By Mark Zeigler
SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
September 25, 2007
U.S. Attorney Robert Clark Corrente, foreground, flanked by agents from the IRS, FBI and DEA, announces indictments, seizures and arrests in an international smuggling and distribution ring for human growth hormone and anabolic steroids during a media briefing in Providence, R.I. on Monday, Sept. 24, 2007.An array of top law enforcement officials wearing expensive suits and stern faces stood behind U.S. Attorney Karen Hewitt yesterday morning at the federal courthouse in downtown San Diego as she proudly announced an international investigation that is called “Operation Raw Deal” and is being called the largest steroids bust in history.
The numbers are staggering: seven U.S. law enforcement agencies, 10 countries, 20 months, 56 underground labs, 124 arrests, 143 search warrants, 242 kilograms of steroid raw materials, $6.5 million and 11.4 million dosage units – or enough, by some calculations, to supply 50,000 muscle heads for a year.
Here's another number: zero.
That's how many names of athletes were revealed yesterday.
“The investigation is ongoing,” Hewitt said when pressed about names. “I'm not going to talk about specific customers.”
Next question: Can you say if some of them are athletes?
Hewitt: “There's a broad spectrum of individuals who are customers. I'm not going to go into details.”
The sad reality is that, without names, Operation Raw Deal – and the years of hard work by law enforcement agents here and across the country – likely will fade from the public consciousness by the weekend. Big names, not number of dosage units seized, drive the media these days.
You know all about BALCO, which implicated the biggest names in baseball (Barry Bonds) and track and field (Marion Jones), along with a couple of dozen more high-profile athletes.
But have you heard of Operation Gear Grinder?
Didn't think so. It came two years later and wiped out three-quarters of the illicit steroids trade in the United States from Mexican suppliers, impacting thousands of users across the country and making it that much harder for the high school kid trying to beef up for the football season to find “gear,” as steroids are called. Number of athletes implicated: zero.
Operation Raw Deal is a pumped-up version of Operation Gear Grinder, targeting the Chinese labs that provided steroid raw materials and the underground labs in the U.S. that processed and repackaged it.
“What Gear Grinder showed us is that we could take out what appeared to be the very source of the majority of anabolic steroids, which was Mexico,” said Timothy Coughlin, the assistant U.S. attorney who prosecuted those cases. “But we realized we really weren't cutting off the source. If we were really going to make an impact, we had to strategize and go after the source.”
Or as Ralph Partridge, who runs the Drug Enforcement Administration's San Diego office, put it: “We're aiming at the head of the dragon, if you will.”
The paradigm for U.S. law enforcement in the war on drugs, whether recreational or performance-enhancing, historically has been to go after the manufacturer and trafficker, and not the end user. Operation Raw Deal, on the surface at least, sounds like more of the same.
So athletes have nothing to worry about, right?
Maybe not.
Two things changed in recent years. One is that President Bush mentioned the scourge of steroid use in his State of the Union address in 2004. The other is BALCO, which showed law enforcement and anti-doping authorities could work together effectively.
Not on the podium at yesterday's news conference but in attendance was Travis Tygart, the CEO of the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency.
“I think it's a day of vindication for athletes who compete ethically and they see the federal government is willing to put its resources behind these types of investigations,” Tygart said. “Those who were maybe tempted to dope feel their decision not to do it is vindicated.”
And what about those who were tempted to dope, and did?
No one has been named, but you figure Tygart isn't flying out from Colorado for the news conference if elite athletes aren't involved. And the U.S. Olympic Committee isn't putting out a statement that calls Operation Raw Deal a “landmark victory” that “could represent the beginning of a new era.”
Beyond the 27 pill presses, three boats and 25 cars seized in raids of underground labs, investigators also obtained distribution lists and have begun compiling a database of “thousands” of end users.
“I'm not going to go into detail,” said Coughlin, the assistant U.S. attorney, “but that was certainly part of the DEA's strategy, to at some point identify the end users and begin to look at that as people who needed to be addressed and contacted.
“I think absolutely they should be worried . . . They will probably be contacted at some point in time by the DEA. I'm not indicating that there necessarily will be prosecutions, but they are in violation of the law.”
Or put it this way: If you're a college or professional athlete and you used steroids or human growth hormone or some other banned substance in the past few years, and unless you are 100 percent certain you can't be linked to its origin, you suddenly have that queasy feeling in your stomach that is equal parts fear and paranoia.
Fear, because you know you did something wrong and you might now get caught.
Paranoia, because you don't know when.
“It's probably a day of reckoning for a lot of athletes,” USADA's Tygart said. “There are probably a lot of nervous people in locker rooms.”
Mark Zeigler: (619) 293-2205; mark.zeigler@uniontrib.com
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