The Armstrong Lie Page #11

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me knew I was telling the truth.

However, when it affected Frankie's

ability to work in the sport,

that's when I put my

foot down and I said,

"I'm going to be obsessed with

getting the truth out there."

This is the first time

Andreu has spoken about it on television.

He replied, "Growth hormone,

"steroids, testosterone,

EPO, cortisone."

From the moment

Betsy started speaking out,

Frankie was confronted by an

old teammate, George Hincapie.

Frankie was my mentor,

and the first time I ever saw dope

was in Frankie's refrigerator.

And that's when I realized,

"Well, f***, I have to dope."

So for me,

that really bothered me

that all of a sudden he changed,

and he wasn't racing anymore and

said, "Well, Lance is doping."

Well, I mean,

you taught me how to dope.

How could you stand by when you

know that you did what you did?

Lance never sat there and said,

"You're gonna dope or you're

out or I'm firing you."

That's just not true, and they made

it seem like that was the case.

You're either on his side,

or you're off his side.

If you crossed him,

you were doomed.

You were thrown out

very quickly, cast aside,

and then you could

sit there waiting

for the revenge to

be sent upon you.

That desire to bully.

That desire to crush people.

He tried to wreck their lives.

Armstrong used his fame

to undermine the credibility

of his critics like Greg LeMond.

Greg, who I know has serious

drinking and drug problems,

was clearly intoxicated.

Hey, Emma!

Emma O'Reilly, part of

Postal's team support staff,

had helped Lance

hide his doping.

After she left the team,

she told a reporter about it.

Emma.

Afraid that we were

gonna out her as a,

you know,

all these things she said,

as a whore or whatever.

I don't know.

Lance's lawyers pressured

Emma to change her tune,

but she was determined to tell the

truth and refused to back down.

Lance's counsel sued for libel

in Britain and France.

One of his many modus

operandi was "just sue."

The financial drain, the emotional

drain, the mental drain...

It's a pretty effective legal

strategy when you think about it.

It's like,

"I've got deeper pockets,

"and I can fight this war of

attrition and you can't."

It just built one upon another,

and the denials

became more defiant,

and the arguments

became more heated.

I should have just backed away.

In 2004, Armstrong launched

lawsuits over L.A. Confidentiel,

the first book to air

doping charges against him.

He stopped its

publication in America,

forced an apology and won a

judgment worth $1.5 million

that tarnished the reputation

of the co-author, David Walsh.

How can this guy dope

so much and not get caught?

That tells us about

how cycling was run.

It tells us about

the attitudes of the UCI,

which is the world

governing body for cycling.

Its president for most of the Lance

Armstrong years was Hein Verbruggen.

Hein Verbruggen and Lance Armstrong

have always been friends.

The UCI denies that

they ever covered up

a drug test for Lance Armstrong,

but they do say

that when Lance and other top riders

tested with suspicious levels,

they would go and talk to those

riders and they would say,

"Listen, you're flying

a little too close to the sun.

"We're going to be watching you.

"You better stop

what you're doing."

There were dozens, if not

hundreds, of those conversations

going, "Hey, this is close."

But the truth is that

everybody was making money.

Everybody.

And I mean everybody.

Trek Bicycles, in 1998,

does $100 million in revenue.

Now they're pushing a billion.

We all made money. Some made

a lot more than others.

Some of

Verbruggen's money was managed

in an appearance of

conflict of interest

by an investment

firm owned by the man

who bank-rolled

Armstrong's team.

As head of the UCI, Verbruggen

knew how much money and popularity

Lance had brought to the sport.

So when L'Equipe published

evidence of doping by Armstrong,

cycling had a problem.

It was in his interest for the

sport to continue to grow

and grow controversy-free.

A thing we weren't very good at.

I mean, it was controversies every year.

Every year. Big ones.

Verbruggen asked an

acquaintance, Emile Vrijman,

to conduct an investigation

into the newspaper allegations.

In the conversations

with Hein Verbruggen,

clearly was

the focus point on saying

find out what kind of

research did they do

is this a positive test

according to our definitions

and if yes, should we

do something about it.

Oddly, the Vrijman Report didn't

focus on whether Lance had doped.

Instead, it looked at technical

details, lab protocols,

and attacked

the World Anti-Doping Agency.

Without examining samples for

drug use, the report concluded

that Lance was

completely exonerated.

The 130-page

Vrijman Report that came out,

he was

the independent investigator

hired by our

international federation,

it outlined,

very clearly, what happened.

What Lance didn't say then,

but what he told me years later,

was that he and his team

had input on the report

and were delighted

with the result.

Based on further talks with

Lance, I had more questions.

Did you or your

law firm receive any payments

from Lance Armstrong

or his representatives?

Not at all.

As far as I know, not at all.

Vrijman's denial

led me to an odd coincidence.

In 2007,

the UCI paid the final bill

for the report,

approximately $100,000.

Earlier that year, Lance had

made a donation to the UCI.

The amount? $100,000.

The reason, says the UCI,

to pay for a blood-testing

machine purchased in 2005.

Listen, nobody believes in

doping controls more than me.

I've submitted to all of them,

whether in competition

or out of competition.

On the road, Lance

was able to protect his lie

by enforcing

the power of omert,

a code of silence

among riders about doping.

During the 2004 Tour

Lance Armstrong very publicly

humiliated me.

What happened was that

Filippo Simeoni tried to attack

to join the six-man breakaway that had

built up a bit of a lead on the peloton.

The trouble is that Lance

doesn't like Simeoni,

who is actually

suing him for slander in Italy

after Armstrong

called him a liar.

Was that all about Ferrari?

Simeoni had testified

at a trial against Ferrari,

and Lance was working

with Michele Ferrari

and considered

Ferrari a good friend.

So, in the race,

Simeoni attacked,

and Lance,

who had the yellow jersey on,

followed the move,

which is unheard of,

'cause normally you just let your

team do all the chasing for you.

But he went up to Simeoni, and

Simeoni was trying to win the stage,

and, pretty much,

Lance said, "No way."

It was kind of

wrong of him to do that,

but the peloton

was happy about it

because they didn't appreciate what

Simeoni was doing at that point.

You mean sort of

outing the secret?

Yeah, outing the secret.

They were all probably

doing the same thing.

The result was that

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