[Azure]

But BALCO also demonstrated another truth to the anti-doping agencies: In BALCO, a track coach anonymously sent a syringe containing the tweaked drug to doping authorities. Suddenly, finding snitches, sometimes by pressuring athletes, became an obsession for the drug cops. They also have moved aggressively into investigations à la Law and Order. When they think they’ve got the goods, whether there’s a positive test or not, they charge an athlete. If the charges stick — and they almost always do because the system favors the agencies — the athlete is hit with a “non-analytical positive.”

Marion Jones never failed a test. But she was declared to have a non-analytical positive. Her titles were taken away, and she was banned from track and field for life.

The United Kingdom’s anti-doping agency is now led by a former cop. Australia’s is part of the government, with government investigatory powers. (It once demanded athletes’ private medical records.) The U.S. Anti-Doping Agency is a nonprofit business, so it can’t issue subpoenas. But it has managed to harness the government’s power by helping instigate criminal probes like the two-year grand jury investigation of Armstrong mounted by the Los Angeles U.S. Attorney’s office.

Faced with threats of perjury, former teammates caved. Tyler Hamilton (who had passed many doping tests before failing one at the end of his career), Floyd Landis and others reportedly testified. They admitted they’d been doping all along. The U.S. attorney ultimately declined to press charges, but USADA took the evidence and issued its own charges. Because the standard in these cases is merely “comfortable satisfaction,” not “beyond reasonable doubt,” there was no reasonable doubt that Armstrong was doomed.

Last night, when Armstrong said, Roberto Duran-like, “no mas,” the doping cops were free to declare a non-analytical positive. All those tests over all those years meant nothing.

http://www.wired.com/playbook/2012/0...g-allegations/

Sounds extremely clear cut.