How do we feel about the Chron guys now?

I agree that Bonds' "admission" is of the connect-the-dots variety and not as rock-solid as folks interested in bringing him down would have you to believe. It works in the court of public opinion but not in a real court, which is why the feds are leaning on Anderson so hard.

 

And it doesn't seem likely that Anderson will ever talk. It seems more likely that the information in the Game of Shadows book will come under fire as more people begin to scrutinize it's contents.

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This is like watching the four-corners offense.

 

There's an article called "BALCO's Singing Cowboy" in the new CAL LAW that was published on-line today. The article was written by Justin Scheck and was published on March 14, 2007 in The Recorder. I find the following excerpts to be very interesting. The in-depth article contains a lengthy interview with Larry McCormack about both Ellerman and Fainaru-Wada and is a total of nine pages.

Excerpts:

Later in the Fall, McCormack said, the agents got mad when he refused to set up a conference call with Ellerman and Fainaru-Wada for fear of entrapping one or both of them.

"The feds were not happy with the reporters," he said. "I told them what a great guy Mark was, and they did not share that opinion."


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Kindred says, "First reporter who gets to Ellerman gets a helluva journalism story."

A few more selected excerpts from the "BALCO's Singing Cowboy" article are below.


Larry McCormack says:
“I hope there’s no one here who wants to kill me,” he said, scanning the sparse post-lunch crown at the TGI Friday’s in the shadow of Pikes Peak.

The news stories turned public attention away from the maker of “the clear” and “the cream” at the heart of the criminal probe, and toward the athlete witnesses who gave testimony under the promise of immunity – and confidentiality.

That’s who the public really cared about, and the reporters Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams capitalized on it with a series of stories in the Chronicle, and eventually in a bock, quoting extensively from those transcripts. Their work spurred Major League Baseball and Congress to start their own drug investigations.

But the more immediate effect was an annoyed Judge Susan Illston, who ordered an investigation of the leaks.

From 1998, when they met, to the end of 2004, the men worked cases together, sharing an office and, at times, a home.

Ellerman had the cocksure defensiveness of a man who'd grown up riding trick horses — wearing "tights and a white hat," he said in a 2006 interview with a rodeo publication — in a macho world of bull riders and steer wrestlers.

When McCormack first met Ellerman, the lawyer struck him as over the top.

"His hair, you know that style where they have it all shaved on the sides with that little cow pie on top?" McCormack said. "It was curly and dyed blond, and I said 'Who's this dumb ass?'"

"When you ask him why he does what he does, he says 'just to fuck with you,'" said Jason Adams, a former Rodeo Association employee who left after a fallout with Ellerman.

For a time in 1999 and 2000, when McCormack and his wife lived in Hanford, he would commute to Sacramento weekly, sharing an apartment with Ellerman from Monday to Friday.

"We worked strategy together," McCormack said. "We lived the cases."

By the beginning of 2005, when the two men left California together, their relationship was so solid, McCormack said, that Ellerman couldn't imagine the PI would air his secrets.

"I guess it goes back to the idea that he thought I'd never do that," McCormack said. "And I did."

Then he met the Chronicle's Fainaru-Wada.

McCormack doesn't remember exactly when he ate lunch with Ellerman and the reporter. In a letter last August to FBI agents, he said it was sometime in the early summer of 2004.

McCormack had plans that day to meet Ellerman at their regular lunch spot, by their office on downtown Sacramento's Cesar Chavez Plaza.

At Cafe Soleil ("sole-eel," McCormack calls it), Ellerman showed up with a companion.

"To me, it was like this is probably another attorney on the case or something like that," McCormack said. "I didn't know who the hell the guy was. Troy said 'I'm giving him information.'"

Fainaru-Wada was a good lunch date, McCormack said, likeable — the kind of guy you'd help out if you could.

After lunch, McCormack said, Fainaru-Wada accompanied the two men back to their office, where he spent several hours hand-copying grand jury transcripts.

 

A few more excerpts from "BALCO's Singing Cowboy." Apparently, McCormack was also actually passing BALCO documents and information directly to Fainaru-Wada.

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Excerpts:

And in any event, Ellerman and McCormack were losing enthusiasm for criminal defense.

"It was getting old, child molesters coming in, drug dealers, all that crap," McCormack said.

"Everyone says 'Larry's a hit man,' and yeah, I was. When Troy told me to fire someone, I would," he said.

McCormack hired a woman he met at Starbucks to take over the controller duties.

"She had great references," McCormack said. "Unfortunately, we didn't know there was a period of time she'd worked at the casino, and been charged with embezzlement," he said.

In June, McAteer called the PRCA.

"He got his payback," McCormack said.

The former CFO let them know that his replacement had admitted to stealing more than $400,000 from the Gold Rush Casino in Cripple Creek, and would be headed to prison for six years.

"That's when everything went downhill between Troy and me," McCormack said.

"When Troy fired her, Troy was like holier than thou, and I was pissed, because I was like, 'Troy, you're facing more time than her on a felony deal,'" McCormack said.

"My flow of information from Troy almost came to a stop," he said.

A month later, in March, Ellerman took a trip to California and met with Fainaru-Wada, who gave him a copy of "Game of Shadows" for McCormack to read.

"It hit me like a ton of bricks," McCormack said, and he relayed that to Ellerman, who, he said, hadn't read it. "I said, 'It's a pretty good book, but in the book, it says they're coming after your ass.'"

The agents followed up quickly and, McCormack said, couldn't believe that the leaker was anyone other than Conte.

Not long after, agents approached Ellerman, but didn't accuse him. They then wired McCormack up again, and recorded Ellerman admitting to the crimes, and saying he thought he'd be safe thanks to the reporters' promise to stay mum.

"I said 'Troy, I heard they're doing a full-scale investigation on the BALCO jury leaks, and I want to know why you dragged me into this,'" McCormack said. "And he says 'just chill.' That's his favorite word."

McCormack left the meeting temporarily placated, but still concerned: He was on the scene when the leak was happening, and hadn't done anything to stop it.

The PI was OK with it for awhile; in 2005, he said, he too passed documents to Fainaru-Wada, though he said they had nothing to do with the grand jury.

But McCormack and Ellerman clashed bitterly over the next two years, and, McCormack said, his anxiety about the leaks rose. By their last blowup, McCormack was wearing an FBI wire.

"All these so-called legal geniuses who are badmouthing me, they don't know what it's like," McCormack said. "He betrayed me in the first place by bringing me into it."

McCormack paused.

"So quid pro quo."

 

The Chron guys did a great job, regardless the naysayers.

 

After a dental-appointment-like review of the last few pages, I'd have to say this:

If Ragu were the gas station owner in The Stand, the whole place would be a flaming ruin, with the hero of the book a charred cinder. Yet somehow Ragu would still be alive, wandering through the post-apocalyptic desert and stammering to lizards and cacti that if the government had just printed more money, none of that would have happened.

 

The Legacy of Al Hrabosky would strike you out.

 

I didn't think this thread could be revived.
I was wrong.

 

It has been reported by the NY Times that the BALCO grand jury transcript leak investigation is ongoing. McCormack is a government witness. McCormack says that the FBI didn't agree with him when he told them that Fainaru-Wada was a good guy. Could they still be investigating government employees? Might they also possibly be looking at Ellerman's sidekick attorney Robert Holley? Holley co-wrote the motion to dismiss based upon government misconduct. Why has Lance Williams been out there pimping their book while Mark Fainaru-Wada has been silent? Any thoughts?

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