Untold: Hall of Shame (2023) Movie Script

[mesmerizing music playing]
[beeps]
[Victor Conte] People joke that
I like to blow things up
just to see where all the pieces land.
They've called me...
A lot of people have called me a genius...
- [intriguing music playing]
- ...but, you know,
sometimes people call that reckless.
This is a story that broke last week
and it's been growing ever since.
A federal grand jury
is going to begin hearing testimony
this week from some very major athletes.
[reporter 1] Investigating Victor Conte.
[reporters] Victor Conte.
[reporter 2] The president
of BALCO Laboratories.
[Conte] "BALCO" is a word
that's now forever in the lexicon.
[man] BALCO.
BALCO.
The biggest doping scandal
in sports history.
[Conte] Articles had come out saying
I was a modern-day Al Capone,
the BALCO mastermind...
[chuckling]...Dr. Frankenstein,
you know, from BALCO.
[reporter 3] They were searching
for evidence,
linking Conte to a previously
undetected steroid known as THG.
They called it The Clear.
It is a designer steroid...
Made for the sole purpose of cheating.
It is now a full-blown conspiracy
with ties to top athletes...
[news anchor 1] From baseball,
football, track and field...
[news anchor 2] Including
home run record breaker, Barry Bonds.
[commentator] A high drive...
[Conte] The whole investigation,
in my opinion,
was all about chasing headlines.
Unfortunately, some in professional sports
are not setting much of an example.
This is about values,
it's about our culture.
Major League Baseball had a very,
very serious problem with steroids.
It wasn't dealt with.
[Conte] I knew
they didn't have the evidence
that they claimed that they had,
and that's why I walked out into
a sea of reporters and did this.
That meant this.
[Tim Montgomery] Victor Conte
is a person that can come across
to be anybody he wants to.
[Jeff Novitzky] I think most people
who hear and see Victor Conte
realize him for who he is,
and that's, you know, a used car,
snake oil salesman, bullshit artist.
[Conte] It was fun, it was exciting.
It was about trying to be great.
When Marion Jones hit the finish line
and won the gold medal,
when Barry Bonds hit all those home runs.
[riveting music playing]
[commentator] Bonds hits one!
Deep to right field.
The record has changed again. Barry Bonds...
[Conte] You know,
any of these great accomplishments,
those are things
that I'll always be proud of.
["Your Sweet Love"
by Lee Hazlewood playing]
Stranger's arms reach out
To me
'Cause they know
I'm so lonely
Then my mind
Goes back to you
Your sweet love
Sees me through
- [insects trilling]
- [panting]
[dog barking in distance]
[nuanced music playing]
Welcome to the hall of fame,
or hall of shame,
depending upon your viewpoint.
Okay, this is one
of, uh, two autographed photos
that I have from Barry.
This one's "To Victor"
and the other one is "To BALCO."
And this is a Sports Illustrated
of Marion Jones here.
This is back in the 2000 time frame.
This is Tim Montgomery
at the world championships in 2001.
That was in Edmonton, Canada.
When we started working with him,
his name was Tiny Tim.
Charlie Francis, he said,
"Show me somebody not on steroids
and I'll show you a loser."
There is a level playing field,
it's just not the one
everyone thought it was, okay?
[producer] A lot of these people
used steroids, right?
From 1984 when I started BALCO
until 2000, for 16 years,
I never gave anybody
any sort of illegal drugs.
It was a legitimate business providing
nutritional element information
through comprehensive blood testing.
Thank you very much.
Yes, as Ken stated,
my name is Victor Conte,
and I'm the executive director
of BALCO Laboratories,
BALCO standing for, uh,
Bay Area Laboratory Co-operative,
and I'm also the... the founder
of something called the SNAC system.
They've called it Victor's knack,
that whatever I decide to do,
I can go straight to the top,
and I taught myself.
I got a library card,
and I pulled
all these scientific journals,
then I would read 'em all.
I went across zinc and muscle strength,
zinc and testosterone.
I learned athletes can be low in iron,
they could be lower in copper.
Some of these deficiencies are connected
with various symptoms like
muscle cramps or lack of concentration.
And we... Hopefully, by, uh,
giving some input,
we can help the United States
win a few more gold medals.
I put together this partnership
and raised money and started BALCO.
Update on the BALCO Laboratory facility.
There's a new building.
We'll walk into the lab area.
We started testing athletes,
one led to another, and...
The first-world-class athletes
that I tested were in track and field.
And then Matt Biondi, who was the world's
fastest swimmer at the time.
So I could collect all this data
that was valuable to them.
You know, I was kind of
a natural-born promoter.
The next thing you know, NBA players.
I worked with the entire
Seattle SuperSonics team in '92 and '93.
[sports commentator speaks indistinctly]
But for me to actually enhance
the performance of the athletes,
I had to learn
how to formulate supplements.
So I created a whole line of mineral
and trace element products
and formulated ZMA, and that... I mean,
it was like a rocket ship.
Pretty soon, Bill Romanowski showed up
from the Denver Broncos.
And he... he was the gateway
to the NFL for... for me.
Then all of a sudden
I had 250 NFL players.
[indistinct chatter and laughter]
[Conte] Are you going to assault
the world record, Gregg?
[chuckles] Mr. Zinc. Call me Zinc.
- [Conte] Mr. Zinc.
- [laughter]
[Conte] So from '84,
all the way until 2000,
everything that BALCO and SNAC did
was completely legal, completely clean.
No athletes were ever given
any sort of performance-enhancing drug.
[chuckling] Now, were some of these guys
using drugs, like shot putters? Of course.
I just wasn't involved
in... in providing those to them.
[clapping]
But I knew the use
of performance-enhancing drugs
in Olympic sport was rampant.
[commentator] Carl Lewis is in lane three.
[Conte] In the Olympic Games
in '88 in Seoul,
of course Ben Johnson stands out.
[commentator 1] And Johnson does it again.
Unbelievable. Nine-seven-nine.
[commentator 2]
New world record. Incredible.
Now, I've just been handed
a piece of paper that, if it's right,
it'll be the most dramatic story out of
these Olympics or perhaps any others.
Ben Johnson
has been stripped of his gold medal
for testing positive to using
anabolic steroids.
[reporter] He is one of the athletes
under a cloud of suspicion for a while,
as is his coach, Charlie Francis.
[Charlie Francis] Where you offer
an athlete only two choices,
run clean and lose or take drugs and win,
then of course the choices will be clear.
[Conte] Working with elite athletes,
I realized this is what happens
at the elite level of sport.
This is what it takes
to go to the next level.
Reports on a frightening sign
that sports competition
is being pushed too far.
Steroids.
[reporter] America's newest drug epidemic.
President Bush recently signed a bill
which, for the first time, classifies
steroids as controlled substances.
Said it's the classic dilemma between
the fair play associated with sport
and the desire to win.
[people clamoring]
In my experience, 80% of athletes say,
"I'm not gonna invest 10 years of my life
then walk away, so give me those pills."
[Montgomery] I hate losing.
I hate for anyone to look at me
and say they beat me.
And I think that comes from my childhood,
because they called me Tiny Tim.
I hate the name Tiny Tim.
I remember watching Conan the Barbarian.
["Wheel of Pain" by B. Poledouris plays]
How he pushed the wheel
and he became so strong.
I would cut grass.
We had an old push lawn mower.
The lawn mower was this tall,
and it had a little centerpiece there,
so I'd be pushing, you know,
and everybody was looking at me,
at little Timmy push the lawn mower.
I'd push all that yard because I wanted
to be like Conan the Barbarian.
I wanted to be stronger, faster.
I wanted to be everything.
So I was really, in essence,
training myself for my near future.
My goal was... was
to be the best in the world,
the greatest of all time.
[commentator] Tim Montgomery of the US
may be, uh, a sleeper in this field.
[Montgomery] In 1997, I ran nine times
under ten seconds...
[commentator]
Montgomery and Donovan Bailey.
...so I knew what I could do naturally.
I just needed more power.
[commentator] He's a little bit smaller.
I think he may need
to put on a few pounds,
and I think his time is coming...
[Montgomery] So, in 1999,
I moved down to Raleigh, North Carolina,
and I started training with Trevor Graham,
Marion Jones' coach.
And the workouts was...
Couldn't finish 'em.
So I go to Trevor's house
and he got tapes of Ben Johnson.
I mean...
I can't do no start like that.
It ain't how I start.
He's like, "No, you see that raw power?"
And that's when I was introduced
to the dark side.
Performance-enhancing drugs.
[Conte] The Ben Johnson race,
eventually, something like six or seven
out of the eight guys
were suspected of using
performance-enhancing drugs.
If you run at least two meters faster,
this is the difference
of 10 flat and 9-8. Okay?
So you're... you're... A guy not on stuff
is going to have a very difficult time
competing with somebody who's on stuff.
[Montgomery] When I got with Graham,
I saw that the best was doing it.
I assumed that this was
what everybody was doing.
[Conte] When I realized
the hypocrisy of all of this,
I decided it was time to start playing
by the real rules of sport,
and the rest is history, as they say.
[hard rock music playing]
[Conte] I went to a... a bodybuilding show
in San Francisco,
and I was introduced
to these 25 pro bodybuilders,
all the biggest names in the sport.
Whoo!
[Conte] And it's
the only professional sport
where the use of steroids is a mandate.
And so I stood up to tell them we did this
testing of minerals and trace elements,
but we also have the ability to do
all of the comprehensive drug testing.
[hard rock music continues]
[Conte] We tested those 25 bodybuilders...
[ding]
...and I said, "These Winstrol
tablets you think you're taking?"
"There's no Winstrol in your urine.
These are fake."
That's how I became a part of that world
and tried to learn about steroids.
It was a new challenge,
and that's what makes me tick.
You know,
that's what got the wheels turning.
[riveting music playing]
[Catlin] I'm Oliver Catlin.
I am the son of the guru
of sport drug testing, Dr. Don Catlin.
And today I am the president
of Banned Substances Control Group.
In anti-doping, the level playing field
is what we strive for,
but it's hard to achieve.
Victor knew what he wanted
in undetectable drugs,
but he didn't know
how to make those himself,
and that's where the skill set
of Patrick Arnold as a chemist came in.
[Conte] At the Mr. Olympia Expo
in Las Vegas
is where I met Patrick Arnold,
and he just said he had some stuff
that seemed to, you know,
help with recovery.
He didn't really even tell me what it was.
And so I bought a bottle of it from him.
It was a clear liquid,
you used an eyedropper
and you put drops under your tongue.
It was sublingual absorption.
Took it myself and it felt great.
And then I did some testing on it,
where I measured my testosterone
the next day, the next day and the next.
And I realized, "Boy, this stuff
acts like an anabolic steroid."
Many of the steroids had been built
by pharmaceuticals and just not used,
but when we got to BALCO,
new drugs were literally created.
Patrick bubbled hydrogen through
gestrinone, a birth control pill,
and it turned into one of the most
anabolic steroids that was ever created.
[Conte] Then when I did the comprehensive
drug testing, it came back as clean.
- [ding]
- It was undetectable.
Oh, shit, you know?
Then the light bulb went on.
[Catlin] And I think he saw
performance-enhancing drugs
that were undetectable
were a much quicker avenue
than the legitimate nutrition products
that he was selling.
That's when I started giving it
to athletes, at the beginning of 2000.
How about this?
[producer] What do you got?
This is Marion Jones
at the, uh, 2000 Olympics in Sydney
that they opened up where she wins
by something like four meters.
That just shows you the type of dominance
that Marion had at that time.
Going into the 2000 Summer Olympics,
Marion Jones was the golden girl.
[commentator 1] ...Jones taking command.
[commentator 2] She has yet to be beaten.
[commentator 3] Her goal this year,
she'll say it: To be undefeated.
She's a competitor.
Marion Jones is making
three million dollars a year.
In Sydney, she's going for five medals,
trying to be the greatest of all time.
The only time I even consider
the quest for five
is when people mention it. [laughs]
[Conte] She had sponsorships
with General Motors,
American Express, Nike, you know,
the commercial "Can you dig it?"
[Jones] We need more role models.
The more, the better.
Can you dig it?
I had not talked with Marion,
but had talked with her trainer,
Trevor Graham.
They were using traditional testosterone
and EPO and growth hormone,
and they said, "We hear you have
this undetectable substance."
"Can you help, uh, Marion Jones?"
And immediately I realized
this was a very, very big moment,
and I sent a box
of some of this stuff to them.
[Australia's National Anthem,
"Advance Australia Fair" playing]
[woman] I promise that we shall take part
in these Olympic Games,
committing ourselves to a sport
without doping and without drugs.
Once we got there,
we created a... a calendar for Marion.
We determined what to take,
how much to take, when to take it.
Of course, it was all based
on circumventing the testing.
[commentator] Marion Jones has seven
of the fastest 11 times ever run.
[Conte] I got tickets to sit
at the finish line of the 100 meters.
It was insane.
[commentator] Set.
Away. Pretty good start for Jones.
She's in the winning position.
Early startup, pulling away slowly.
We were shooting
for the... for the top of the mountain.
[commentator] Jones going hard.
Lawrence has had a good first 50.
Jones clearly in front.
Look at the margin.
She's straining them.
[Conte] I knew she would win,
but I didn't think
she'd blow everybody away Flo-Jo style
and win by four meters.
[commentator]
She absolutely annihilated them.
[Conte] Marion ended up winning
five medals at the Olympics in Sydney.
It felt great to just be
a part of her success.
- We're done. We're done.
- We're done.
[Michael Schmidt] I think the... the thing
about the BALCO investigation
is that it brings you behind the scenes
into largely criminal activity
that was done in secret.
And it's... it's exposing
what these athletes were willing to do
to try and succeed.
[commentator] That one's high.
Deep right field, gone!
Home run, Barry Bonds.
[audience cheering]
[Schmidt] Steroids were banned
in baseball at the time,
but there was no testing for them,
and, in the late '90s
into the early 2000s,
it's just like an explosion in home runs.
[commentator] Canseco looks like
the sort of a comic book hero: Huge.
Wow, did he crush that one?
Then in 1998, there was this chase
to break the single-season home run record
between two great sluggers, Mark McGwire...
[commentator] Number 45 for McGwire.
[Schmidt]...and Sammy Sosa.
[commentator] One for two
and he sends a rocket. Number 48.
And it completely captivated the country.
[commentator 1] Sixty!
[commentator 2] Can you say "66"?
[commentator speaking indistinctly]
Number 70! How much more can
you give us than that? Number 70...
[Schmidt] Bonds saw
what Sosa and McGwire had done.
At that point in Bonds' career,
he was already a Hall of Famer.
He basically said to himself,
"I know I'm better than these guys."
[man] Whoo!
[Schmidt] "There's no reason
I shouldn't be performing at that level."
But he was at an age
when most players' careers
are on the downtick,
when they retire from the game.
And... And I'm trying to think of,
what next level can I get to?
What... What can keep me motivated
to do the things that I've been doing
day in and day out?
[Conte] Greg Anderson, Barry's trainer,
brought him to... to BALCO.
You know,
he asked if... if we could work with Barry
and test his blood and see what
nutritional elements that he may need.
And then after providing Barry
with a number of different
legal nutritional supplements.
I've lost more championships
in my life more than ever, ever.
I mean, I almost get numb at times.
It just eats me up so bad.
[Conte] In a year's time there,
Barry put on, like,
20 pounds in an off-season.
My recollection is he weighed 208,
and then the following season
he weighed 228.
And so we provided all sorts
of nutritional supplements,
but nothing beyond that.
[producer] I think people assume you're
his doctor giving steroids all the time.
Not true. He does have a personal doctor,
who I met, but...
[chuckles]...it's not me.
I not only didn't give him
The Clear or The Cream
or any other anabolic steroids,
but I've never even discussed steroids
with him, not a word ever.
In my opinion,
the entire investigation was...
Had everything to do with Barry Bonds.
He was the target.
[Novitzky] My name is Jeff Novitzky.
I was lead investigator
on the BALCO Laboratories investigation,
one of the highest-profile
performance-enhancing drug investigations
of all time.
And I carry an immense,
immense love for sport.
Basketball, I wanted to go
to the NBA until,
maybe mid-part of college
where you realize
that's probably not in the cards.
And after college, came across an entry
from IRS criminal investigation division,
and I'll never forget this, their motto
was "Be an accountant with a gun."
And I thought, "All right,
that's something
I could be interested in."
I remember sitting in a class
and having a senior agent come in saying,
"Make cases out of things
that you just see around you."
"You don't need to wait
for an official referral
from Washington, D.C."
"If you see this really nice Ferrari
going down the street,
run their plate and see if that person
would be making that kind of money."
"If they don't, then maybe
you should look further into that."
And I started to hear
in the '90s about BALCO Laboratories,
which, as the crow flies, is probably
less than a mile from where I lived.
And that, despite them claiming
that they were a blood testing laboratory,
what they were really doing is providing
athletes with performance-enhancing drugs.
One of the first things I did was query
the currency transaction database,
and saw that Victor Conte
and BALCO Laboratories
were withdrawing hundreds
of thousands of dollars in currency
for a purported blood testing laboratory.
That, by itself, appeared suspicious
and didn't seem right.
Go on to some
of the online message boards,
and Victor Conte talks very openly
about steroids
and his knowledge of what drugs do what,
about how much they cost,
about every athlete that he's worked with,
and when I saw these athletes
that were going to BALCO,
including Barry Bonds,
I thought to myself,
"This could potentially get more attention
than any investigation before it,
so we probably need to kind of expand
and see who else is involved."
My first time seeing Victor was in Sydney,
and we partied every single day.
Every single day.
[chuckles]
[Conte] At that time,
he was ranked number eight in the world.
[commentator] Men's 4 by 100 underway,
and here's the handoff to Tim Montgomery
and the US has the lead...
[Conte] He was one of the top guys.
I decided it was time
to take it to another level,
and help him break the world record.
[Montgomery] At that time, the record
was 9.79, held by Maurice Greene.
I was in that race,
1999, when he broke it in Greece.
[commentator] Nine-seven-nine.
Does that ring a bell?
As just mentioned, Ben Johnson
had that very same time
at the '88 Olympics in Seoul,
only to be stripped of the gold medal
after testing positive.
[Montgomery] Whoever broke
the world record in the 100 meters,
you were the fastest human ever.
It's like a unicorn.
I told Maurice, "It's yours for now,
but I'll be back to get it."
I had already run down
nine-nine-two in 1997. Clean.
[commentator] ...at the finish line...
Once Victor understood
that I had been clean,
he said,
"You're gonna break the world record."
I told Victor Conte,
"I don't care if I die."
"I want to see what it feels like to be
the greatest at any cost possible."
It's almost like
selling your soul to the devil.
And that's when I made that decision
to help Tim Montgomery
to become the world's fastest human,
and... and I took it as a challenge.
And we were gonna call it
Project World Record.
[man] Set.
[intriguing jazz music playing]
[Montgomery] When we got back,
we were going to put together the plan.
What do the program needs to look like
in order to get nine-nine-two
to nine-seven-five?
So you can talk about stuff,
but can you implement and achieve it?
That's a whole 'nother...
That separates the men from the boys.
I immediately reached out
to Charlie Francis,
who was Ben Johnson's coach
and he lived in Toronto,
and then I reached out to Milos Sarcev.
They call him Milos the Mind
because he's a very smart guy.
In terms of the weight training program,
Trevor Graham really was kind of
the frontman as a coach.
[Montgomery] And then Victor Conte,
you're behind the pharmacology.
[Conte] Taking growth hormones,
taking insulin, EPO, taking The Clear,
and we created a... a calendar.
[Montgomery] So when you on steroids,
you have to have a plan
that goes with the medication.
It was thrilling.
[Conte] You know,
more does not mean better.
This is how you optimize the drugs.
He had a system.
I got me a real connect. A real doctor.
Until I found out Victor wasn't a doctor.
[Conte] A lot of people
mistakenly call me doctor.
I don't know why, 'cause I... I guess
because I'm interpreting
blood test results and I'm giving them
the type of information that a doctor
would give them, I guess.
Most people know me as a bass player.
I played with many groups that had albums.
Uh, the most famous
would be Tower of Power.
["What is Hip" by Tower of Power playing]
The passing years would show
You into a hip trip
But I had three daughters.
I was on the road ten months a year,
and I'd come back
and they'd be this much taller.
Hi, camera.
- [Conte] Well, how are you?
- How are you?
[Conte] I want you to tell me
what your name is.
What's your name?
[Conte] No, you tell me what's your name.
- My name is Veronica.
- [Conte] Where do you live at?
We... I live at my house.
My youngest memory, there were always
athletes around, and oftentimes,
the people we were going to support
were making big achievements
and so it was exciting.
[Conte] Could you tell Daddy what the name
of the place is that he works at?
- Yeah.
- [Conte] What's the name?
It's BALCO.
[Conte] BALCO? What is...
What does BALCO do?
You working.
[Conte] I know, but what do I do there?
What kind of work?
So I would say in my teenage years was
when I really knew, "Okay, this is..."
"My dad's involved in the dark side."
And he was just open and honest with me
about what was going on.
At the time,
I knew that he was kind of the mastermind
behind this Project World Record effort.
[indistinct chatter]
[Conte] Oh, this is Modesto Relays.
This is May of 2001.
[commentator] Tim Montgomery in two...
That was the first race
where he won in a world-leading time.
Tim just destroyed it.
[Veronica] Tim won. Tim won!
- [man] He did?
- [Veronica] Tim won!
- Oh my God!
- [man] They're shaking hands.
[Veronica] They're shaking hands, so cute.
I love this!
This is the most exciting thing
I've ever experienced.
[Conte] On the back of his shirt,
it says "Project World Record."
We were there announcing
that we were going
to break the world record.
I ran nine-nine-six.
We knew from then it was no stopping.
[propulsive music playing]
[Conte] The transformation was incredible.
[Montgomery]
Starting Project World Record,
I weighed 148 pounds.
[Conte] We bulked him up to 176.
We put, like, 28 pounds of muscle on him
in a short period of time.
Greg Anderson was coming to BALCO
to help Tim Montgomery
with all the weight training,
and in eight weeks his bench press
went from 265 to 345.
Ten pounds a week increase.
He looked like an NFL linebacker,
and previously they called him Tiny Tim.
[Montgomery] It was incredible.
Felt like Conan the Barbarian.
[clang]
[Montgomery] Me and Victor,
we were together all day.
Ate breakfast together, lunch together,
dinner together, we partied together.
It became like we're a team.
My habits changed.
I had a plan,
how much to take, when to take them,
and what to take with them.
You know, he became kind of muscle-bound.
You could see he was running like this
because his lats were so big.
Then we cut him back to about 160.
Victor Conte was honcho.
And then from there, I went to Oslo.
[commentator] On the right,
here comes Tim Montgomery.
It's Montgomery in lane four
with a late surge.
Unofficially 9.84 seconds.
[Montgomery] And I felt so good.
Oh, I could beat everybody.
[commentator] Boy, the difference
has been pronounced this year.
Only Maurice Greene has ever run faster.
This is the transformation that happens.
It... It makes you Superman.
[reporter] Montgomery makes history,
but more importantly,
he sends shock waves
through the sprint world.
What has Trevor been teaching you?
Trevor Graham, your coach now.
To stay patient and wait for it to come.
Don't try to break the world record,
let the world record come to you.
[man] Go!
We were like,
"Next race we break the world record."
"Next race. Next race up,
we break the world record."
You're on the edge
of greatness and disaster.
That feeling becomes addictive.
[pouring]
[ding]
[Novitzky] For me, this thing
that I love so much, sport,
were being sullied by the presence
of PEDs and breaking rules,
and the unethical decisions of,
"Well, I'm gonna break this rule
because it's gonna get me
something good on the other end."
And so this case consumed my life.
It literally consumed my life, and...
From the time I woke up in the morning,
to the time that I went to sleep at night,
that's literally all I was thinking of.
- [whirring]
- [mellow jazz music playing]
[producer] What gave you the idea
to go through his trash to begin with?
Yeah, I think that was a technique
in the first couple of years of my career,
and a lot of agents didn't like to do it,
'cause it wasn't fun.
[jazz music continues]
However, I don't think trash examinations
have ever gotten as much notoriety...
[chuckling]...and coverage as mine did.
So BALCO was
a lower-risk trash collection.
They put their trash out
every Monday night.
And I'd go, you know, 11:00, midnight,
got in and out of there
as fast as possible.
This is just various stuff
that was unsealed during the BALCO trial.
This is where the trash
was placed every night.
Was right about here,
where in the mornings,
the dump... you know,
the trashman would come collect it,
but he'd come here and it'd be empty
'cause I took it the night before.
I'd usually drive it to a dumpster
that was well-lit, kind of in the area,
so that I could discard the smelly stuff,
food items, that I didn't want.
I remember bringing stuff home
the first night
and I started finding these, uh,
medications, used like, torn-up wrappers.
And I'm like, "Hey, am I... am I right
in seeing what I'm seeing right here?"
[Catlin] He needed to know
what the drugs were that he was finding,
and so he called our lab.
[chuckling] The lab folks
were suspicious, frankly.
They were just... You know, it was some
random person playing an IRS agent.
[Novitzky] Basically came out
and told him what I was doing, um,
and what I was finding.
[chuckling] And realized
that Jeff really was an IRS agent.
[Novitzky] We started putting
some pieces of the puzzle together.
So this was the first night I did,
and this was human growth hormone,
a torn-up box, the box of testosterone.
Here's the note
from a world champion shot putter.
"Here's a check for the next cycle.
I need it by the end of the week."
"Thanks. Kevin."
He was just careless and haphazard
in what trash he threw away
as anyone I've ever run across
in my law enforcement career.
[tense music builds]
[commentator 1] Top of the wrist...
[commentator 2] Here's a long home run
by Bonds, number 39.
It sails over the fence.
This is the hottest man
in the history of baseball, home run-wise,
at this point
in any season over 100 years.
In 2001, Barry was going
for the 70 home run... The season record.
It was very exciting
for me to... to know him
and to be a fan of his
and doing my best to help him
in any way that I could.
[commentator] Number 43
on the year for Bonds.
[Schmidt] So you've had this guy
with a Hall of Fame career,
he's on the downslide,
and all of a sudden
he begins performing at a level
that... that even Babe Ruth couldn't.
[commentator] Number 45 for Bonds.
I've never seen anything like this
in my life besides Mark McGwire,
and Sammy Sosa...
[reporter] Forty-nine homers faster
than any major-leaguer in history.
I can't explain it.
If I knew what I was doing
I would've done this a long time ago.
[commentator] Fifty for Barry Bonds.
[Novitzky] I think it was almost genius
that his scheme primarily was,
"Barry Bonds, I'm going
to give you these drugs."
"Don't pay me checks, money orders, wire."
"Instead, you're going to promote
my SNAC line of supplements."
The acronym stands for Scientific
Nutrition for Advanced Conditioning.
The AM formula is called Vitalize.
The PM formula is called ZMA.
Tell the world that this is the reason why
you're approaching the home run record.
[commentator] It is outta here!
[Conte] Would you like to vitalize
your mind and vitalize your body?
Then it's time to get
vitalized with the SNAC system.
[rock music playing]
[Conte] ZMA, it blew up
to the point where, in 2000,
we had four different brands of ZMA
in all 9,000 GNC stores nationwide.
So you'd walk around any mall
and see ZMA in the window.
This is Mr. Barry Bonds.
This is a photo shoot that he did
and they had a capture of him
on the front cover.
[Novitzky] "And I want you to go out
and talk to Muscle and Fitness
about how great my supplement line is."
"Say, 'Liquid ZMA
helped me get five medals
at the Sydney Olympics and break
these home run records.'"
And, I mean,
that paid off a tremendous amount.
I'm sure hundreds of thousands,
if not millions, in sales.
[commentator] Here's the pitch.
Bonds hits one hard to right field.
Outta here!
And he joins Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa,
Babe Ruth and Roger Maris,
the only players to hit 60
or more home runs in a season.
[Conte] Oh.
This is a... This is a room
where we dress up all the athletes.
[chuckling] As you can see,
we got lots of different gear here.
So, branding is how I win.
[Montgomery] We were thinking that,
okay, we promote the ZMA,
no one would find out
about what's behind the scene of the ZMA.
He has the top athletes.
It's like, when you're doing a crime,
you think you're the smartest person
that's committing the crime.
Then you look back and say, "That was
the dumbest thing I ever thought of."
[commentator 1] The men's 100-meter dash
presented by Pontiac Grand Prix.
[commentator 2] And there's a man who
I think is running very well this year.
Tim Montgomery, I think,
is the favorite going into this final.
[commentator 1] Has to be.
Back in the finals
of the men's 100 meters at US trials,
Nike was going to give me $50,000
to wear their clothes in the finals.
[Conte] Tim wore the ZMA logo
and we had two or three
different outfits made
that were one piece that had ZMA on 'em,
and he wore them in many races.
We already had an agreement
that was made that he would wear it,
and then at the last minute
there was some mention that,
"Oh, Nike wants me to wear their stuff."
And Victor was like,
"Who you going to be loyal to,
me or them?"
So I'm like, "It's 50,000 dollar, homie."
And he was like,
"My time is worth millions."
Project team leader's the boss,
the project team leader's the one
that finances the whole project.
So I say, "Okay, you have been with me.
I'm going to wear ZMA in the finals."
Not one person in track and field
has ever run with a vitamin company...
[chuckling]...on their uniform
in the history of track and field.
[commentator] Here comes Montgomery,
and it is Tim Montgomery...
[Montgomery] I wore ZMA in the finals
and then I signed with Nike
after the race,
and Victor was upset
because he wanted
to control that contract.
He went from being a doctor
to now an agent.
If I had a signed agreement with Victor,
you would have seen it on the screen.
For going to the world championship,
Victor had already hit me with...
He wanted 35 percent of my winnings.
It was the percentage
that he wanted going forward.
[Conte] That's... I never asked
for any percentage of his winnings ever.
That's just a complete lie
and a fabrication by... by Tim.
He was committed to me.
I brought him to the dance,
now he's gonna dance with somebody else?
You tell me, is that... is that fair?
And so, at a certain point, I just said,
"Well, I can't continue with this guy."
I terminated my relationship with him.
[Montgomery] I'm trying to fathom him
saying he ended the relationship with me
and I'm on the verge
of breaking the world record.
Listen, I like Victor.
Victor hurt me...
when he wanted 35%,
because I considered him as a friend.
"Look into my eyes and tell me
you feel like I owe you something."
"What did you give me
for wearing ZMA at US trials?"
So I was done with Victor, period.
And Victor was like,
"Oh. Oh, you can't walk away."
"I'm the show.
You ain't gonna run fast without me."
I said, "Watch me.
I can do this on my own."
[engine running]
[engine stops]
[door closes]
[suspenseful music playing]
[Novitzky] One thing, I was finding, uh,
dozens of discarded
one-use syringe wrappers
but no syringes, and thought,
"Man, if I had the syringe,
maybe I could send the syringe
for DNA analysis."
We were able to subpoena
the medical waste company,
so when they picked up the medical waste,
the sharps box from BALCO
on a weekly basis,
they'd bring it back to their hub,
set it aside for me
and I would go through that.
Syringes we sent to laboratories.
They were able to extract
what the substances were
being, uh, injected.
We were keeping track
of what mail was being delivered.
They will give you where the mail's
coming from and who it's addressed to.
And even found
an email from Patrick Arnold,
where he's chronicling sending
Victor Conte the designer steroid.
Financial ledgers
showing payments from the athletes,
invoices for a substance
called epitestosterone.
When you use The Clear,
it would throw your natural hormone
imbalance completely out of whack,
and that was something
that anti-doping was looking at.
They were looking at something called
the testosterone to epitestosterone ratio.
In sport, there's a four to one ratio
that we look for of T to E.
If it's above four to one, that's a sign
that somebody's doping with testosterone.
[Novitzky] Victor Conte
created the Cream to bring up that ratio
so that the testosterone
would not get out of whack
and show an abnormal ratio.
Using these protocols
to try to avoid detection,
it's absolutely a cat-and-mouse game.
[commentator] Annihilated it,
but to the second baseman,
who turned it into a double play
the first time he faced him.
Bonds swings, and there it goes.
It's heading for McCovey Cove.
It is gone!
A home run.
Number 69 for Bonds.
[Schmidt] I think the whole thing
starts to get a little curious.
Like, what's really going on here?
You know, baseball made a big deal
and the media made a big deal
that players were, you know,
lifting weights, you know, in ways
that players hadn't in decades before,
and they're eating better and, you know,
that's why they're hitting more home runs,
but it didn't totally add up.
[commentator] He's within
one of the record.
You know,
I saw these numbers being put out
and knew what was going on
behind the scenes
and knew that they weren't real.
They were as a result
of using these... these substances.
[audience cheering]
[commentator] Bonds with a drive...
Looks like number 70 for Barry Bonds.
And it is! Tying the all-time record set
in 1998 by Mark McGwire.
[Conte] Can somebody gain 20 pounds
in a year, you know,
without using steroids?
And the answer is, they can.
You know, it depends upon
what sort of training you're doing,
how many calories you're consuming,
and what those calories consist of.
[producer] I thought you gave
Barry Bonds a lot of steroids?
[chuckles] No, I did not
give Barry Bonds any steroids.
[commentator] There's a high drive
deep into right center field,
to the big part of the ballpark!
Number 71!
And what a shot!
Over the 421-foot marker.
[Conte] I mean, I was not with him
when he was training.
Greg was pretty much administering
whatever supplements that he took.
[producer] And had you given
The Clear to Greg?
Yes.
This seems like a gotcha moment
that you want to go say,
"I... I know Barry Bonds took steroids."
That's not gonna happen
because I don't know that.
Now, do you want me to guess?
You want me to guess
if I think Barry Bonds took steroids?
I think it's likely.
Do I have any direct evidence?
Only what I saw in terms of the discovery
that they gave me
after the fact of some of the records
that Greg kept indicate that.
[producer] Who's this one?
It says "Bib," B-I-B.
I... I don't know who that is.
And then it says "March"
and it says "April."
Let me see what else is on there.
[producer] Could that be
Barry Lamar Bonds?
[Conte] Could... Could be B-L-B,
but this... this is not my handwriting.
I hate to speculate or guess.
You know,
this could have been Greg Anderson,
I... I don't know that.
So, I... This is the first time
I've ever seen this.
[Montgomery] In 2002,
I had no reason to panic,
I had every reason to be happy.
I'm training good.
My times were even better
or the same, you know?
[commentator] Tim Montgomery pulling away
from everybody with 9.91 seconds.
He is getting more and more consistent.
[Conte] He continued on
working with Charlie Francis
with Trevor Graham as the frontman.
And he had stockpiled enough of the drugs
that I'd given him.
[Montgomery stammering] No.
No.
Not a person in this world
got a year's supply from Victor.
He rations out everything week by week.
I only had insulin
that was non-detectable,
and I had HGH.
So, as the year kept going,
I kept getting faster.
And so last track meet of the year,
we at Grand Prix finals.
[commentator] Running 9.91
earlier this year
was Tim Montgomery in lane five.
My mind was all over the place
coming out there.
I just rolled with it.
[commentator] ...Olympic gold medalist
and world record holder.
You feel like you are ready for it
'cause you trained up to that moment
to do something great.
Greatness comes when greatness comes.
- [commentator] ...is in lane four.
- [man] Set!
[commentator] Very fast start.
Out quickly is Tim Montgomery.
Chambers beside him now.
That was the part of me dreaming
that one day I'd be a part
of something that would be great.
[commentator] Montgomery with slight lead,
Montgomery by two feet, three feet.
Nine-point-seven-eight seconds,
a world record for Tim Montgomery.
Sensational performance to win...
It was historic.
[commentator] Nine-seven-eight.
They posted what his reaction
time out of the blocks was.
You cannot be
faster than one-tenth of a second.
And so everybody,
"You see what you just done?"
And I look back...
it is nine-seven-eight, and I'm like...
And the world just go black.
[commentator] And it is official,
a world record for Tim Montgomery.
[Montgomery] When I took the lap
and I came back around
and I took the picture by 9.78,
I said to myself, "You done it."
"You done it."
[Conte] You know,
it was kind of bittersweet because
I knew that wouldn't have happened
without me and without Milos
and without Charlie,
and it... it was a brain trust.
It took... He certainly
couldn't have done it on his own.
That's my opinion anyway.
[reporter] ...new world record holder,
Tim Montgomery.
You just stepped right in and took it all.
It's unbelievable.
That's all I can say. It's unbelievable.
[laughter]
[reporter] How you gonna top this
for next year, Tim?
Nine-seventy-five.
I thought the next chapter of my life
was going to be, oh,
the greatest of all time.
Ended up being a nightmare. [chuckles]
This instrument over here
that we have is a triple quad LC-MS.
What you're looking at here
can take apart a molecule,
put it into multiple different peaks
that can then be fingerprinted
and matched to a drug in question.
So, this was what we used
to be able to break the code
and break the back of BALCO.
[click]
[Catlin] The process
of actually decoding what The Clear was
started when this mystery
syringe arrived at our laboratory.
[Novitzky] Turned out that that steroid
was given to USADA by Trevor Graham,
the track and field coach
who, at one time,
was working with BALCO and Victor Conte
but had a falling out.
It was not at all simple for us
to figure out what it was.
We put it through our instruments,
and when you put a substance
into a mass spectrometer,
you come up with a bunch of peaks,
and it's a matter of trying
to identify those peaks,
and that was ultimately the work
that took many months for us to do.
[Novitzky] And they basically
reverse engineered it,
and figured out what exactly
that they were looking at.
So, unbeknownst to the athletes,
they had created a test for that
when they thought they were using
a substance there was no test for yet.
[tense music playing]
[Conte] I knew for months and months
somebody's watching,
and it started with the mailman saying,
"Listen, there's law enforcement
of some kind
that's copying all your mail every day."
I need to start paying
attention a bit more,
'cause it's... Big Brother's watching.
[Novitzky] Near the tail end of that year,
where I was collecting trash,
I had a dumpster that was well lit
that I was regularly going to,
and they moved the dumpster.
And so I located what I thought
was another secure one.
[Conte] Started getting calls
from the owner of the building.
And he said,
"Stop dumping your trash in our dumpster."
I said, "Oh my God."
I went over there to see,
and sure enough, our trash was
in his dumpster. I said, "Oh my God."
They did it again. They did it again.
But the third time, this guy called,
he said, "I'm calling the police, okay?"
My dad called me and said, "Hey, have you
looked at the throwaway paper this week?"
I'm like, "No, why?" He goes,
"Look at their police blotter section."
Sure enough, there's a story about trash
from BALCO Laboratories illegally dumped.
Scared me.
You know, I came very close,
I think, to... to being caught.
So, the combination
of the trash being discovered,
the mail cover being disclosed,
we thought it's about time now, I think,
that we needed to go overt in this case.
[tense music sting]
[Cheryl Hurd] So, on September 3rd, 2003,
my assignment desk
received this weird call,
"Go to this location." "But what time?"
"Well, we don't know what time."
"Just be there and wait."
We started seeing cars coming in.
Looks like agents.
What kind of agents?
The IRS?
We didn't know who they were after,
how long it was going to last.
They're going into this building.
I don't know what BALCO is.
We were on edge.
We... We didn't know
if... if there would be gunfire.
It was... It was very intense.
And right through that driveway,
and in here and here and here
and around the corner,
that's where six or seven black
cars came in full of SWAT team agents
wearing flak jackets with rifles
and... and a helicopter came
and was hovering right there.
[reporter] Federal agents raided
a Burlingame building
housing the Bay Area
Laboratory Co-operative, BALCO.
All of a sudden, SWAT teams came in.
It was... It was like out of the movies.
[Novitzky] There was
some controversy over,
"Oh, they brought, you know,
20, 30 agents, they all had guns."
Well, we... we carry guns.
That's what we did,
and we brought these guns
to every search warrant we did.
Everything I saw,
they were secured to their side.
They weren't drawn
as we were making entry.
I looked out the window
and here comes ABC, NBC, CBS.
Next thing you know,
these satellites are coming up.
So somebody from Novitzky's team
must have called the news desk.
[producer] Can you say
who your sources were?
Of course I can't say who my sources are.
I did not tip them off, no.
Their neighbors are seeing
who the customers are of this business.
They're seeing Barry Bonds
walk into this business frequently.
People are going to start talking
and making some calls.
[Hurd] A representative of BALCO
was escorted out of the building.
[reporter] Victor Conte
is one of four people
charged with distributing
the illegal substances.
[Hurd] I'm looking and I'm saying,
"Who is that guy with the ZMA hat on
kind of cocked to the side,
sweating profusely?"
He must be the bad guy.
That's my job as a reporter.
Find out who the bad guy is.
Federal officials wouldn't tell us
what they found
inside BALCO Laboratories last week.
No one has been charged,
and no arrests have been made.
[reporter] But US Olympic officials
believe BALCO
could be involved in a conspiracy
to beat drug tests
by designing a new steroid.
[Veronica] It felt very over the top.
Like, "Is there more to this story
than I know?" You know?
Like, why is this being amplified so much?
[tense music playing]
[Novitzky] When we were conducting
the search warrant at BALCO,
we found bankers boxes
with athletes' names on the box...
On these folders within that box,
and then within those folders
were doping calendars,
financial ledgers, uh, Quest, uh,
urine steroid tests,
some of them positive, um,
and then multiple boxes
full of these drugs.
It was a virtual pharmacy, uh,
that we found in the storage locker.
And based on the amount of evidence
that I had collected,
I knew what questions to ask.
I'm reading here
from the memorandum of interview
written by Jeff Novitzky,
September 3rd, 2003.
And he had a list that he had made.
It said, "Track and Field,"
"NFL," and "MLB,"
and he had these names on the list.
[Novitzky] We went down that list,
and absolutely, he said,
definitively, "I've given these athletes
The Clear and The Cream."
[Conte] He said, "Did you work
with these players or these athletes?"
And I thought he meant blood testing,
nutritional supplements,
developing individualized program.
No mention about giving
any drugs to any of them.
Yeah, that's not the truth.
I mean, I was very explicit about that.
Think about it, I go in there and say,
"Have you worked with these athletes?"
And not ask,
"What does that work entail?
Have you given them drugs?"
That's the whole reason I was there.
Never gave Barry Bonds
The Cream or The Clear.
He can't give you one shred of evidence
linking me to having anything to do
with giving Barry Bonds steroids.
And if he's got it, where is it?
[Novitzky] Barry Bonds was consistently
providing urine
and blood samples to BALCO.
I have those records and they showed
he was testing positive for things like
methenolone,
high-level anabolic steroid, nandrolone,
so there is no doubt he knowingly used
performance-enhancing drugs
and used a lot of them
for a several-year period
that assisted him in achieving
these... these hallowed records in sports,
without a doubt.
[unsettling music playing]
[reporter] This evening,
you've heard it before.
Athletes and steroids.
Dozens of the biggest names in sports
will be taking time off from competition
to tell a grand jury what they know about
the maker of a so-called designer steroid.
[Novitzky] After the raid,
we subpoenaed several dozen
of these high-profile athletes
to the grand jury in San Francisco
and told 'em, "Tell the truth in there,
this may be the last you hear from us."
"You're certainly not going to be
a target of this investigation
if you go in and tell the truth."
I get, uh, a... subpoena,
and they're sitting down saying that
they have ledgers and everything
on us working with Victor.
So I talked about my involvement.
I was taking The Clear.
HGH, I did use.
And I told them grand jurors
that you don't know
what you was getting for Victor.
Victor was a con artist.
He's not a doctor.
[Novitzky] These powerful
hormonal substances
really hadn't undergone
any clinical trials or human testing.
So they were literally
using these athletes as guinea pigs.
[Montgomery] Victor can read about
what HGH does to the body,
he can read about what EPO does,
and then he can use you to see
if he got the formula right.
[Novitzky] Even found an email
from Patrick Arnold:
"Hey, here's what I've created,
but I don't quite know what the dosage is
so you have to experiment on that."
Some of the female athletes said,
they didn't get their menstrual cycles
for months if not years
while they were on this stuff.
Victor Conte is your doctor
and your pharmacist.
That's very, very dangerous.
Oh, my God. So I've been doing
comprehensive blood testing on everybody,
making sure
there were no adverse health effects
and all the dosages were correct.
So the opposite was true.
You become numb
to what's right and what's wrong.
At the end of the day,
I wanted something so bad...
at any price... possible.
[John Ashcroft]
After an 18-month investigation,
a federal grand jury
in the Northern District of California
unsealed a 42-count indictment
charging four individuals
with distribution of illegal
anabolic steroids to dozens of athletes.
[reporter] Today's indictment
charges Bonds' trainer, Greg Anderson,
and this man, Victor Conte,
with running the operation,
money laundering and using code names
for drugs to cover up the scheme.
Illegal steroid use calls into question
not only the integrity
of the athletes who used them,
but also the integrity
of the sports that those athletes play.
Well, I think it's rather odd
that, uh, Mr. Ashcroft got involved.
I don't want to say it's political,
but it is political.
The use of performance-enhancing drugs
like steroids
in baseball, football and other sports,
is dangerous
and it sends the wrong message.
So tonight I call on team owners,
coaches and players to take the lead,
to get tough
and to get rid of steroids now.
It's like, uh,
going after a fly with a bazooka
when there are thousands
of other flies running around.
It's not even going
to make a dent in the problem.
[tense music playing]
[reporter] If convicted on all counts,
the defendants face
long prison terms and hefty fines.
I knew that they didn't have the evidence
that they claimed that they had.
Why do you think on the day
of the 42-count indictment
that I walked out
into a sea of reporters and did this?
That meant this.
[Veronica] At that point, there were times
he was in the news every day.
So every time there were court hearings,
there was a ton of media
really villainizing him.
Um, forty-two counts,
it seemed like a lot.
You know, I remember him grabbing my hand
to guide me through the media
and all the cameras
and everyone shouting, and...
it's intimidating.
The whole investigation, in my opinion,
was all about chasing headlines.
Novitzky was bragging
to the undercover agents, you know,
saying, "I'm going to be
the modern-day Eliot Ness."
"I'm going to bust Al Capone.
Movie deals, book deals."
Yeah, I probably said that because,
going back to my training,
you, as an agent,
need to find those investigations
that are going to get the most coverage.
And hopefully, other people out there
that are breaking a similar law
are gonna say, "I don't want to get
caught up in this, so I'm gonna back out."
I believe that Jeff Novitzky
was feeding information to the Chronicle.
Nope. Not whatsoever.
I think it was
his narcissistic personality
that, you know, Victor was like,
"No publicity is bad publicity."
Um, you know, I remember
the night he went on 20/20.
He was indicted,
but the case hasn't been resolved yet,
and we got a call
from his defense attorneys saying,
"I don't know what our guy's doing.
He's going on 20/20 tonight."
"An entire hour is dedicated
to everything he's been doing."
I knew that this was the most coveted
of all, you know, records and gold medals.
Um, so we kind of had a collective dream
and I was the mastermind, so to speak.
[Martin Bashir] You're designing,
in effect, a criminal conspiracy
to break the world record.
That's what it was, wasn't it?
Well, if you're asking if it included
illegal activity, the answer would be yes.
And sure enough,
he disclosed all of his criminal activity
on national television.
Nobody does that.
Are you saying Marion Jones
was a drugs cheat?
Without a doubt.
And that you saw her even inject herself?
You saw that happen?
That's correct.
Victor Conte is delusional. [chuckles]
To start taking out athletes
on the system he was part of.
[Bashir] Did you fear there was
a moral problem when you realized
that if you wanted to compete
you had to cheat?
The answer is no.
If you've got the knowledge that
that's what everybody's doing,
and those are the real rules of the game,
then you're not cheating.
[Conte] I... I was called
a lot of very bad names.
Dr. Frankenstein,
the Saddam Hussein of sports.
But one of the most important things
you learn is that you need adversity.
You know?
If you want to build big muscles
you got to lift big weights.
[Ed Swanson]
Victor was in a difficult spot
when we got into the case.
Uh, he had done the 20/20 interview,
the case was on the boil
and it wasn't headed in the direction
that he wanted it to go.
Victor's previous counsel
had already filed a number of motions
to suppress evidence,
to suppress statements,
dealing with the agents
in a very confrontational manner,
and Victor had to make a big decision,
whether or not
to try and resolve the case,
or whether to be embroiled
in this battle for the next year.
And Victor made the decision
to have us negotiate the case.
We thought this case involved warehouses
of steroids and millions of dollars,
because that's the way
the story was being told.
Once we started to look at it,
everything began to shrink
and the millions became hundreds
and the warehouse became a locker,
and the amount of drugs became something
you could fit in your hand.
Our technical term for the amount of drugs
in this case was "teensy."
Week after week,
we would sit down with the prosecutors
and would take another piece of the case,
and we would say, "You've charged this,
it's not illegal and here's why."
To their credit, they listened to us
and they pushed back,
and it was so much fun.
There's no question what he had done.
He had provided athletes
with the substance.
The question was, was that illegal?
The Clear was not illegal,
and our position was
even The Cream was not illegal.
[McNamara] Which was a diluted
amount of steroid testosterone
in a lotion to be applied on the skin.
And the law didn't apply to mixtures.
[McNamara] The amount of money
that Victor was transacting
amounted to less than a thousand dollars,
which is so below the power of what
federal prosecutions generally prosecute.
[Swanson] It was as thin as it gets.
There's never another case we've seen
where someone was charged
with drug distribution of an amount
that doesn't even register
in the sentencing guidelines,
but that was their case.
[reporter] Anything to say today, Victor?
Uh, afterwards.
[camera shutter clicking]
[Conte] I will never forget the day
that I picked up the front page
of the San Francisco Chronicle,
and the headline said,
"40 of 42 BALCO charges dropped."
And the subtitle was,
"The wrist slap heard around the world."
- [reporters clamoring]
- [reporter] Mr. Conte, care to comment...
[Hurd] Victor Conte pleaded guilty
to two felony counts today.
One, conspiracy to distribute steroids,
the other, money laundering.
The Feds should be embarrassed.
It started with 42 counts,
Victor Conte will now plead guilty
to only two counts.
And we quote, "This deal
does not require Mr. Conte to assist
the prosecution of any other person
involved in the investigation."
- [woman] So the athletes walk.
- [man] There'll be no federal charges
and no criminal charges
against any athlete.
Victor Conte was sentenced
to six months in federal prison.
Typically, in federal prison,
with good behavior,
you do 85% of that time.
So he did a little over four months.
Here's some pictures that my dad sent me
from the, um, prison camp.
This is him and his cellmate.
His name was Evil.
He was a scare to my dad at first,
let me tell you, as you can imagine why.
Like, oh, I'm dead meat in this cell...
[laughs] You know, when he first met him,
but he had his back,
and they became good friends.
They're still friends to this day.
I was happy to see
that he was making friends and really...
You know, it was humbling.
Humbling experience for him, so...
[Conte] I took full responsibility,
did not cooperate
in any way, shape or form.
I did some wrongdoing,
I deserved to go
to prison camp just like I did.
I went and I served my time.
And, of course,
when I went through the... the front door,
they immediately grabbed me
and they put me through
the metal detector,
and it was, "Toes and nose
against the wall."
And here I am being handcuffed,
and I realized, "I belong to them now."
And I had mailed myself some magazines,
and I timed it so that it would get there
when I got there.
When they brought the mail that day,
they put my mail
through the food slot in the door.
In addition to the magazines
I'd sent myself
was this letter from my youngest daughter.
Where do you live at?
I live at my house.
[Conte] What's... Where's your house?
In what city?
[voice breaking] And there were pictures
of my kids, and, uh...
[emotional music playing]
Yeah, that's kind of when it all hit me.
[sniffles]
[voice breaks] I realized that
I'd completely lost control of my life.
I hadn't really
reflected upon, you know...
how serious the consequences were.
But I thought that,
"I'm a big boy, I'm a man."
"Whatever happens,
I'll be able to deal with it."
I was... Had been a horrible father.
I took... I took their sense of security
away from them.
And created a lot of uncertainty.
[Veronica] I think
success is addictive, uh,
praise and credit is addictive,
but I don't defend what my dad did.
I think it's clear
that he crossed some ethical lines.
And I wish he didn't.
[voice breaking] But I didn't realize
that this was the same effect
on all the athletes' families.
That they had to deal with their kids
coming home saying,
"Dad, at school
they're saying you used steroids."
"Did you use steroids?"
And kids don't understand,
you know, so it's, uh...
[trembling]
[Montgomery] Three of my kids
run track and field.
The second-oldest boy
has been training with me.
He's like,
"Dad, what steroids do for you?"
And I said, "Ruin your whole life."
Runners, take your mark.
Set.
I told him, "If you cross the finish line
and you were first and tested positive,
what did you gain?"
When you leave,
you wanna know that you did it right.
Sometimes you can over try.
You got to always feel like
you don't have a second chance.
Everything I did in the past,
all the wrongs I did,
well, my son said,
"Dad, I care nothing about that."
"I believe in you right now."
And so, as I think about it...
Victor Conte believed
in Project World Record the same way.
He believed in the dream.
I guess in some respects,
did we create a monster?
Uh, maybe a little, but, I mean, I think
most people who hear and see Victor Conte
realize him for who he is,
and that's, you know,
a used car, snake oil salesman guy,
bullshit artist.
I'd like to dedicate my life
to helping to create a level playing field
for the young athletes of the future.
I'm, by far, most proud of my contribution
to the anti-doping movement,
and went and met with WADA,
the World Anti Doping Agency.
I reveal specifically how these athletes
are circumventing the anti-doping policies
and procedures in place.
What they're doing now is they're using
duck and dodge techniques.
Just take it like this
and put it under the tongue.
I think there's abuse going on.
I think there needs to be
a further investigation.
- But how many guys are using it?
- My guess is about 50%.
[Rogan] Fifty of MMA athletes,
or professional athletes?
Yes, of MMA.
Now because you can't make
a living cheating anymore,
you want to flip the other side
and call people out, pointing fingers?
I can't believe anybody
even listens to this guy,
anybody even quotes this guy.
Victor Conte is a two-faced piece of shit.
So Victor administrated the drugs,
then he gave the drug people the system
on how to catch you now
so that he can do something different.
And that's something
you can never take from a hustler,
the hustle.
[Conte] It just so happens
that the red-light district of sport,
which is boxing,
I was able to find a home there.
[grunts]
- [bell rings]
- [grunts]
With Victor,
people will come to me and say,
"He's a cheater and he's going to try to
give you drugs or he is giving you drugs,"
and stuff like that,
but I never really paid attention to it.
Yeah, I would say that
it is performance-enhancing,
just without the drugs.
[chuckling] Victor's definitely
the mad scientist.
You're a beast.
When you're doing high oxygen here,
it increases
the production of lactic acid,
that, in turn, triggers the production
of testosterone and growth hormone.
Your speed and your power are 10% greater.
There's a lot of things that work
that are legal.
[commentator] Wanted to see another gear
from Devin, he's showing us another gear.
Devin Haney is 30 and O.
He defends the undisputed...
[Novitzky] He'll take any publicity
as long as his name is in the lights,
so I don't think
you can believe a word that guy says.
[riveting music playing]
The BALCO investigation changed
the country's perspective
and the perspective
of the leagues towards drugs.
This record is not tainted at all.
At all.
[Schmidt] And it set off
consequential developments
that create
the drug-testing systems today.
[Veronica] I think the masses
remember Victor Conte
as the guy who single-handedly
brought down the world of sport.
I hope that changes.
[Hurd] Victor makes things work for him.
I think that that has a lot to do with him
controlling his own narrative.
I mean, it's the American way.
Isn't he still driving a Bentley?
[Conte] I realized there's no such thing
as bad publicity.
Like, Google Ads,
whatever the keywords that you put in,
if you put in "Barry Bonds"
or "Marion Jones"
or "BALCO" or whatever it is,
right next to it's an ad for ZMA, right?
So, in essence,
I was turning the lemon into lemonade.
Should I send the Feds a thank-you card?
They might have made me
millions of dollars.
[chuckles]
["It's All in the Game"
by Tommy Edwards plays]
But it's all in the game
All in the wonderful game...
[commentator] ...deals,
and Bonds hits one high, hits it deep!
It is outta here!
Seven-fifty-six!
And your future's looking dim
[audience cheering]
But these things
Your hearts can rise above
Once in a while he won't call
But it's all
In the game
Soon he'll be there at your side
With a sweet...
[commentator] 9.78 seconds.
A world record for Tim Montgomery.
[indistinct chatter]
[Montgomery] Did I deserve
to get taken away? Yes, I did.
But the experience I'll always live with,
and that's what they can't take back.
That moment of doing this...
they can never take it back.
[music stops]
That's the original sign
that was up behind the spectrometer
and the laboratory of BALCO for 20 years.
Probably worth at least a buck or two
I would think.
- [producer] You're gonna sell it?
- I don't know.
No, we'll probably just give it
to the baseball hall of fame.