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Rocket fires back with lawsuit

BY KAT O'BRIEN | kat.obrien@newsday.com

January 8, 2008

HOUSTON - Roger Clemens has done what some have been saying for weeks he needed to do if innocent - sue. Clemens filed a defamation lawsuit against Brian McNamee Sunday evening in Harris County (Texas) District Court.

According to Clemens' lawyer, Rusty Hardin, Clemens had been hoping that McNamee might change his mind and come forward to say the allegations he had made were false. In the Mitchell Report, released Dec. 13, McNamee accused Clemens of using steroids and said he injected Clemens with performance-enhancing drugs.

Hardin and Clemens said their camp began preparing a possible lawsuit during the past week. Clemens spoke by phone with McNamee Friday. But when Newsday reported the conversation on Sunday, with one of McNamee's attorneys saying there could have been witness tampering involved, Clemens and Hardin decided a lawsuit could wait no longer.

The lawsuit states that McNamee initially denied that Clemens used steroids or human growth hormone when interviewed by federal investigators. The lawsuit quotes McNamee - a quote Hardin said was obtained when two investigators representing Hardin's law firm met with McNamee Dec. 12 - as saying that Assistant U.S. Attorney Matthew Parrella and IRS Special Agent Jeff Novitzky, members of the BALCO prosecution team, pressured him to implicate Clemens.

In the lawsuit, Clemens charges that he has been defamed by the allegations of steroid use made by his former trainer. The lawsuit, which was first reported by the Houston Chronicle, outlines 15 statements that McNamee made in the Mitchell Report that Clemens calls "absolutely untrue and defamatory."

Among the statements alleged to be false about Clemens are the following:

That in 1998, Clemens approached him and asked for McNamee's help with injecting Clemens with steroids.
That McNamee injected Clemens with Winstrol with needles provided by Clemens.
That in late 2000, McNamee gave Clemens injections of testosterone and HGH.
That Clemens used, possessed or was injected with steroids and/or HGH in 1998, 2000 and 2001.

Yet during Clemens' news conference yesterday, he expressed frustration at the difficulty of proving himself innocent.

"How do you prove a negative? It's hard," Clemens said.

Clemens' name was reported in the Los Angeles Times in October 2005 as having been in an affidavit associating him with steroids. That turned out to be false, and the Times later ran a correction.

Clemens insisted that clearing his name is not about the Hall of Fame. He said: "This is not about records and heroes and numbers. I could give a rat's ass about that. This is about health."

Hardin said he will advise Clemens not to take a lie detector test. However, Clemens will testify before Congress next week. He said yesterday that he will not plead the Fifth Amendment and will deny ever having used performance-enhancing drugs.