Book about Bonds' drug use

If Bonds had any doubts about continuing to use performance-enhancing drugs, they were eliminated just before the start of spring training in 2000, when he went to Cashman Field in Las Vegas to compete in the Big League Challenge, a charity home run derby broadcast on ESPN. Jose Canseco dominated the event. He hit 28 bombs in the last round, while Bonds didn't even make the finals. At one point Bonds saw Canseco take off his shirt: 255 pounds, seemingly not an ounce of fat, just gleaming, chiseled power.

"Dude," Bonds said. "Where did you get all that muscle?"

In the Giants' new park, there would be new drugs. Anderson put Bonds on Deca, the gym rats' name for Deca-Durabolin. Like Winstrol, it was a bodybuilder's injectable steroid, used in medicine to treat anemia associated with kidney failure. Eventually, Anderson started Bonds on human growth hormone (HGH), the synthetic drug being touted by cosmetic surgeons as an anti-aging miracle. Injecting HGH was tricky and painful: Rather than plunging the syringe into a big muscle, the user pinched a bit of skin on the belly with thumb and forefinger and carefully put the needle into the flap. Like a steroid, Growth could help the user increase muscle mass. But it was also thought to strengthen joints and connective tissue and thus was often cocktailed with Deca or other steroids.

Bonds especially liked growth hormone. It allowed him to maintain his impressive musculature without intensive training. That was important because he was doing well to manage 15 or 20 minutes of pumping iron each day during the season, and that wasn't nearly enough to keep one's body looking like a locomotive. But with HGH, Bonds remained buff and more energized to train, yet he felt more flexible. There was an added benefit to the new drug regimen: Bonds stopped complaining about his eyes. At age 35, he felt better than he had in years.

The new Pac Bell Park opened in 2000. It had a 2,700-square-foot clubhouse, and Bonds had the run of the place. He felt he had built the new ballpark, and he insisted on bringing Anderson, his stretching coach Harvey Shields and his running coach Raymond Farris there with him.

The Giants' training staff wanted nothing to do with Bonds's three trainers and urged management to ban them from the clubhouse, according to a source familiar with the conversation. The Giants had unofficial background checks done on Bonds's trainers and learned that World Gym was known as a place to score steroids and that Anderson himself was rumored to be a dealer. But the club decided it didn't want to alienate Bonds on this issue, either. The trainers stayed.

Bonds had an outstanding year, batting .306, with 49 home runs -- a career high and second in the league to Sosa's 50 -- and 106 RBIs. He felt strong all season and recovered quickly from minor injuries. He had high hopes for a fourth MVP award. Instead, the trophy went to a teammate he hated, Jeff Kent, who batted .334 with 33 home runs and 125 RBIs. Despite the disappointment, it had been a breakthrough year, one in which Bonds had completed the transformation of his body and his game and, it seemed, had discovered the Fountain of Youth. At 35 Bonds's father had batted .215 for the Cubs and retired. But at the same age Bonds had enjoyed what he considered his best season. There were more to come, as he transformed himself into the game's most feared slugger.

No one was in a better position to note his transformation and its side effects than Kimberly Bell, a graphic artist five years younger than Bonds. They met in 1994, when she was 24 and he was separated from his first wife, Sun, and locked in bitter divorce proceedings centered on the validity of the couple's prenuptial agreement. Bonds was determined to keep his estranged wife from getting his money. Obsessed with the litigation, he told Bell there was no way he would ever get married again. Bell told him she didn't want to get married, either.

They began dating. Except when the Giants were on the road, they spent two or three evenings per week together. Bonds introduced her to friends as "my girl."

When they were apart, Barry took to calling her at work every morning around eight, just to check in. It was a new kind of relationship for him, he told her. He said he usually dated strippers. Bonds also began giving her money: $5,000 to $10,000 in cash in an envelope, on an irregular basis. He said the money came from the sale of autographed memorabilia. Often Bonds would tell her how she should spend the money: a new big-screen TV or a bed for her apartment, for example. In 1996, he decided she should have breast augmentation surgery, and a check arrived from the Beverly Hills Sports Council, Bonds's agent, to pay for it.

Bell went to many of his games. Candlestick was too windy and cold to be fun, but the road trips were exciting. Bonds told her they had the perfect relationship. Bell had her own career, she didn't pressure him about money or getting married, she rarely complained, and she did what she was told. It came as a rude shock when Bonds announced one day in 1997 that Liz Watson, a girl he had met in Montreal, had arrived in the Bay Area and was staying at his condo. Bell didn't like it, but she didn't feel she was in a position to make an issue of it.

Then, in January 1998, Bonds told Bell that he and Liz were getting married. Bell burst into tears, but Bonds told her that nothing would change between them. He simply needed to get married or his ex-wife would get sole custody of his kids. Bell always said she didn't want to get married, he reminded her, while Liz was willing to stay home and raise his children. Besides, Bonds said, Liz was black, and it was important for him to marry a black woman. He said he had gotten "too much s---" from the media for marrying a white woman last time.

Bonds got married on Jan. 10 and dropped by Bell's apartment after he returned from his honeymoon. Against her better judgment, they resumed their affair, but nothing was the same. The way they related to each other, the way Bonds treated her, even the way Bonds looked, underwent radical changes. Bell saw less of the sweet, engaging side of Bonds's personality. He became irritable, controlling and verbally abusive.

Bell blamed steroids for the ugly changes. Although Bonds didn't tell her where he got the drugs, she assumed they were administered by Anderson, whom she called his "paid friend." Bell had gotten to know Anderson during spring training. Every year Bonds rented a big house in a gated community in Scottsdale, and Bell would come down for a week before Bonds's family arrived. Anderson stayed at the house, too. Bonds had become so rude that the only people willing to hang out with him were his employees, Bell says.

On most mornings in Scottsdale, before leaving to work out, Bonds would grab his "man bag,"which was full of what seemed to be medications, and summon Anderson. "I've got to go talk to him for a minute," Bonds would say, and then the two men would go into the master bedroom and close the door.

Bonds's physical changes during this time were consistent with steroid use. His hair fell out, and he began shaving his head. Perhaps it was her imagination, but the head itself seemed to be getting larger, and the plates of his skull bones stood out in bold relief. Bonds's back broke out in acne, and he would stand in front of the bathroom mirror and say, "Oh, my God, I don't know where this is coming from." Bonds also suffered sexual dysfunction, another common side effect of steroid use.

Bonds became more quick-tempered. When his anger at Bell flared now, he would grab her, stand close to her and whisper intimidating, hurtful things. He insisted on knowing where she was at every hour of the day or night. If he couldn't find her, he would become enraged, and he told her he would kill her if he found she was seeing someone else. Her social life evaporated. He called her so many times at work that her boss began to complain. And his rages became increasingly violent.

 

Bell used a telephone answering machine with a tape cassette; when one tape filled up, she'd toss it in a drawer and put in a new one. She began saving the voice mails after a few bleak occasions on which Bonds threatened to kill her, remarking that if she disappeared, no one would be able to prove he even knew her. The messages showed the trajectory of their nine years together.

Despite it all, there still were moments when Bonds was attentive and kind, as he had been in the old days. One night during spring training in 2001, they went to dinner at Morton's, and afterward the Arizona sky was lit up with a spectacular desert sunset. "I would love to live here," Bell said, and Bonds replied, "Is that all you want?" Over the next few days he came up with a plan to buy her a house in Scottsdale, paying for it in installments with the cash from card shows. It was a move they both would come to regret.

If the pitch was three inches outside the strike zone, Bonds would ignore it and work another base on balls. But if the pitch was located where he could drive it -- and in 2001 that seemed to be anywhere in the strike zone -- he would take a rip.

If he hit the ball squarely, and that season it seemed he almost always did, Bonds would toss his black maple bat aside and saunter two or three steps down the first base line while he watched the ball sail out of sight. Only then would he begin the slow jog around the bases, often with a blank look on his face, occasionally with a slight smile.

If he hit a milestone home run, and that season he hit many of them, he might throw his arms up like a football official signaling a touchdown before he started his home run trot. Often when he crossed home plate, he pointed both hands skyward and raised his eyes, in what he described to interviewers as a tribute to God. If the home run was special enough, he might take a curtain call, coming out of the dugout and doffing his cap. There were many curtain calls that summer, as Bonds -- systematically, methodically and with little suspense -- obliterated baseball's single-season home run record, which had seemed so unassailable just three years before.

The fans turned out for Bonds, but there was a muted feel to baseball's reaction to his home run march, a sense of anticlimax. It simply wasn't as big a deal as it had been in 1998 when McGwire was breaking a 37-year-old record.

There were many possible explanations for the tepid response, beginning with Bonds's image. His reputation for surly self-absorption was proving hard to overcome. Although the press coverage was usually positive, he just wasn't popular with fans outside San Francisco. Perhaps, as Bonds himself would say, the reaction to his achievement was muted because he was a black man in a white man's game.

Bonds's appearance -- and the way it had morphed over the years -- also proved unsettling to some fans. Although McGwire had bulked up, he already was a big man when he hit 49 home runs as an A's rookie in 1987. Mac was still recognizable 11 years later on the Cardinals. But the massive, pumped-up Bonds of 2001 didn't look anything like the Giant of the late '90s, much less the lithe, young Pirate of the late '80s and early '90s who used to knock the ball into the gap, accelerate as he took the turn at first base and fly into second for a double.

Perhaps what gave the most pause about Bonds's march, however, was that it was occurring so soon after McGwire's. Baseball records were supposed to last, particularly ones as momentous as the single-season home run mark. Now something different and unsettling seemed to be going on.

On April 17 Bonds hit his 500th career home run. By June 1 he had 28. On June 22 the Giants traveled to St. Louis for a three-game series that underscored the changed fortunes of Bonds and McGwire. McGwire's body had begun breaking down. He would finish 2001 with a freak-show batting line: an average of .187 with 29 home runs. Of his 56 hits, more than half were home runs.

Bonds was now the focus of baseball's attention, trailed by a growing media entourage. He arrived in St. Louis with 38 home runs. In the second game of the series he hit number 39, a shot that bounced off a pillar underpinning the rightfield stands at Busch Stadium. As they had since the barrage had begun, the press pack wanted Bonds to discuss his incredible power. As usual he wouldn't be drawn out. He had come closest to offering an explanation after hitting six home runs in three games against the Braves in May.

"There are some things I don't understand right now," he said. "Call God. Ask him. It's like, wow. I can't understand it, either."

But the source of Barry Bonds's newfound power wasn't God at all. It was growth hormone and Greg Anderson. And now new drugs known as the Cream and the Clear.

After the 2000 season ended, Anderson had wanted someone to introduce him to Victor Conte. Conte was the owner of a once-failing business that finally seemed to have turned a corner, thanks largely to sales of ZMA, a legal supplement that was of dubious value but was endorsed by several prominent athletes in exchange for the highly effective -- though illegal -- performance- enhancing drugs Conte provided by way of his network of sophisticated chemists and suppliers. The gross income of Conte's company in 2000, according to court records, was $1.18 million, up from $42,820 two years earlier. BALCO was around the corner from World Gym in Burlingame, where Anderson spent virtually every waking hour and where he trained Bonds. Anderson had learned of Conte's reputation as an innovator in the business of performance-enhancing drugs.

The publicity machine was gearing up for Conte and his company, and he had it figured out. He would encourage elite athletes to wear ZMA T-shirts and hats and talk up his supplement to the bodybuilding magazines. In exchange he would help them reach new levels of success, setting up an elaborate system to ensure that his athletes could obtain and use effective performance-enhancing drugs without fear of getting caught. His regular clients at the time included several elite track and field athletes and NFL All-Pro linebacker Bill Romanowski, among others.

Although Olympic athletes faced the toughest steroid policy in sports, Conte came to realize that beating the testers was not difficult. He worked to provide a broad menu of drugs that were hard to detect. Among those he ultimately offered were growth hormone; erythropoietin, or EPO, the oxygen-boosting drug; the diabetes drug insulin, which also was particularly potent when cocktailed with other substances; norbolethone, a.k.a. the Clear, a powerful anabolic developed by Wyeth Laboratories in the 1960s but never brought to market (possibly because of doubts about its safety); a testosterone-based balm that Conte called the Cream; and the narcolepsy drug modafinil, a powerful stimulant that athletes took directly before competing.

Growth hormone and insulin were completely undetectable. The EPO test couldn't detect all forms of the drug. Testers wouldn't screen for norbolethone, a drug that had never been marketed. And the Cream was a mixture of synthetic testosterone and epitestosterone that concealed what would otherwise be telltale signs of the use of an undetectable steroid.

Conte created a simple "alphabet" shorthand for his drugs -- for example, "E" for EPO, "G" for growth hormone, "I" for insulin -- to be used on calendars he and the athletes kept. The calendars would list when athletes were scheduled to take which drugs, and they also indicated the dates of competitions so that the drugs' effects would be peaking at the right time. Conte also kept a ledger that detailed the types of drugs athletes were using, as well as the results of blood and urine tests conducted on the athletes. Conte engaged in this "pretesting" to make sure his athletes would pass drug tests.

Conte was very pleased to do business with Bonds's trainer. It meant he could add the greatest baseball player of the modern era to the BALCO stable of athletes. At minimum it was another big name Conte could drop on the Internet chat boards, another celebrity whose name and photo could be exploited to promote his business and himself. "Barry takes ZMA every night without fail," he would write on one board. "Barry is a big fan of ZMA."

 

Anderson, meanwhile, sold Bonds on Conte by dropping the names of the Olympians and NFL stars already using BALCO. Of course the real BALCO program had little to do with ZMA -- instead, it gave Bonds access to state-of-the-art drugs like the Clear, which other elite athletes had begun calling "Rocket Fuel" and "the magic potion." A BALCO connection had additional value because it provided Bonds with a cover story for his radically transformed appearance.

Now Bonds could insist that he built his muscular body with intense weight training and the modern science of nutritional supplementation. In baseball, a sport that didn't even test for drugs, the cover story seemed good enough to protect the reputation of Bonds, the Giants and the game itself. Like all good cover stories, it contained some truth.

There was no question Bonds had worked brutally hard in the gym in the off-season. Later, Conte and Anderson would persuade Bonds to plug BALCO and ZMA in a feature story and photo spread in Muscle & Fitness, the bodybuilding magazine. Conte also put Bonds through a battery of blood and urine panels. According to the pseudoscience used to shill for BALCO's legal products, to obtain maximum athletic performance it was important to remedy minute deficiencies of zinc and magnesium with supplements, starting with ZMA. Bonds's own doctor drew his blood, which Anderson transported for testing. In July 2002, Bonds allowed a writer for The New York Times Magazine to observe his weight training. That story portrayed Anderson as more of a nutritional technician than a tattooed gym rat.

In secret, Conte had offered Bonds a new array of performance-enhancing drugs, along with more expertise than Anderson could provide. Anderson knew steroids, but his knowledge was from the inject-and-grow school. Conte's drug cocktails were designed not only to be undetectable but also to address an athlete's specific needs. Conte's real blood and urine-testing program -- not the trace-element workup that Anderson had so solemnly described to the Times -- was designed to ensure that the drugs were working as intended and to ensure that they would not be detected on a steroid test. Bonds underwent one such screening on Nov. 18, 2000, according to BALCO documents. Quest Diagnostics (the medical concern that was later hired to do Major League Baseball's drug tests) ran an anabolic steroid panel on Bonds. After the 2001 season, on Nov. 12, LabOne, another drug-testing lab, did another workup on Bonds's testosterone levels. (LabOne reported a level of 11.2, which was considered abnormally high for a man of Bonds's age.) There was no reason to perform the tests unless Bonds was using steroids.

In addition to growth hormone and testosterone, doping calendars showed that Bonds used insulin along with steroids; the drug's anabolic effect was significant, especially when used in conjunction with growth hormone. He also popped Mexican beans, fast-acting steroids thought to clear the user's system within a few days. The label of the container read, "Andriol. Undecanoato de testosterone" -- in English: testosterone decanoate. Early in the 2001 season, the calendars indicated Bonds tried trenbolone, a steroid created to improve the muscle quality of beef cattle. Within the year it would be the chemical foundation for a new formulation of the Clear, the undetectable steroid Conte obtained from an Illinois chemist, Patrick Arnold.

Bonds carried around what Kim Bell called his "man bag" and, with Anderson's guidance, would take as many as 20 pills at a time. Meanwhile, Bonds began asserting more control over the drug regimen. He could feel the drop of energy that came when he was cycling off the performance enhancers and was mindful of the distance of his home runs; when his power started to decline he would tell Anderson to start him on another drug cycle, according to a source familiar with Bonds. Anderson kept the calendar that tracked his cycles. If he told Bonds he didn't need a cycle, Bonds would just tell him, "F--- off, I'll do it myself."

Meanwhile, friends of Bonds's were available with positive, upbeat commentary for the avalanche of profiles that were being ordered up as he approached McGwire's record. The friends' talking points addressed Bonds's reputation for boorish behavior. Some contended that Bonds was misunderstood and had never been a jerk in the first place. Others acknowledged prior problems but said he had become a better person. "I think he has changed and I think, frankly, that his marriage has a lot to do with it," Magowan, the Giants' owner, told TheOakland Tribune's Josh Suchon. " ... He's got a lovely wife and lovely kids. He's a very good father."

Bonds hit his 40th home run in Seattle the day after the All-Star break. He passed Maris on Sept. 9 in Denver when he pounded Rockies pitchers for numbers 61, 62 and 63. There were still 18 games left in the season. McGwire's record fell on Oct. 5, at Pac Bell Park, and on the last day of the season Bonds hit his 73rd home run. After the game he said he wanted his trainers written into his new contract. Of Anderson and the others, Bonds told the San Jose Mercury News, "Those guys are with me for life."

Barry Bonds was 38 years old in 2002 when he won his first batting title. He batted .370, hit 46 home runs and drew a ridiculous 198 walks. Once again Bonds's offensive surge was powered by performance-enhancing drugs from Anderson, who got them from BALCO and Conte. Conte and Anderson sent Bonds's blood for testosterone screening at the end of the 2001 season and ordered another round before spring training 2002. Then baseball's new Home Run King began another drug cycle, as described in the doping calendars kept by Anderson.

During a three-week cycle, Bonds was injected with human growth hormone every other day. Between injections he alternately used Conte's two undetectable steroids, the Clear and the Cream. At cycle's end, Bonds took Clomid, a drug doctors prescribe to women for infertility; Conte thought it helped his clients recover their natural ability to produce testosterone, which was suppressed by steroid use. Conte recommended a week off between cycles. Usually the drugs were administered at Bonds's home, with Anderson dropping by to inject him with Growth or to squirt the Clear under his tongue, using a syringe with no needle.

Bonds's gaudy numbers would make him an MVP once again. Even better, the Giants made it to the World Series. And, for the first time, Bonds produced in the postseason: Against the Anaheim Angels he hit .471 with four home runs and a garish on-base percentage of .700. But the Angels won the Series in seven games, and Bonds told friends that perhaps he was fated only to set individual records but never to play on a championship team.

In 2002, after Ken Caminiti confessed to Sports Illustrated that his 1996 MVP season had been steroid-powered, Major League Baseball was pressured to make steroid testing a part of the new labor agreement that was negotiated that summer. To Olympic athletes, baseball's testing policy was a joke, so weak that it could barely be called a policy at all.

Weak or not, players still feared getting caught. Bonds despised the thought of being exposed as a drug cheat. He wanted no part of the humiliation he might endure if his status as the game's premier player were called into question. But Anderson guaranteed that Bonds was protected. "The whole thing is, everything I've been doing, it's all undetectable," he would say during the spring of 2003, when he described Bonds's drug use to an acquaintance who was secretly wearing a wire. "The stuff I have, we created it. You can't buy it anywhere else, you can't get it anywhere else. You can take [it] the day of [a drug test], pee, and it comes up clear.

"See, like Marion Jones and them -- it's the same stuff they went to the Olympics with and they test them every f------ week. So that's why I know it works, so that's why I know we're not in trouble. So that's cool."

Bonds started 2003 more slowly than Anderson would have liked. In May he was hitting around .280 and was only fifth in the league in home runs. Anderson blamed a rare loss of self-confidence and intensity.

"He thinks the magic's gone, [that] he doesn't have it any more," Anderson said on the tape. "It's generated by his mind. He's afraid he's like losing it, but like I told him, he's way too nice. Talking to reporters, being way too nice -- be an a------ again! Every time he's an a------, it just f------ works. He f------ plays good because he's being himself."

 

After the All-Star Game, Bonds broke out, as Anderson had predicted he would. For the year he hit .341 with 45 home runs and won his third straight Most Valuable Player award. The runner-up for MVP was the Cardinals' new star Albert Pujols, who was 23. It was as though Bonds were ageless -- at 39 he put up better numbers than he had when in his prime with the Pirates; better numbers, in fact, than at any time before he hooked up with Anderson.

Early in the 2003 season, Bonds decided it was time for Kimberly Bell to disappear. His promise to buy her a house in Scottsdale, made so casually that night in spring training 2001, had created financial headaches for the multimillionaire athlete. By any conventional measure, Bonds was wealthy. But his pay from the Giants and his investment income went to his accountants, who paid his income taxes and child support, kept him on a strict allowance and wrote financial reports that his wife could see. If Bonds had used that money to buy a house in Scottsdale, the accountants would ask questions and Liz would find out. So Bonds had planned to use the cash from memorabilia sales and autograph sessions, where he received income in cash and didn't report it to the IRS. During the 2001 season he would sit in a hotel for hours, signing balls as fast as he could to raise cash for Bell's house. By the end of the season, Bonds had given her $80,000. She made a down payment on a house in Scottsdale, then quit her job and moved to the desert.

There were nothing but problems after that. In New York, Bonds had met a centerfold model from Eastern Europe, according to a source familiar with Bonds, and began flying the model instead of Bell to road games. Bonds was spending too much money on the model to afford house payments in Arizona. Bell became frantic as she went deeper in debt to keep up the payments. (She would eventually sell the house and move back to the Bay Area.)

The relationship unraveled on May 2, 2003, the start of a series against the Reds at Pac Bell. Bell said her flight from Arizona was late, and when she arrived at the room in the Westin Airport Hilton where Bonds was waiting for her, he was livid. She had blown his whole schedule for the day. She tried to apologize, but by her account, he put his hand around her throat, pressed her against the wall, and whispered, "If you ever f-----' pull some s--- like that again I'll kill you, do you understand me?"

Bell was frightened. He left, and she went back to Arizona two days later without seeing him. They saw each other once more, when the Giants were in Phoenix to play the Diamondbacks at the end of May, and on his way out of town, he called her from the airport.

"You have to do something for me," Bonds said. "You need to disappear."

"What do you mean?" Bell said. "For how long?"

"Did I f----- stutter?" Bonds replied. "Maybe forever."

Bell became angry. "Are you going to make your girlfriend in New York disappear too?" she asked.

Bonds didn't reply, and his cellphone cut out.

As a result of an IRS investigation of BALCO as well as evidence sent to the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency (USADA), a federal raid on BALCO was scheduled late in 2003, involving more than two dozen agents and officials representing five different agencies. On the morning of Sept. 3 the raiding party gathered at Bayside Park, one mile east of BALCO.

There, Jeff Novitzky, an agent of the IRS Criminal Investigation unit, handed out copies of a briefing document and explained that Conte and BALCO vice president James Valente were distributing steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs to well-known athletes, specifically mentioning Barry Bonds and Marion Jones. The agents were told to seize all "controlled substances and other athletic performance-enhancing drugs and paraphernalia," along with documents dating back to 1994. Novitzky was to be informed immediately if the name Greg Anderson was found on any documents.

At 12:20 a caravan of unmarked Buicks, some with lights flashing, roared down Mahler Road toward the BALCO building. As Novitzky entered BALCO, he called out, "Federal agents, we have a search warrant."

The agents encountered Conte, Valente and Valente's wife, Joyce. Novitzky asked Conte if he would be willing to talk, and the BALCO chief agreed. After patting him down for weapons, Novitzky and John Columbet, a local drug agent, escorted Conte to a conference room. Novitzky told Conte he already had proof of his guilt, but he said Conte's cooperation might be viewed favorably by prosecutors. The agent wanted Conte to cooperate and lay out his entire operation. Amazingly, Conte did. Over the next three hours, he talked and talked. Although he sometimes dissembled or lied, Conte nevertheless gave the government a remarkable account of the steroid conspiracy he had directed. According to the government, for instance, Conte detailed his distribution of the Clear and the Cream to elite athletes and explained how they worked.

The shining moment for the agents came when Columbet pulled out a list of BALCO athletes and asked Conte to identify which ones had received the performance-enhancing drugs.

According to the government, Conte implicated 27 athletes -- 15 from track and field, seven from the National Football League and five from the major leagues, including Barry Bonds. Prior to the start of the 2003 season, baseball's first year of testing for steroids, Greg Anderson had brought in several players, including Bonds, to get the Cream and the Clear. Bonds used the substances "on a regular basis," Conte said, which meant taking each drug twice a week, with cycles of three weeks on, one week off. Bonds didn't pay for the drugs; instead, he received them in exchange for promoting Conte's legal supplement, ZMA. Conte told the agents that Anderson had last been in the office to refill his supply of the Cream and the Clear three or four weeks earlier.

If that wasn't enough, Conte also said he kept the drugs in a storage locker on the other side of Highway 101, and he agreed to take the agents there and let them search it.

About an hour into the interview at BALCO, Novitzky emerged from the conference room with a smile on his face. "Conte just gave up everything, he just cashed in everybody," Novitzky told his colleagues, mentioning Bonds and Jones in particular. There was no tape made of the interview.

In their search for evidence the agents found the ledger in Conte's office -- listing the names of athletes, the specific drugs they were using, their blood and urine-test results and their testosterone-to-epitestosterone ratios (a key reading for drug testers). They also found documents detailing lab work performed for various athletes, apparently as part of Conte's trace mineral-testing program.

At 2:16 Larry Bowers, a USADA expert, joined Novitzky, Conte, Columbet and an IRS CI photographer for the search of Conte's storage locker. There, they hit the mother lode. Conte helped the agents pull out several boxes of drugs, including his supplies of the Cream and the latest version of the Clear, a designer steroid unknown to testers until USADA had received a sample of it sent anonymously. Bowers reflected on his days running an Olympic drug-testing lab in Indianapolis, when he and other scientists mused about whether somebody could be out there creating designer drugs that would go undetected: This is it, he thought.

 

Conte also directed the agents to two banker's boxes filled with files on his athlete clients. The files contained calendars as well as testing and payment records -- essentially diaries detailing the extent of the cheating, down to the day and the dose.

At 3:24, while the search of the locker was wrapping up, Novitzky and Columbet took Conte back to BALCO. Conte kept talking. He provided, among other things, an outline of the alphabet used on the calendars.

At 3:59 Novitzky and Columbet brought Conte back to the reception area. Now it was Jim Valente's turn. Valente gave the agents a statement that mirrored Conte's but without the hyperbole or slipperiness. Valente also offered additional insights. He explained that he was the contact for Greg Anderson, who had become the BALCO connection for baseball players. Valente delivered BALCO drugs and invoices to Anderson.

In addition to the Cream and the Clear, Anderson supplied his ballplayers with human growth hormone and testosterone cypionate, Valente told the agents. Valente said Bonds had received the Cream and the Clear directly from BALCO on "a couple of occasions," but the Giants outfielder didn't like the way the Clear made him feel.

Then the agents turned their attention to Anderson. They found him in a nearby gym and told him they had a warrant to search his home and car. Did the trainer want to come along, observe the search and perhaps answer some questions?

Anderson agreed to speak with the agents but was more guarded than Conte and Valente. When he began talking, Anderson would only admit that he gave "a small amount of steroids to people." While he talked, agents searching the residence found more than $60,000 in cash inside a safe above the microwave.

Anderson said he had been working with professional athletes since about 1997. His baseball clients included Barry Bonds. At first he said he provided steroids only to bodybuilders but then admitted he supplied them to other athletes as well. He didn't want to name names.

As the interview continued, Anderson admitted that he gave the ballplayers testosterone and human growth hormone, often sending the drugs via Federal Express. He acknowledged that after baseball began testing for steroids, he gave players the Cream and the Clear obtained from BALCO. He paid for the drugs with cash.

Anderson didn't want to talk about Bonds. When pressed, he claimed the Home Run King never took the Clear or the Cream. But by then the other agents had discovered file folders with the names of baseball players on their covers. Just like the ones at Conte's storage locker, the folders contained calendars detailing the players' drug use -- amounts, quantities, intervals. There was a folder for Bonds, and the agents asked Anderson about it. That was the end of the interview.

While the raid was under way, an athlete who knew that Anderson had computerized his doping calendars was frantically trying to get in touch with Bonds. They're raiding Victor, the athlete said in a phone message that was left on an answering machine. Tell Barry he better get Greg to dump all that stuff off his computer.

At 10:56 on the morning of Dec. 4, 2003, Bonds arrived at the Phillip Burton Federal Building in San Francisco for his date with the grand jury. A little past 1:00, he was sworn in, and then prosecutor Jeff Nedrow described Bonds's immunity agreement: Nothing Bonds said before the grand jury could be used to prosecute him for any crime, as long as he told the truth. But the immunity didn't extend to perjury, Nedrow emphasized.

The session began innocently enough, with Bonds describing his long association with Greg Anderson. Briefly, he told how Anderson had introduced him to BALCO.

Soon, though, Nedrow and his veteran boss, Ross Nadel, began to show Bonds page after page of documents that implicated him in the use of steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs. There were doping calendars that detailed specific drugs to take on specific days. Ledger pages that logged testosterone levels in his body at various points. Documents from steroid tests completed on samples of his blood and urine. The prosecutors peppered him with questions, beginning first with the Cream and the Clear. Bonds's answers meandered, but he admitted nothing, yielding virtually no ground on his long-standing claim that his tremendous sports achievements had been all natural, the product of hard work and God-given talent.

"At the end of [the] 2002, 2003 season, when I was going through [a bad period,] my dad died of cancer.... I was fatigued, just needed recovery you know, and this guy says, 'Try this cream, try this cream,'" he said. "And Greg came to the ballpark and said, you know, 'This will help you recover.' And he rubbed some cream on my arm ... gave me some flaxseed oil, man. It's like, 'Whatever, dude.'"

Bonds was shown a vial that the government believed had contained the Clear. Bonds insisted it was for flaxseed oil. He said he had ingested the substance by placing a couple of drops under his tongue -- the prescribed method for taking the BALCO steroid but hardly the common way to down flaxseed oil.

"And I was like, to me, it didn't even work," he told the grand jury. "You know me, I'm 39 years old. I'm dealing with pain. All I want is the pain relief, you know? ... I never asked Greg. When he said it was flaxseed oil, I just said, 'Whatever.' It was in the ballpark ... in front of everybody. I mean, all the reporters, my teammates. I mean, they all saw it. I didn't hide it ... . You know, trainers come up to me and say, 'Hey, Barry, try this.'"

Bonds's approach was obvious: He didn't know what he put in his body, he simply ingested whatever substance his trainer gave him. If his trainer told him it was flaxseed oil and arthritis cream, then that's what it was. To people who knew Bonds's meticulous and controlling nature, the claim was absurd, but the prosecutors didn't pursue the point.

Instead, they began quizzing Bonds about doping calendars and documents showing the results of blood and urine tests, all pulled from folders marked with Bonds's name or initials.

Did the notations for "Growth" and "G" mean Bonds had been taking the anabolic substance human growth hormone?

"I don't know what G is," he replied. He had never injected himself with drugs, he declared. He knew nothing about paperwork showing the results of steroid screens run on his blood. Questions about a document reflecting the purchase of growth hormone -- "!G! one box off-season and two box season $1,500," the note read -- prompted a nonresponsive answer.

"Greg and I are friends," Bonds said. "I never paid Greg for anything. I gave Greg money for his training me.... You're going to bring up documents and more documents. I have never seen anything written by Greg Anderson on a piece of paper."

Nadel showed Bonds a bottle and asked about a calendar notation that referred to the steroid depotestosterone.

"I have never, ever seen this bottle or any bottle pertaining that says depotestosterone," Bonds said.

"It's an injectable steroid, right?"

Bonds denied using it, then began rambling again: "Greg is a good guy, you know, this kid is a great kid. He has a child."

What about Clomiphene (also known as Clomid), an anti-estrogen drug employed by steroid users when coming off a cycle?

"I've never heard of it."

Erythropoietin, a.k.a. EPO, an endurance-boosting drug?

"I couldn't even pronounce it."

Modafinil, a stimulant?

"I've never heard of it."

Of the substances Anderson provided, Bonds said, "If it's a steroid, it's not working."

The prosecutors also quizzed Bonds about a calendar entry that said, "Barry 12-2-02 T, 1CC G -- pee." Did that reflect events on Dec. 2, 2002, when Bonds used testosterone and growth hormone and then gave a urine sample to Anderson for a private drug test?

"T could mean anything," Bonds replied. "G could mean anything. And pee could probably mean anything."

He couldn't explain a medical report describing his testosterone levels -- "I wouldn't even understand it anyway, so they wouldn't talk to me about that," he said -- nor calendar entries kept by Anderson that reflected his use of steroids and Clomid.

"I've never had a calendar with him, never had anything," Bonds said.

"Did Greg ever give you insulin?"

"Insulin? I'm not a diabetic."

Bonds said he had paid Anderson $15,000 for supervising his weight training. "I paid him in cash," he testified. "I make 17 million."

At the end of the more than three-hour session, the grand jurors were given a chance to question the superstar. "With all the money you make, have you ever considered building a mansion" for Anderson, a grand juror asked.

 

"One, I'm black," Bonds replied. "And I'm keeping my money. And there's not too many rich black people in this world. There's more wealthy Asian people and Caucasian and white. And I ain't giving my money up."

With that, they were done. Nedrow seemed pleased. It had been a slow process, but the prosecutor understood why it had taken so long: When you know what a witness knows, and they won't tell you what you know they know, it takes more time.

Bonds, too, seemed to think that the session had gone well: He left the room confident that he had asserted control over the government's inquiry, just as he controlled his baseball team and, for that matter, most of the people in his life. His reputation had been preserved and his well-guarded secret had not been revealed.

But as the government would learn, Bonds and his inner circle hadn't been so discreet about his use of performance-enhancing drugs. By the time Bonds was subpoenaed before the BALCO grand jury, more than a dozen people either had been told directly that he was using banned drugs, had seen him using the drugs with their own eyes, or had been provided with information that made the conclusion he was doping inescapable.

On Oct. 26, 2005, the White Sox completed a World Series sweep of the Houston Astros, clinching Chicago's first championship since 1917. More than the end of an 88-year drought, the moment marked the exorcism of baseball's worst demon: the Black Sox scandal of 1919.

But there was a new scandal that posed an ongoing threat to the game. By last fall it was apparent to the general public that a great many players, including some of the major leagues' biggest stars, had been using steroids and other illegal drugs for years. Public opinion was divided about BALCO. Polls showed that the majority of fans considered baseball's steroid problem serious and wanted the cheaters punished. But those who were cynical about the game believed that BALCO was merely typical of a society driven to enhance its performance and appearance.

With the publication of Game of Shadows on March 27, however, it will be harder for even the most jaded fan to shrug off the use of drugs in sports. In addition to the revelations included here about Barry Bonds, the book examines, in startling detail, the systematic use of a wide array of illegal drugs by other major leaguers, NFL players and track and field athletes who, like Bonds, were performing at the very highest levels of their sport.

Yet even as Game of Shadows challenges our fond assumptions about the purity of competition, the BALCO probe moves into its fourth year and the 41-year-old Bonds prepares for his 21st season in the big leagues. Bad knee willing, he will begin the season needing only seven home runs to pass Babe Ruth for second on the alltime list. Then, he will need 41 more to surpass Hank Aaron. And in San Francisco, they were preparing to celebrate the Home Run King. Issue date: March 13, 2006

 

damn, in scanning through all the copied "he said, she said" i missed the pictures. check your attachments please, they didn't load.

 

Check out any Giants fans. They would defend him if he was caught with a syringe hanging out of his butt