The New York Times-20080125-Committee Reviewing McNamee Tapes
Return to: The_New_York_Times-20080125
Committee Reviewing McNamee Tapes
Full Text (860 words)The House oversight committee is reviewing transcripts of three conversations by Brian McNamee, the personal trainer who said he injected Roger Clemens with performance-enhancing drugs, a congressional staff person with direct knowledge of the matter said Thursday.
The transcripts, provided by Clemens's lawyer, will shed light on whether McNamee told a consistent story during a one-month period surrounding the Dec. 13 release of the report by George J. Mitchell, the former senator who investigated the use of performance-enhancing drugs in baseball.
The transcripts include a Dec. 5 telephone call with an employee of Clemens's agent, a Dec. 12 interview with investigators for Clemens's lawyer and a Jan. 4 telephone call with Clemens, said the staff person, who was granted anonymity because the committee work had not been made public.
The committee announced Thursday that Clemens's interview with committee staff lawyers had been pushed back 10 days, to Feb. 5. It will mark the first time Clemens will speak under penalty of prosecution if he is not truthful.
The date change means Clemens will now follow the interview by his former teammate and training partner Andy Pettitte, rather than going first.
McNamee's lawyers say the change is a strategic move by Clemens. Clemens's lawyers declined to comment. Karen Lightfoot, a committee spokeswoman, said the change was so we could accommodate folks' schedules.
A committee statement also said that as of Thursday afternoon, Chuck Knoblauch had not been found by the United States Marshals Service to be served with a subpoena. Knoblauch, Pettitte and Clemens had McNamee as a trainer. McNamee told Mitchell he injected them with performance-enhancing drugs.
Clemens has publicly denied the charge. Pettitte has confirmed he was injected with human growth hormone twice. Knoblauch has not said either way, although he told a New York Times reporter who found him in Houston on Jan. 10 that he was not angry about being named in the Mitchell report.
The committee is scheduling interviews and depositions in advance of a Feb. 13 public hearing on Clemens's challenge to the Mitchell report.
Richard D. Emery, a lawyer for McNamee, confirmed Thursday night that he had been told about three taped conversations with McNamee, although he had not heard two of them. Emery predicted that they would support McNamee's credibility.
The existence of the Dec. 5 tape and transcript of a conversation between McNamee and James J. Murray IV, an employee of Hendricks Sports Management, has not previously been made public.
Murray, 30, is an agent for Hendricks, which represents Clemens and Pettitte. Murray could emerge as a third-party witness in a story that so far pivots on the contradictory accounts of Clemens and McNamee.
Lawyers for both sides agree that McNamee spoke with Murray on the telephone Dec. 5 to tell him what he had told Mitchell because McNamee had not been able to reach Clemens or Pettitte.
Emery said the conversation, as McNamee recalls it, was fairly brief, closer to the 17 minutes of the Clemens conversation than the estimated two-hour interview he gave to investigators for Clemens's lawyer Rusty Hardin.
In that interview, Emery said, McNamee recalls telling the investigators many details about his own actual experiences injecting Roger with steroids and naming other people who would have information.
It is a terrific investigative tool for the committee, and I suspect that very little preparation will be necessary other than their independent discussion of events with witnesses, Emery said Thursday in a telephone interview. He added that he has not heard the tapes but that McNamee provided detailed information about what he had said.
Asked whom the tapes point to for more information, Emery said, Jim Murray, various trainers, maybe they want to go back and talk to Jose Canseco and people who were in Toronto that year. But the fact is, even if they don't, these tapes are going to give them a primer on steroid administration.
Emery said McNamee had not known any of the three conversations were being recorded. McNamee had consented to talk with the investigators to tell them what he had told Mitchell so Clemens and Pettitte could have warning.
Emery said McNamee had previously suspected that Murray taped their conversation Dec. 5 because of something the investigators for Hardin had told McNamee a week later.
A tape of the Clemens phone call was played by Clemens and Hardin at a Jan. 7 news conference. Hardin has talked about McNamee's interview with his investigators but declined to release it publicly. Joe Householder, a spokesman for Hardin, declined comment Thursday, referring all questions to the committee.
The updated schedule of interviews by staff for the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform is Jan. 29, Knoblauch, if he is served the subpoena; Jan. 30, Pettitte; Feb. 5, Clemens; Feb. 7, McNamee.
An interview date for Kirk Radomski, a former Mets clubhouse attendant who acknowledges he provided drugs to dozens of major league baseball players and to McNamee, has yet to be determined.
Radomski is to be sentenced under a plea agreement in San Francisco on Feb. 8.
[Illustration]PHOTO: Roger Clemens's interview with the committee's lawyers was pushed back to Feb. 5.(PHOTOGRAPH BY DAVE EINSEL/GETTY IMAGES)(pg. D1)