in 2000 that he was using steroids; Giants' head athletic trainer Stan Conte; and Dr. Arthur Ting, Bonds' orthopedist.
In court Thursday, prosecutor Jeff Nedrow said the government had obtained the Anderson recording in the summer of 2005.
The prosecutor acknowledged he wanted to question Anderson about the recording, but said he also wanted to query him on a "mountain" of other evidence.
Geragos argued that if the government had acted illegally in obtaining the recording, Anderson was no longer obligated to testify. Geragos said he wanted a copy of the recording to see whether it was the product of a bugging.
The lawyer also said the government had violated the terms of the plea bargain, under which Anderson agreed to incarceration in return for a guilty plea, by subpoenaing Anderson for the subsequent grand jury proceedings.
The judge rejected the arguments, but the lawyer said he would take them up again at the contempt hearing.
On the recording, Anderson described Bonds' use of "undetectable" banned drugs to beat baseball's drug testing program, which was first instituted in 2003.
"The whole thing is, everything that I've been doing at this point, it's all undetectable," Anderson said of the drug he was providing Bonds. "See the stuff I have, we created it, and you can't buy it anywhere else, can't get it anywhere else, but you can take it the day of (the test), pee, and it comes up perfect."
