Hearing - Weds: Landis Closing

Suh is a the podium, settling in. Brunet and McLaren is present. There are exhibit boards. Campbell shows up.
Brunet moves away; it gets quieter. Brunet is back.

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BRUNET: Ready.

SUH: thanks for time, consideration and attention; also to Dr. Botre. A long 8 days. We said the case was a disaster, and a disaster is what we've proven.

We've shown significant errors in every phase of every test. Identification, QC, chromatography, manual processing, deleted data, and other ISL violations.

Perhaps the most important, common sense.

[more]


We have tried to look behind the false positive, and what supports it. Incompetence and

Dr. Botre quote about reliability of the process. Believes in good stuff, not bad labs, cherry picking, and Incorrect results.

Burden of proof discussion; bearing in mind the seriousness of the allegations mace.

"Must present evidence" is not the same as saying the results are good. No speculation, looking for facts. We've left USADA's summary of results, which we've left up, because we want to look behind it.

USADA hasn't even tried to demonstrate, making only conclusory statements.

All these things run together. There's reasons manual processing needed; why data deleted; fabric of QC failure at LNDD. Any one broken link is fatal to the case.

Failed identification. Both the TE and IRMS. If you don't identify correctly, the test is worthless.

ISL Violation -- three diagnostic ions required. LNDD only looked at one. Goldberger brought 10 examples to demonstrate. UCLA shows how to do it right. LNDD chose to do it wrong.

This is not a theoretic problem, we can brush off with "that's OK"

Identification in T/E identified compounds that were not even there. USADA did not even try to prove TE results. Produced summary charts, results only, without supporting information following the results.

All the longitudinal results are invalid because of lack of supporting data; not even addressed.

Response has been it's just corroboration. It's not if it doesn't follow the rules.

Every single S17 TE is unreliable. It's out.

Shouldn't have proceeded to IRMS.

Identification to IRMS. Must do two kinds of identification. The results are sitting here in view, but what about the identification they are doing the right thing?

Whether or not this is the proper method, even though Dr. Brenna tried to suggest it didn't matter this morning. But USADA and the LNDD techs said it was.

And Dr. Brenna said so. They said relative retention is how you do it.

Our table show relative retention times way off what they should be according to the ISL.

Without being able to associate the peaks you don't know what you are looking at. How do you know the forest is what you are looking at.

Should stop here. Failed to identify.

Failed Quality Control.

Mix-cal acetate is not an acceptable positive control.

We've never said the MCA's are bad. It doesn't mean it's accurate. Perfect 6" group off to the left means you are precise, but not accurate. When you turn to others, we see urine a bad matrix. You job as a lab tech is to separate and identify it.

That you can identify things in MCA doesn't mean you can do it in Urine.

MCA cannot be a positive control.

The MCA's are out of range in the blanks and actual samples. Brenna said "there were standards at each level".

Chart by M-A shows affect of inaccuracy on the internal standard.

How do we even know they are the internal standard? The relative retention times are wrong.

We do know there are 2 in the sequences in A and B samples.

We know QC steps not run immediately before and after the samples. Curiously, the time it would take to rerun samples. We don't know. Should be documented.

Errors build one on top of one another. Pattern of mistakes, necessary to cover the previous mistake, which creates a need to do something else.

B sample, another time gap, time to rerun samples to get the result you want.

Both times, the operators signed off -- these are not QC, it's a fraud.

Bad chromatography-- throughout this case. Examples from Goldberger and M-A.

S17, S11, S15, S19, S20; similar problems in all.

Saw study from M-A, shows what can happen to per-mil values. Chart with effects. All over; Showed a 2 mil difference in an example. Mr Young's example was more significant than he imagined when he gave it to M-A.

You can't assume the athlete is guilty and back into it with the science.

Fatal chromatography with 2/1 trace; it doesn't have the resolving power that Dr. Brenna says it does. M-A explained it too. M-A showed you that when background changes, you can't assume background is being integrated correctly.

USADA did not meet burden. Questions were speculation, lawlessness, not rules.

Manual processing. No changing defenses here. "We almost never knew"

Why an audit trail? ISL requires to prevent what we saw here. The software allows you to document matters of subjective judgement.

Deleted Data. Why needed? Which ISL provisions apply? "Another competent analyst could evaluate the data." What's done here is shocking and wrong. Why was this being done and hidden it it's correct.

-32.22 isn't -31.76, and we're that to support quality control. Outrageous.

Just in Sample A? No, also in B.

The pages came from some other sequence. We don't know.

Log Files. It's a pattern and practice at LNDD. We almost didn't get them.

We've had them testify. Sometimes they remembered, sometimes not. Sometimes "the results were not correct."

There is no interpretation of the rule that allows that.

All this needed because of previous failed steps.

All the check marks in USADA briefs of things done correctly.

Other ISL problems -- CoC quotes from rules. The CoC form is a summary only. We have to rely on memory.

We have never claimed the techs are evil geniuses. We think they are neither. Untrained, lack of procedures. Nothing to suggest they are evil. It does surprise us that an operator with 6 months of training was testing the TdF champion's B sample.

CoC quote from Landaluce.

Lab documents, crossouts, improper procedures. Our point has never been that these were someone else's samples. It was about sloppiness and lack of care. Seven errors on one page. What does that tell you about quality and training? It's no good.

In March of this year there was a discovery dispute, and LNDD produced in March. This was one dealing with preparation of reference solutions. We saw some strange things. This is supposed to be a living documents. Supposed to be a conteporanesous log, but the handwriting is the same all the year.

How often in March to you write previous year? I have never written the subsequent year. We got it in March 2007. We think this is fraudulent and made up in response to our request.

This should concern us all.

Strange lab practice.

We're not saying any of these thing alone is enough to invalidate the results we've had up all week.

Can you now have a comfortable satisfaction everything was done right?

We don't.

What happens? GIGO

Same sample, we get a bunch of different T/E values. These make no sense.

These violations have a result.

Inconsistent reprocessing results. This shows what happened during the reprocessing. We shouldn't just cherry pick the results. The mistakes made in one part are

We find it curious that auto processed blanks appear to be positive.

Inconsistent retesting results; Amory's argument. Except for 7/13, the 5a and 5b don't move together. USADA's theory here says Landis took T to parade around the Champs E'Lysee.

No evidence anything can produce those 5a and 5b skews.

The longitudinal-- Catlin said "there is no sign of steroid use until you get to the box"

Marches through Opening statement assertions.

Claim that we shifted theories is simply not true. We didn't have a theory, because we didn't have facts.

USADA has had a shifting theory. It used to be that things were perfect. Now it's "good enough" if we cherry pick the data.

The ugliest part of the argument is that if the ISL doesn't apply to these problems, then the ISL is a fraud. It applies by it's plain language.

Bunch of things in USADA's brief, statments made that are demonstrably not true.

If I were them, I'd have shifted my theory that everything was done perfectly.


WADA Code of silence vs. The Oath.

Mr. Young says they don't have to come, but how are they going to resolve telling the truth with the WADA "ethics".

It is offensive to call it a code of ethics, it's a code of silence, and we've seen it here.

"We'd better be creative" means "we're going to lie."

Two witnesses called and discussed at length by USADA. Joe Papp, who took so many drugs he didn't know what they were. Subject to lifetime ban. Haven't heard about that. They didn't call an andrologist.

Lemond did get an admission.

We were shocked by Geoghegan's actions, it wrong, and disgusting, and there should be no guilt by association, and should have no bearing on the science.

Can we be proud of LNDD's work? It matters not just to Mr. Landis. This is the first case to challenge the systematic failures of a laboratory.

This is a day in court for every athlete that LNDD has accused. Right now at LNDD, we may have lab techs with 6 months training who think what they are doing is right.

Can we approve of this work? Deleting files, changing data, not being able to identify the substances in questions.

If we do, that is what is coming to the 2007, 2008, 2009 tour.

Every athlete deserves to be treated better than this.


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REBUTTAL:

YOUNG: When the facts are not on your side, you accuse people, of lying, hiding, trafficing. We trust the panel to reach its own conclusions.

REST.

SUH:

REST.

CAMPBELL: Provide findings of fact and findings of law, please.

SUH: When?

CAMPBELL: sometime after final transcript?

SUH: one week after that?

YOUNG: whatever you want -- could take us a couple of weeks?

SUH: two weeks is fine.

BRUNET: Hearing will be adjourned, not closed; after final documents. This is unusual in arbitration, but I'd like to thank a number of people, the longest arbitration in First Pepperdine personnel, the AAA, Susan Pollakoff the media liaison.

I'd pay special tribute to lawyers on both sides, working on very challenging circumstances. Complicated data, and make it accessible. [ names individuals ] Also Dr. Botre, for Paris analysis and the hearing. Also legal assistance. Thanks to the court reporter.

Because this was a public, I'd like to thank the members of the press who have been respectfull of the panel and the press. We were concerned about possible disruptions, and this did not happen.

ADJOURNED.