...and reminds us of the difference between infotainment interviews a la Oprah and Katie, and real news.
http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=50139841n Travis Tygart, the director of the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency (USADA), was just devastating, and seriously undermined the claim by Armstrong that he had finally come clean and take responsibility for his sins. Among the specifics in the ass-kicking: - Tygart gives a very good reason, which I have seen suggested elsewhere but nowhere this clearly, for Armstrong denying doping after his comeback; the statue of limitations on various federal ccharges he is vulnerable to is 5 years. If his doping ceased in 2005 then the SOL is expired; if he doped in 2010 with Team RadioShack, then the clock is still ticking on the federal charges. - Tygart repeated what was in the report - that there is a 1 in a million chance that Armstrong was not doping in 2010 (I think that is based on the "biological passport"). - Tygart asserted that Armstrong lied to Oprah when he told her he had not offered to make a donation to USADA, since he himself (Tygert) took a phone call from a "very close" advisor to Armstrong who said that Lance wanted to make a sizable donation - he did not name the advisor on camera, saying that he had disclosed this information to federal prosecutors investigating the case and that it would not be appropriate to disclose it publicly at this time. - Tygart stated that Armstrong's claim that he was just leveling the playing field by doping was false, even if you believe that everyone else "had access to doping materials" (that is a rough quote, from my memory). Armstrong specifically denied to Oprah that he ran a state of the art doping operation unparalleled in sports history, but Tygert repeated the charge, explaining that nobody else had as much inside information on testing procedures and schedules and other info that enabled him get away with more doping than anyone else. - Tyler Hamilton came back to say that after his previous 60 Minutes interview he ran into Armstrong at a crowded bar, where he was confronted and intimidated by him, including having Armstrong get in his face and threaten to make his life a "living fucking hell" both inside and outside of the courtroom. Pelley pointed out that since Hamilton was a witness in what at the time was an open federal criminal investigation into Armstrong, that would be a crime if it constituted witness intimidation. He asked Hamilton if he felt intimidated by Armstrong and Tyler said that he did. - Tygart said that he himself has felt the intimidation from the Armstrong camp, including receiving many threatening, but anonymous emails, one of which threatened to put a bullet in his head, which he took serious enough to turn over to the FBI. - In a voice over Pelley says that Armstrong has until a February 6 to come completely clean in order to have his lifetime ban reduced to 8 years. Pelley reported that Armstrong's lawyers have now replied officially that Armstrong can not make that deadline, and is more likely to tell his story to the International Cycling Association (which Tygart and USADA believe were complicit with Armstrong's doping conspiracy in the first place). Pelley closed with what seems to be the key to what Armstrong himself admitted to Oprah was the most important question - "why now"? - why come clear now after all the lies and denials and intimidation? Armstrong and his partners are facing a $90 million lawsuit from Floyd Landis, which the US government is considering joining. We have known this all along of course, but it was not as clear to me before that the suit becomes much stronger if the government joins it, and that Armstrong may well have made the judgement that an Oprah mea culpa might convince the Justice Department that he has already "suffered enough" and that it was not worth pursuing the lawsuit. Thus, one way of explain Armstrong's Oprah interview is that his plan was to not admit anything that would put him in jeopardy of criminal charges (denying everything since 2005) while confessing enough to try to get the government to opt out of the $90M civil suit. That is certainly consistent with the pervasive defensiveness and deflection of real responsibility that I felt the urge to call bullshit on during the Oprah interview. -- -- TV or Not TV .... The Smartest (TV) People! You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TV or Not TV" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/tvornottv?hl=en
