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Lawyers: trainer has evidence against Clemens

BY JIM BAUMBACH AND ROBERT E. KESSLER | jim.baumbach@newsday.com
and robert.kessler@newsday.com

February 7, 2008

Lawyers for Roger Clemens' former trainer said yesterday that he will provide Congress with information about physical evidence today corroborating their client's story that he injected the star pitcher with steroids.

Richard Emery, one of the attorneys for the former trainer, Brian McNamee, declined to describe the evidence. But sources familiar with the situation said the evidence included syringes that McNamee says he used to inject steroids and human growth hormone into the pitcher, as well as gauze used to blot up the injection sites and empty bottles from which the drugs came.

Clemens has denied McNamee ever injected him with steroids or human growth hormones, but has conceded the trainer injected him with B-12 and the painkiller lidocaine.

The sources also said that McNamee passed on to federal investigators at a meeting in January syringes that he believed he used to inject Andy Pettitte and Chuck Knoblauch with human growth hormone. They also are being tested by the investigators. DNA testing could take weeks. The Pettitte and Knoblauch relationships will be part of his congressional testimony, the sources said.

Pettitte has acknowledged receiving HGH injections from McNamee. Knoblauch has not publicly discussed his relationship with McNamee.

Pettitte's lawyer, Jay Reisinger, did not immediately return a message left at his Pittsburgh-based office. Knoblauch's lawyer, Diana Marshall, declined to comment when reached by Newsday.

McNamee handed over the Clemens material to federal investigators from California, who are heading the federal probes into the use of steroids by professional athletes, several weeks ago at a meeting in Manhattan, the sources said. The meeting was held with IRS agent Jeff Novitzky and assistant U.S. attorney Matt Parrella on Jan. 10 at the Manhattan office of Earl Ward, a lawyer for McNamee.

McNamee told the investigators that the material might contain traces of Clemens' DNA either in blood, or microscopic amounts of skin or muscle tissue, along with steroids.

"That material has been turned over to the government," Ward said. "Brian will discuss it tomorrow [with Congress]. And after tomorrow we'll talk about it."

But the sources cautioned that the government has not completed testing of the material McNamee handed over. Further, even if Clemens' DNA were found on the material, he could argue that it came from contamination when McNamee injected him with vitamins or the painkiller.

McNamee's lawyers have argued to federal investigators that if the needle contains only Clemens' DNA and steroids, that would prove that the needle was not used to inject either vitamins or lidocaine into Clemens and then later contamined by McNamee to implicate the pitcher, according to the sources.

The steroid injections were administered at Clemens' Manhattan apartment in early 2000, and McNamee took the material back to his Queens home for disposal, the sources said.

McNamee told federal investigators, and plans to tell a congressional committee today, that he said to Clemens that his son was a diabetic and that he had a syringe disposal unit at his home in Queens. The son is diabetic, but McNamee kept the material because he did not trust Clemens in case the situation became the subject of an investigation into drug use, the sources said.

"Remember, he was a cop ... and he didn't want to be thrown under the bus," by Clemens, said one source familiar with the situation. McNamee had been a NYC police officer before he went in athletic training.

Of McNamee's alleged, corrobative evidence, one of Clemens' lawyers, Lanny Breuer, released a statement late yesterday, saying: "Brian McNamee is obviously a troubled man who is obsessed with doing everything possible to destroy Roger Clemens. McNamee lied to the police who were investigating him for sexual assault, he lied to Senator [George] Mitchell, he lied to the federal government, and now he apparently has manufactured evidence.

"He has changed his story repeatedly on this matter," Breuer continued. "He claims to love Roger Clemens, he says he modeled being a father on Roger Clemens, he said Roger treated him like family - but he now claims he kept blood, gauze, and needles from Roger Clemens for seven years. It defies all sensibility. It is just not credible - who in their right mind does such a thing?"

Parrella, the assistant U.S. attorney who is handling the investigation in California, declined to comment.

Staff writer Ken Davidoff contributed to this story.