Responding to last night’s 60 Minutes programme on CBS which made new claims against Lance Armstrong, the rider’s spokesman Mark Fabiani has criticised the station.
“Throughout this entire process CBS has demonstrated a serious lack of journalistic fairness and has elevated sensationalism over responsibility,” he said in a statement. “CBS chose to rely on dubious sources while completely ignoring Lance’s nearly 500 clean tests and the hundreds of former teammates and competitors who would have spoken about his work ethic and talent.”
The programme featured extensive claims by former Armstrong team-mate Tyler Hamilton, as well as another past US Postal Service rider, Frankie Andreu. It reported that the FBI has taken testimony from the director of an anti-doping laboratory which analysed the samples from the 2001 Tour de Suisse, who said that pressure was put on the lab by the UCI to cover up a positive test for EPO.
The programme makers said that Armstrong and his representatives refused numerous requests to be interviewed for the programme.
60 Minutes also said that another former team-mate, George Hincapie, had testified that doping had taken place on the team. The rider responded last week by saying that he had never spoken to 60 Minutes, and wanted to focus on the future, not the past. However he didn’t deny the suggestion that he had told investigators about the team’s past, nor did he deny having used doping products.
More details of Hincapie’s testimony may emerge in time. Until then it’s impossible to know exactly what he did or didn’t say, but for now Fabiani is criticising the programme on this aspect.
“In its unpardonable zeal to smear Lance Armstrong, CBS has also attacked the reputation of George Hincapie,” he said. “We are confident that the statements attributed to Hincapie are inaccurate and that the reports of his testimony are unreliable. George Hincapie and his counsel have publicly said that they did not reveal any aspects of his testimony. The only others with access to Hincapie’s testimony — government investigators and prosecutors — have likewise assured us that they are not the source of the information attributed by CBS to Hincapie.
“CBS’s reporting on this subject has been replete with broken promises, false assurances, and selective reliance on witnesses upon whom no reputable journalist would rely. This latest alleged revelation is no more reliable than CBS’s earlier claims.”
The federal investigation into claims of organised doping on the US Postal Service team is continuing. Armstrong and others involved in running the team have been under pressure since Floyd Landis first made claims about it one year ago. According to 60 Minutes, at least three former team-mates of the Texan have backed up accusations of doping. VeloNation understands that the total number of witnesses verifying Landis' claims is larger than this.