Lance Armstrong Investigation: More Misleading Information

Photo taken from the internet

All the news outlets are saying that Lance Armstrong has decided to quit fighting USADA but I don't believe it. Here's why...

Lance Armstrong Investigation: Has He Been Tested Over 500 Times?

Photo taken from NY Times

I tip my hat to a group of skeptics who have put together an analysis of Lance's claim that he has been "tested over 500 times and not once tested positive." Before we get to the analysis, here are a few of the actual quotes (in addition to the one above) that are attributed to Lance or his legal team in this regard. You can find similar quotes by a simple Google search.

"Lance is the most tested athlete, amateur or professional in the history of sport. We don’t know exactly the number but we think it’s around 300 separate tests that he’s undergone and he has never had a positive test." (Tim Herman, Lawyer to Lance Armstrong, July 2010)

"Throughout his twenty-plus year professional career, Mr. Armstrong has been subjected to 500 to 600 drug tests without a single positive test." (Civ. Action No. 1:12–cv–00606–SS July 2012)

As it turns out, the number of tests he has had over the period from 1990 - 2010 appears much closer to Tim Herman's quote in 2010: 300. Here are some key points from the analysis documented at Cyclismas.com...

Lance Armstrong Investigation: Will Perjury Charges Stick?

As soon as Jeffrey Novitzky started his investigation against Lance Armstrong, conventional wisdom has been that Novitzky's strategy will be to get Lance convicted on perjury. This is how he convicted other top athletes, such as Marion Jones, who were found to have perjured themselves in the Balco investigation.

Today, I read a very interesting transcript of a live chat with the author of the book: "Tangled Webs: How False Statements Are Undermining America From Martha Stewart to Bernie Madoff." The author, James B. Stewart, considers four fraudsters and their obvious perjuries including: Martha Stewart, Bernie Madoff, Barry Bonds and Lewis "Scooter" Libby. Here are some of the points that came out of the chat that suggest Novitzky has his work cut out for him when it comes to making a perjury charge stick:

U.S. Connections to Corruption in Haiti

An investigation by Mary Anastasia O'Grady shows U.S. political connections to corruption in Haiti (see a video here and the article here). I've personally been to Haiti twice and found the people to be hard working but destitute. When I saw the work ethic of may Haitians, I wondered why businesses can't come in and put these people to work and help their economy. The unemployment rate at the time was about 80% and the average wage was $2 per day.

I quickly saw that because of corruption in government, businesses would never get their profits from Haiti. As such, the Haitian people are suffering tremendously. In talking with many Haitians, I also found out that many of them believed that our government had wronged them in the past and it led to much of their troubles. This article confirms these beliefs and suggests that at least one of the individuals given responsibility for overseeing aid to Haiti was connected to this corruption: President Bill Clinton.

I don't claim to know all that has happened in Haiti over the years but this investigation suggests that U.S. politicians were behind some of the corruption that has crippled that country for decades. I am very troubled by the suffering that has existed in Haiti for decades and is only now in the spotlight with the January earthquake.

What I really wonder is how people can sleep at night knowing that they are taking money out of one of the poorest nations on earth where millions of orphans, widows and others are starving. How tragic.