How do we feel about the Chron guys now?

It absolutely changes things, if the prosecution was leaking. Because then that "minor point" becomes valid.

But we don't know that yet, either. What we DO know is: Ellerman was leaking. He was providing info to the Chron. We do know that. And we know they went back to him for more information, after he filed that motion to dismiss -- partially based on prosecution leaks, none of which we know about yet.

So right now, based on what we do know, that "minor point" raises a lot of questions.

 

Ragu,

Per your request, I'll try to provide you with a small portion of beans and rice since you don't eat meat. This first section will contain a chronological history of Troy Ellerman's quotes in the Chronicle newspaper and a bit of commentary for the purpose of background.

The second section will provide some excerpts from the "Game of Shadows" book including information about Troy Ellerman and Jeff Novitzky along with a bit of commentary for the purpose of presenting just a few of the tough questions that I believe need to be asked. In short, I'm simply trying to chop down a few trees, so that you can begin catch a glimpse of the forrest. This will have to be posted in several parts because of the word limitation of each post.

creamora


Part One

The following is a chronology of Troy Ellerman’s quotes in the San Francisco Chronicle along with a bit of commentary in brackets:

2/14/04 Chronicle
Troy Ellerman, attorney for Valente, said it would be impossible to eliminate sports doping unless athletes also faced punishment for breaking the law.

[The above statement was made by Ellerman on the day of the original indictments.]

2/15/04 Chronicle
Troy Ellerman, a Sacramento lawyer representing Valente in the case, agreed with Collins and many others who charge that the case was hijacked for political reasons.

"It's obviously political," Ellerman said. "And when Ashcroft comes out and makes the statement that we want to preserve the integrity of sports and the athletes, well then, why didn't they indict the athletes? The athlete is the one that sends the message to the little kid on the street, who looks at it and just sees the athlete got a free pass."

[The above statements were made the day after the indictments.]

2/28/04 Chronicle
"It's absolutely asinine to ask for an April trial date when there are 34, 000 pages of discovery," attorney Troy Ellerman, who represents Valente, said after court. "This is clear that they're getting pressure (from Washington). They want to get it tried before the election."

3/05/04 Chronicle
The defense lawyers also accused U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft of turning the steroid case into an election-year campaign issue. The prosecution of Conte and others, and the implication of elite athletes, smacks of a political agenda, Ellerman said.

"They are trying to convict our clients and convict the baseball players in the process, and it's purely for political gain," he said.

4/21/04 Chronicle
USADA officials have made repeated attempts to get information from Conte and Valente about possible cheaters. Madden and general counsel Rich Young met with lawyers for Conte and Valente in December -- two months before a San Francisco federal grand jury handed down indictments -- and they have continued to press for additional meetings.

Rich Young and these guys have contacted us probably 20 times in the last several months, they've been pounding the door down to get to Victor and Jim," Valente attorney Troy Ellerman said. "We've just always said, 'There's nothing you can do for us.' "

 

Part Two by creamora

4/25/04 Chronicle
Holley and Troy Ellerman, Valente's attorney, repeatedly have decried the leaks in the investigation and said their clients are being unfairly demonized.

6/4/04 Chronicle
Representatives from the U.S. attorney's office met with Conte and his lawyers for 2 1/2 hours in San Jose on Thursday afternoon, but the sides left neither with an agreement nor plans for future meetings.

"It ain't gonna happen -- there is no plea agreement," said Troy Ellerman, one of two attorneys working for Conte.

6/16/04 Chronicle
Troy Ellerman, an attorney for Valente who also works closely with Holley, said the defendants were left with no other choice but to bypass the local authorities, whom he said had been consistently inconsistent in their approach to the case.
Still, Ellerman did not sound optimistic that reaching out to Bush would do much good.

"No, I harbor no hopes," Ellerman said. "The case is going to trial, period."

[The Tim Montgomery transcript was published by the Chronicle on 6/24/04. Note that no Ellerman quotes appeared in the Chronicle from June 16, 2004 until October 9, 2004 which is almost four months. This is the same June to November, 2004 period of time that Fainaru-Wada made the half dozen trips back and forth to Ellerman’s office. Ellerman’s four months of silence after the Montgomery leaks now speaks volumes.]

10/9/04 Chronicle
The actual purpose of Novitzky's steroid probe, the Conte filing contends, was to "try to nail top athlete Barry Bonds," a BALCO customer who had made a high-profile endorsement of ZMA, a legal nutritional supplement that Conte marketed.
When the agent failed to obtain evidence against Bonds, he targeted Conte, the filing contends. But the agent's investigative methods violated Conte's rights in such fundamental ways that U.S. District Judge Susan Illston should throw the entire case against him out of court, the lawyers argued.

"Novitzky seems to not care about the rules," wrote lawyers Robert Holley and Troy Ellerman, Conte's legal team. "The rules get in the way of his plan to get Barry Bonds." BALCO Vice President James Valente joined Conte in the plea.
10/30/04 Chronicle
Valente's lawyer, Troy Ellerman, disputed the account of his client's statement and called the federal prosecutors "unadulterated punks" for making the document public. It will be "Exhibit A to our argument to dismiss the case, " he said.

[The Jason Giambi transcript was published by the Chronicle on 12/2/04.]

[The Barry Bonds transcript was published by the Chronicle on 12/3/04.]

[There seem to be inconsistencies in the Ellerman statements published by the Chronicle. His statements range from “why didn't they indict the athletes?” to they are “trying to convict our clients and convict the baseball players” to “no other choice but to bypass the local authorities” to “the rules get in the way of his (Novitzky’s) plan to get Barry Bonds.” It seems that the rules also got in the way of his still unclear personal agenda.]

 

Part Three by creamora

Troy Ellerman, Jeff Novitzky and the “Game of Shadows” book.

Excerpts along with commentary in brackets:

Page 187 Game of Shadows
Ellerman was a former rodeo cowboy-turned criminal defense lawyer. He had met Conte in 1997, when he had helped Conte’s middle daughter, Alicia, out of some legal trouble [Ellerman didn’t actually meet Conte until after the BALCO raid in 2003]. Late on the night of the raid, Conte had called Ellerman at home [The first ever phone contact was actually several days after the raid]. For an hour, the lawyer stood in his kitchen with the phone to his ear, listening to Conte complain about the agents.

But the next day, Conte called agent Jeff Novitzky’s cell phone several times. Conte told the agent he was being hounded by the press. He was staying away from BALCO, keeping a low profile, Conte said. [Does it not seem likely that Novitzky was the source of this information? Even if he was, isn’t it simply hearsay?]

Page 188
Novitzky asked about the names Vince Reed and Vince Constantino, which appeared on Fedex receipts. They were fake names, Conte explained: “I was sending things I shouldn’t be sending.” [More hearsay from Novitzky?]

Conte said athletes were calling wanting to know what was going on. What should Conte tell them? Tell the truth, Novitzky advised. He warned Conte not to do anything to obstruct justice or interfere with the ongoing investigation. I would never do that, Conte replied. [Novitzky again? Not likely to be Conte.]

Conte didn’t mention any of this when he got to Ellerman’s office a few blocks from the state Capitol and began his monologue. [Their first meeting was actually at another attorney’s office, it wasn’t even at Ellerman’s office] As Valente sat silent, Conte told the lawyer his entire life and times, …

Ellerman recognized Conte would be a high-maintenance client, impossible to control. He didn’t want to represent him. Still, because of his friendship with Alicia Conte, Ellerman wanted to help. [Could the real reason have been a six figure retainer that was paid?] He called Bob Holley, an attorney with who Ellerman often partnered. They decided to go in together on the case. Ellerman would represent Valente, Holley would take Conte.

“He and Bob initially connected,” Ellerman said of Conte and Holley. “They would sit around and talk about how they used to smoke dope and how they were into music and how they did all these wild things back in the day.” [Again, is this simply not hearsay from Ellerman, someone who we now know lacks credibility?]

Conte yearned to tell his “No Choice” story on national television.

Page 189
Conte craved attention, but he also seemed to want to convince the world that he hadn’t revealed his client’s drug use to authorities and essentially become an informant. Later, as the extent of his denials became known, Conte made sweeping denials: He had never named names, never told Novitzky and the other agents how the business worked, never said anything to anybody. [Note that shortly after Ellerman and Holley were terminated, Valente and Conte’s new attorneys negotiated a plea bargain with the government with absolutely no cooperation required from either of them.]

 

Part Four by creamora "Game of Shadows"

Whenever Conte became too insistent about going on television, the lawyers would say, “Fine, we’ll be ’60 minutes’ and we’ll interview you.” One such mock program took place in a booth at Max’s Restaurant in Burlingame, a deli-style eatery near BALCO.

Holley played Mike Wallace, hammering Conte, leaving him stuttering repeatedly and inconsistent in his responses. His faux TV appearance convinced Holley and Ellerman that Conte would be a disaster on TV or the witness stand. Conte didn’t agree. Within three months of hiring Holley, Conte was threatening to fire him [Has Conte stuttered repeatedly during the any of the many TV interviews he as done? Is this not also simply hearsay again from Ellerman? And how ethical is it for a lawyer to be trashing a former client in a book?]

Page 193
The risk of perjury was one of several issues of concern to Michael Raines, Barry Bonds new lawyer.

In his effort to find out what he was up against, Rains invited Bob Holley and Troy Ellerman to come to his office in the East Bay suburbs.

To the other lawyers, Rains appeared to have two goals: keeping his famous client’s reputation from being stained by the BALCO scandal and ensuring that Bonds did not fall into a perjury trap by making a provably false statement under oath. Conte and Valente insisted they had said nothing to the authorities that would implicate Bonds in the use of banned drugs, their lawyers told Rains. [Note that Holley and Ellerman also reportedly told Rains that their clients had said nothing to the authorities about Bonds and drugs.]

Page 194
“Barry knew, Barry is lying when he says he didn’t know,” Ellerman said later. “We had a meeting with his attorney… We met three or four times, [there was actually only one meeting, not three or four] and he made it very clear to us that he wanted us to do everything we could to make sure Barry’s name was protected. There wasn’t any payment involved [why would Ellerman be bringing up payment?], there weren’t any threats, there wasn’t any quid pro quo, but he made it very clear that Barry would appreciate it if we kept him out of it. And we had several discussions about how Mike Rains knew what the score was – and that is that he knew Barry was using.” [Did the reporters even bother to ask Rains if this information supposedly provided to them by Ellerman was actually true? If so, then where in the book is Rains’s confirmation or denial of Ellerman’s accusations? How can we trust that this is fair and accurate reporting when there is clearly no balance? Once again, note that Conte and Valente have always said that they had no knowledge of Bonds using drugs.]

 

Part Five by creamora "Game of Shadows"

Page 194
“Barry knew, Barry is lying when he says he didn’t know,” Ellerman said later. “We had a meeting with his attorney… We met three or four times, [there was actually only one meeting, not three or four] and he made it very clear to us that he wanted us to do everything we could to make sure Barry’s name was protected. There wasn’t any payment involved [why would Ellerman be bringing up payment?], there weren’t any threats, there wasn’t any quid pro quo, but he made it very clear that Barry would appreciate it if we kept him out of it. And we had several discussions about how Mike Rains knew what the score was – and that is that he knew Barry was using.” [Did the reporters even bother to ask Rains if this information supposedly provided to them by Ellerman was actually true? If so, then where in the book is Rains’s confirmation or denial of Ellerman’s accusations? How can we trust that this is fair and accurate reporting when there is clearly no balance? Once again, note that Conte and Valente have always said that they had no knowledge of Bonds using drugs.]

Page 222
The BALCO defense lawyers publicly defended the slugger.

The BALCO defense lawyers hastily called a press conference in Sacramento, Bob Holley and Troy Ellerman insisted that Victor Conte and Jim Valente had not implicated Bonds in drug use. “There’s no evidence that Bonds did anything, other than rumor and innuendo,” Ellerman said. The government had put their client’s chances of getting a fair trial at risk by leaking the story to the Chronicle, they claimed [Ellerman’s other statements in the book contradict what he said at this press conference on March 4, 2004. Note also that this information was published in their book in March 2005, which is long after the two reporters knew that Ellerman had serious credibility issues.]

Page153
It was after midnight on a mild evening in the spring of 2003. In the flood-lit parking lot of a deserted office building on the San Francisco Peninsula, a thin, very tall man with a shaved head was wrapping up another night of digging though garbage.

As these expeditions went, this one wasn’t so uncomfortable. It was 50 degrees, with the air still; not like some of the nights he had endured in the past six months, when temperatures were in the low 40’s, the wind howled, and rain fell. Monday’s had become trash nights for the man, reserved not for relaxing with his wife after putting the kids to bed, but rather for rooting through a week’s work of a strangers rubbish, looking for evidence of crimes [If Novitzky did this alone, who other than himself could have provided this much detail?]

Since August of 2002, Novitzky had been probing a little-known lab in Burlingame, the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative, and its owner Victor Conte.

Page 155
Novitzky’s two-hour trash recon on the mild, windless night of Monday, March 3, 2003 was particularly productive. He found more of the usual evidence: a pill jar for a diet drug called hydrochloride diethylpropion…

And for the first time, Novitzky found a document pertaining to Bonds.

The first document showed that a sample of Bonds’s blood had been sent to a laboratory for steroid testing. [Could the source be anybody other than Novitzky?]

Page 199
Lawyer Mike Rains had arranged for his superstar client to enter the courthouse as discreetly as possible, avoiding the gauntlet of reporters. At mid-morning, Rains, Barry Bonds and a retired police captain, who was Bonds’s bodyguard that day drove up from the Peninsula and met IRS Special Agent Jeff Novitzky about a mile from the courthouse. The agent had been assigned to drive Bonds, his lawyer and his bodyguard to the federal building in an unmarked car.

Bonds knew who Novitzky was. He felt Novitzky was responsible for forcing him to testify. It was a short ride, but Bonds wasted little time starting in on the agent, grousing that the government had wrongly dragged him into this thing and made him the focus of the probe.

Rains wished Bonds would shut up.

The IRS agent didn’t respond. [More blow by blow by Novitzky?]

 

Part Six by creamora "Game of Shadows"

At about 10:50 AM, the car approached the Larkin Street entrance to the building’s underground garage, around the corner from where most of the cameras were waiting. The agent had to stop for another car, and a few photographers rushed forward and captured the image of a startled Bonds arriving for his day in court.

Page 200
The slugger grumbled that Novitzky had set him up; the feds, Bonds was sure, wanted to make him look as bad as possible, wanted to make certain they got their photo of baseball’s greatest player under subpoena.

Again Novitzky did not bite.

Novitzky and the group rode an employee elevator to the lobby, where they had to change elevators for the ride up to the 17th floor [Who do you think was the source of this information? It’s certainly not likely to have been Rains, Bonds or his bodyguard Richard Cairns, who is a former SF police captain. Who’s left that it could be besides Novitzky?]


Further commentary:

The first series of questions to be asked involve whether Ellerman can be trusted as a source of accurate information for the book? Why are there so many contradictions in terms of what Ellerman has said publicly? He has now been indicted for four felony crimes, so has his credibility not come into question? Note that the book’s acknowledgment list of the “many people who were generous with their time and assistance” contains the name Troy Ellerman.

The second series of questions to be asked involve Jeff Novitzky. It seems quite obvious that he was interviewed extensively for the two Chronicle reporter’s book. Novitzky is also repeatedly referred to as a “hero” in the book. There is a very long list of people in the acknowledgements section on pages 313-315. Everyone mentioned in the book is on that list, EXCEPT Jeff Novitzky. Why? There are Novitzky references on over a hundred pages in the book. What would Novitzky, a government official, be doing collaborating on a book during an ongoing investigation and prosecution? I find the final acknowledgement statement in the book to be very interesting and thought provoking. It says, “Finally, we reserve our greatest thanks to the sources who, at considerable risk, provided us with the confidential documents and information that revealed the true scope of the BALCO conspiracy.”

Is it possible that both Ellerman and Novitzky were actually collaborators for the book and just not given credit for the obvious reasons? If so, I wonder what was in it for the two of them?

This information is simply provided as a small sample of food for thought regarding the ongoing BALCO story. The truth of this story is far from having been told. There are many questions that remain unanswered. The sources and references provided in the Game of Shadows book need to be scrutinized. There are many more inaccuracies and discrepancies throughout the Game of Shadows book not outlined here. It would seem that there are reporters out there with a job to do.

 

I think one point he might be making is ... why should the reporters get the benefit of the doubt, if there are so many questions raised by the discrepancies in their book and the credibility of their sources?

Give credit where credit is due ... but let's ask first if credit should even be given.

I think that's the point of creamora's outstanding effort here. Can't make any judgments on the value of the information yet, but the effort itself is outstanding. Thanks.

 

I'm beginning to wonder who the hell Creamora is.
Anyway, just wondering, but could the Chronicle's silence on Ellerman be interpreted as he wasn't our only source and that when he alleged misconduct on the leaks, the Chronicle didn't say anything because they were getting info from the prosecutors?
Maybe that they used him to confirm other things they were getting from the DA or the cops, but it seems like that might be an option.
But I don't know.
I'll hang up and listen.