It started at 10am this morning and it’s been a truly surreal experience.
Brian McNamee, the former New York City police officer turned athletic trainer, at one end of the table saying that he injected Roger Clemens, the star pitcher sitting at the other end of the table, with steroids and Human Growth Hormone on multiple occasions between 1998 and 2002. Clemens saying that it never happened and that McNamee is lying. As Henry Waxman said when he opened the hearing, there’s no way to reconcile this, one of these men is lying.
They are in a break right now, but it’s already been quite a morning:
Star pitcher Roger Clemens, testifying before a House committee, denied under oath today that he ever used performance-enhancing drugs and called his chief accuser a liar. The panel’s chairman, however, called his testimony into question by citing evidence to the contrary, including a sworn deposition by his former teammate, Andy Pettitte.
Seated at the same witness table with his accuser, Clemens, 45, winner of a record seven Cy Young Awards, listened stoically as the chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.), listed a series of inconsistencies in Clemens’s own statements and described Pettitte’s testimony publicly for the first time. Waxman said Pettitte categorically stated that Clemens had admitted to him in 1999 or 2000 that he had used human growth hormone.
Under questioning, Clemens said Pettitte “misremembers the conversation we had” and reiterated his denials.
This was the worst part of the morning for Clemens. His answer seemed like something a man under pressure would say, and without Pettite there, it’s hard to evaluate the two men to determine who’s telling the truth. Right now, though, I’ve got to say that it’s hard to understand why Pettite would lie about this.
McNamee stuck his story, but he’s not the best witness:
Former trainer Brian McNamee repeated his assertions to federal agents and an independent investigator hired by Major League Baseball that he injected Clemens with steroids or human growth hormone on numerous occasions from 1998 to 2001.
McNamee, a former strength coach with the Toronto Blue Jays and New York Yankees who once worked as a New York police officer, previously told investigators he injected Clemens 16 to 21 times during the 1998, 2000 and 2001 seasons. But today, he said he gave Clemens the injections more often than that.
There have been other discrepancies about McNamee’s story that have come up, including disputes about his testimony that Clemens attended a party at Jose Canseco’s house sometime in 2002, which both Clemens and Canseco deny, and there was a particularly testy exchange between McNamee and one Republican Congressman over the credibility of his supposed physical evidence, which consists of used needles, syringes, and gauze that McNamee supposedly saved in a beer can in his basement.
McNamee strikes me as a weasel, and there are gaps in his story that will probably allow Clemens to walk away from this unscathed, but Brian McNamee may just be a weasal who is basically telling the truth.
If you want to watch the afternoon session, you can find streaming video here.
Update @ 2:45pm: The hearing is, mercifully, over. Reaction later.
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