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Positive Drug Tests Among Key Bonds Evidence

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Positive Drug Tests Among Key Bonds Evidence

SAN FRANCISCO (CBS 5 / AP / BCN) ― Federal court documents released Wednesday show home run king Barry Bonds tested positive for three types of steroids, and his personal trainer once told his business manager in the San Francisco Giants' clubhouse how he injected the slugger with performance-enhancing drugs "all over the place."

Download The Unsealed Court Documents (.pdf):
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4

Prosecutors are seeking to use those 2000-2003 test results and other evidence at Bonds' trial March 2nd to try to prove he lied when he told a federal grand jury on Dec. 4, 2003 that he never knowingly used steroids.

Bonds' attorneys want that evidence suppressed, and U.S. District Judge Susan Illston was set to hear arguments Thursday on what to allow jurors to hear. She ordered the materials unsealed in advance of that hearing and instructed the clerk of the court Wednesday to "file them on the public docket."

Bonds' trainer Greg Anderson, who was jailed several times for refusing to answer questions before a grand jury, appears to be at the heart of the government's case. But his lawyer, Mark Geragos, said Anderson will again refuse to discuss Bonds if prosecutors call him to testify.

Also among the evidence made public were a positive test for amphetamines in 2006 in a urine sample Bonds gave to Major League Baseball; doping calendars Anderson maintained with the initials "BB" and a handwritten note seized from his house labeled "Barry" that appears to be a laundry list of steroids and planned blood tests; and a list of current and former major leaguers, including Jason Giambi, who are expected to testify at the March 2 trial.

The documents said that Steve Hoskins, Bonds' childhood friend and personal assistant, secretly tape-recorded a 2003 conversation with Anderson in the Giants' clubhouse because Hoskins wanted to prove to Bonds' father, Bobby Bonds, that his son was using steroids.

Anderson and Hoskins, who were near Bonds' locker, were discussing steroid injections, and at one point, they lowered their voices to avoid being overheard as players, including Benito Santiago, and others walked by, according to the documents.

Anderson: "No, what happens is, they put too much in one area, and ... actually ball up and puddle. And what happens is, it actually will eat away and make an indentation. And it's a cyst. It makes a big (expletive) cyst. And you have to drain it. Oh yeah, it's gnarly. ... Hi Benito. ... Oh it's gnarly."

Hoskins: "... Is that why Barry's didn't do it in one spot, and you didn't just let him do it one time?"

Anderson: "Oh no. I never. I never just go there. I move it all over the place."

Also during that conversation, Anderson told Hoskins that "everything that I've been doing at this point, it's all undetectable," according to the documents.

"See, the stuff that I have ... we created it," he was quoted as saying. "And you can't, you can't buy it anywhere. You can't get it anywhere else."

He added that he was unconcerned about Bonds testing positive because Marion Jones and other athletes using the same drugs had not been caught doping.

"So that's why I know it works. So that's why I'm not even trippin'. So that's cool," Anderson said, according to the transcript.

The San Francisco Chronicle first reported about a tape recording involving Anderson on Oct. 16, 2004, but did not identify the person he was speaking to.

Bonds attorneys argued that none of Anderson's statements outside of court should be admissible.

"If Anderson does not testify for the government, the truth of any statement he may (or may not) have made out of court cannot be so tested," lead Bonds attorney Allen Ruby wrote. "Mr. Bonds will be stripped of the opportunity to confront and cross-examine the most prejudicial but least reliable evidence against him."

Bonds and Hoskins had a nasty falling out after slugger went to the FBI with accusations Hoskins stole from him.

Three of Bonds' test results were seized in a 2003 raid on the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative, the headquarters of a massive sports doping ring shut down by federal agents. Agents said they seized numerous results of blood and urine tests by Bonds, which prosecutors argue show that the slugger was intimately involved with BALCO.

Bonds lawyers moved to suppress 24 drug tests from 2000-06; more than two dozen drug calendars; BALCO log sheets; handwritten notes; opinion evidence on steroids, human growth hormone, THG, EPO and Clomid; witness descriptions of Bonds' "physical, behavioral and emotional characteristics" - including acne on his back, testicle shrinkage, head size, hat size, hand size, foot size and sexual behavior - recorded conversations that didn't include Bonds; and voice mails allegedly left by Bonds on the answering machine of former girlfriend Kimberly Bell.

Bonds' lawyers also want to prevent the jury from hearing evidence of at least four positive steroid tests they argue can't be conclusively linked to Bonds because of how they were processed.

According to records prosecutors took from BALCO, Bonds tested positive on three separate occasions in 2000 and 2001 for the steroid methenelone in urine samples; he also tested positive two of those three times for the steroid nandrolone.

BALCO founder Victor Conte, in an e-mail to CBS 5 on Wednesday night, questioned the reliability of some of the records seized from his former lab.

"... many questions arise about the blood and urine samples allegedly collected from Bonds and processed by BALCO. These questions need answers than can be substantiated. A laboratory test result is only as valid as the history and integrity of the sample analyzed... these samples were not handled and processed as a part of the routine BALCO Laboratories business, nor were the records that were kept for these types of samples,"
Conte wrote.

But a government-retained scientist, Dr. Don Catlin, also said he found evidence that Bonds used the designer steroid THG upon retesting a urine sample Bonds supplied as part of baseball's anonymous survey drug testing in 2003, when the designer drug was not yet detectable. Federal investigators seized them in 2004 from the private laboratory used by Major League Baseball before they could be destroyed, which the players were promised.

Catlin said the sample also tested positive for Clomid, a female fertility drug, and foreign testosterone.

Included in the evidence was a letter from baseball independent drug administrator Bryan Smith that Bonds tested positive for an amphetamine during a drug test on July 7, 2006, when Bonds hit a three-run homer at Dodger Stadium. There also was a letter from baseball commissioner Bud Selig to Bonds that Aug. 1 informing him of the positive test and telling him that he will be subject to six more tests over a one-year period.

The New York Daily News reported on that test on Jan. 11, 2007, saying Bonds attributed the positive test to a substance he had taken from teammate Mark Sweeney's locker.

The court documents also show that prosecutors plan to call to the witness stand Giambi, along with his brother and former major leaguer Jeremy Giambi. The government also plans to call Bobby Estalella, Marvin Benard and Santiago, all former teammates of Bonds and clients of Anderson.

Bonds, 44, who set the Major League Baseball record for career home runs while playing for the Giants in 2007, faces one count of obstruction of justice and 10 counts of making false statements in his testimony before the 2003 grand jury.

Bonds is one of 11 people who were accused of criminal charges stemming from the BALCO probe and is the only one still awaiting trial. The 10 others pleaded guilty or were convicted of either lying during the investigation or illegally distributing sports drugs.

(© CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. The Associated Press and Bay City News contributed to this report.)

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