Posted on 10/13/2012 4:43:34 PM PDT by Vision
Ms. O’Reilly said Mr. Armstrong demonized her as a prostitute with a drinking problem, and had her hauled into court in England. Ultimately, a legal settlement was reached, and Ms. O’Reilly tried to pick up her life, sometimes talking about Mr. Armstrong and drugs, but to little notice.
Ms. O’Reilly said she was once in a room giving Mr. Armstrong a massage when he and officials on the team fabricated a story to conceal a positive drug test result. Ms. O’Reilly said Mr. Armstrong told her, “You know enough to bring me down.”
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
That’s pathetic.
And everyone else who did cheat either got caught and/or fessed up to it [or is in the process] and have accepted their punishment -- except Armstrong who is doubling down on denial in the face of overwhelming evidence.
So in that respect he is "not doing what everyone else did".
The reason why Armstrong won the ‘99 TdF is because the they took doping to a level nobody had seen before. They had a guy on a motorcycle follow the race around France getting dope to them- so it didn't need to be transported in team cars...which nobody in the TdF wanted to do after the heightened security from Festina scandal.
If drug use in Cycling is that open and widespread, why are they zeroing-in on him now?
It does appear though, on the surface, that “they” need a “prime fall guy” and LA is the “chosen one”, since he’s got the 7 TdF titles which they somehow don’t think he (an American) should be entitled to earn and hold.
Who “they” is/are, I don’t know, yet. I haven’t followed that sport or the politics in it, and I sure don’t want to get into any “black helicopter” theories, here.
Just thinking out loud, after reading so many articles/stories/testimony in the past few days.
I’m still keeping an open mind about the coming testimony/evidence etc.
We are arguing about reading a book, not the article.
The word on Armstrong as been out for a long time but it’s taken years to have enough evidence to move it forward. I promise this isn’t a care of anti Americanism.
I believe you. I’m just beginning to follow all this now. It was just a thought which popped into my head, given all the anti-American bias from some countries.
BTW, a full discussion of the article would be much more interesting than what we are getting in this thread, due in no small part to people dragging other things like “books” into the argument instead of discussing the article.
Has anybody read the full USADA report? I haven’t. But I’m not talking about what is in that report either, because why would I talk about a report I haven’t read in a thread about a newspaper article I DID read?
The problem with articles like this is that you simply have no easy basis for determining truth. This woman had a lot of charges she made. She could be telling the truth. But apparently she has no evidence, just her word.
For example, she mentions that she knows they dumped drugs into a field. Did anybody go check the field? I don’t know what the half-life of these drugs are, but you’d think that $25,000 worth of drugs and drug paraphanalia dropped on the side of the road in a field might be detectable. Of course, she waited a long time to tell the story.
SHe has a “plausible explanation” as to why she waited. Unfortunately, waiting probably means every bit of evidence that could be found was gone. Which, if you were making up a story, would be very convenient.
Of course, we can’t tell from the article whether her story can be corroberated or not. We can check a few things. For example, there were a spate of cycling deaths, although there doesn’t seem to be an uptick that corresponds to the time period she says she decided to talk to the newspaper BECAUSE of those increased deaths.
We know that the british courts looked at her allegations as part of this lawsuit the early 2000s, and there doesn’t seem to have been enough evidence to get Armstrong’s case thrown out.
Still, she gave a “sworn deposition”. That might mean something, if there was any chance at all that lying in that deposition would get her in trouble. It is clear from what the USADA has said that they were basically begging people to talk bad about Armstrong. People who had previously SWORN otherwise changed their sworn testimony to match USADA< and none of them got charged with perjury for their earlier sworn statements.
And if she hadn’t told them what they wanted to hear, it could have meant another bad court case for her. So I can think of good reason she might lie now. But I have no evidence that she is lying, and no evidence she is telling the truth. If I spoke with her personally, I might know. But as it is, we just have people making claims, a lot of people making a lot of different claims, who didn’t make the claims when they could have been verified, and who have various motives for making those claims now.
They could all be true, they could all be false.
I still contend, and nobody has offered any counter argument, that it doesn’t fit the “best cheaters in the world” argument that an entire team of cyclists were trusting their drug work to a massage therapist who would have NO reason to keep their secrets, because she would suffer no consequences for telling her story.
I’m supposed to believe that Armstrong knew he was cheating, knew it would ruin his career if he was caught, but would blithely have conversations around people he had reason to trust, and would even admit to them that they were hearing things that would destroy him.
Sure, people make that mistake all the time — people who get CAUGHT because they are stupid. Nobody is arguing that Lance was a bad cheater.
what a “witty” comeback. Do you ever win ANY arguments you have that way?
The problem with arguing with a fool is they will drag you down to their level and then beat you with experience.
The interesting thing about those records is that the annual fee for doping was $15,000, but the ledger shows payments of $75,000 to $100,000, supposedly for Armstrong.
What was Armstrong getting from this doctor that was so different from doping?
We know Armstrong had a relationship with Ferrari, Armstrong has said so (the USADA argument is simply over whether Lance ended that relationship in 2004, or 2006, or 2009 — they seem to argue that he continued paying through 2006, and had some sort of free relationship to 2009; since Lance isn’t talking anymore, we have no idea if the payments after 2004 were settling balances or were for new work).
Could it be that Armstrong, who needed drugs that were banned or similar to banned items, and had special limited exemptions, needed the Ferrari to make sure he didn’t do anything that would fail a drug test? And if so, would that be a sign that he wanted to do everything he could without actually breaking the rules, or would it be a sign he wanted to get away with cheating?
Or is there a conspiracy? Could Armstrong have been using Ferrari because he was very good at what he did, and then Ferrari started blackmailing Armstrong, and that’s why Armstrong’s payments are so much higher than the cost of doping?
Or was Armstrong paying off Ferrari not to talk?
If an entire cycling team is taking drugs, is it a shock that Armstrong would feel compelled to do so as well? Or was an entire team forced to drug themselves against their will because of Armstrong?
When did the use of drugs in cycling stop being part of the cost of doing business, and actually become cheating? Suppose Armstrong had never used drugs, and never won a Tour. Would we be talking about how great he was, or would he be a nobody like all the other nobodies, and would there be some other winner that was being brow-beaten for drug use?
You would if you actually read the USADA report, or others who have, and the statements of the other 25 witnesses who all corroborate each other as to times, places, people, syringes, coolers, injections, etc.
Your post shows someone who has been reduced to a mere existentialist in light of your defense of someone with mountain of evidence against him that cannot be refuted -- evidence that you refuse to look at.
For years the foreign guys were after Armstrong, but they never could prove anything.
Now he’s done, so nobody cares. This is all about USADA, another government office that should never exist, that has no authority in constitutional law, but has taken on dictatorial powers to persecute private citizens like Lance Armstrong, who broke not a LAW, but a sporting rule.
That Lance would avoid any races where USADA was sanctioned to verify athletes makes no difference, apparently.
So far as I can tell, the USADA has unlimited powers. They could decide that you are using drugs, could investigate you, could then try to get you fired from your employer. Sure, it sounds absurd, but that is the problem here — the absurdity of this USADA organization stepping far beyond it’s mandate, a mandate that already oversteps constitutional bounds.
But who cares that they spent millions. It’s not like the government doesn’t have money to burn, or needed the money spent persecuting Lance Armstrong to, say, defend our foreign consulates from terror attacks.
That's obvious
and then Ferrari started blackmailing Armstrong
blackmail only works if you have something to be blackmailed for.
and that’s why Armstrong’s payments are so much higher than the cost of doping?
he may have wanted Dr Ferrari's services exclusively for himself and no other cyclist.
The hilarious thing is that you, trying to argue about not reading things, fail basic comprehension.
Which is clear by your statement “your defense of someone with mountain of evidence against him”
Beyond noting that we are arguing over what people SAY, I’ve never said that Armstrong was innocent.
I came into a thread to discuss the article; others want to discuss a USADA report, or some book.
You clearly believe that the people cited by the USADA are telling the truth. Why do their statements match each other so well? Do you know that the USADA didn’t help them all with their statements? Did their statements made prior to the USADA involvement match? (no). Did many of them get special consideration to make statements that helped the USADA (yes). Is there a reason why these people could all by lying (yes). Is there any chance they would suffer from lying at this point (no). Is there a chance that they would suffer if they refused to tell the USADA what the USADA wanted to hear (yes).
They could all be telling the truth. They are clearly not all truthful, what with prior quotes denying what they now say happened, with their waiting years to come forward, etc.
So, if you have someone who you know WOULD lie, then the question is, what would it take to get them to lie now? It’s not like these people are pure as the driven snow, and it’s insulting to suggest they might lie. We already know they WOULD lie.
The girl in this story apparently lied, cheated, and participated in the drug trade for years. Then, according to her, she had a change of heart, only couldn’t prove anything she said well enough to win a court battle, and then she pretty much went away for years, and then she told the USADA what they wanted to hear.
Her story could be entirely true. I certainly don’t know otherwise, and I wouldn’t bet against her. But to decide to believe her now, I have to decide to NOT believe her prior actions, and I have to have a reason why she is more truthful now than before.
And the USADA has given me EVERY reason to believe that they would happily coerce perjured testimony if it would help them in their vendetta (I’d say that they wouldn’t BELIEVE it was perjured).
The picture painted is a bad one. Apparently the entire cycling “sport” is nothing more than druggies on parade. There are some who seem to think the most important thing in the world is that they be proven right in their personal animosity for Lance Armstrong. I never got the hero worship, and I don’t get the hatred. He’s a guy who has low moral standards, and a liberal outlook on life. He happened to be a good cyclist, and if he was a cheater, he was our cheater, and he beat their cheaters.
Maybe when we are done using the US. Government to persecute a private citizen for sporting rules infractions, we could figure out why our U.S. Postal Service, with a monopoly, had to pay millions of dollars for world-wide advertising using a cycling team.
That was the real scandal of the 90s — our government getting involved in a private sport.
Thanks for the comment(s).
Can you point that out in the article???
Before this whole LA thing erupted a few weeks ago, I’d never heard of that group of gov’t nazis. Along w/ EPA, NPR, NEA etc etc etc etc, they should be on the shortlist to defund/dissolve/destroy within his first 10 days, IMO.
In an interview this week, Ms. O’Reilly said she became a regular player in the team’s doping program, one that investigators have charged took on its most sinister and far-reaching dimensions with the arrival of Lance Armstrong in 1998. Ms. O’Reilly, then not yet 30, said she wound up transporting doping material across borders, disposing of drugs and syringes when the authorities were lurking, and distributing performance-enhancing substances to the team’s riders whenever they needed them.She participated in the drug trade. She helped hide the evidence, thus cheating. She actually distributed prescription drugs, and since she isn't a pharmacist, that could well be a criminal violation.
And so, she said, she once traveled from France to Spain and back to pick up illegal pills for Mr. Armstrong and delivered them to him in a McDonald’s parking lot outside Nice.So she was an international drug trafficker.
She spoke of using her talents with makeup to disguise bruising on the arms of the riders from needles.She was intimately involved in the drug use cover-up, perpetuating the lies by hiding the evidence.
The traumatizing part,” she said in the telephone interview from Manchester, England, “was dealing with telling the truth.” Ms. O’Reilly first went public in 2003, when she was paid to cooperate on a book, “L.A. Confidentiel: Les Secrets de Lance Armstrong,” that sought to expose Mr. Armstrong as a drug cheat.Her statement here suggests that lying was easier than telling the truth (I do understand that). She finally told the truth, by her words, only when someone PAID her to do so.
So, just looking at what SHE said: She was aware for years that the team was violating the rules of cycling. She not only condoned this action, she actively participated in both the drug use and coverup. She transported illegal drugs internationally, she dispensed drugs without a license. She actively worked to hide the drug use from authorities, including disposing possible criminal evidence. She lied until someone paid her to tell "the truth".
She could well be telling the truth now -- but the truth paints her as someone who would lie for money, and change her story for more money. That's not my opinion of her, that's what she TOLD US in this article, which we all read and are discussing.
They say the problem with many prosecutions is that you have to rely on crooks and natural liars to make your case. That is true, and I don't know how else it could be.
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