The United States Federal Government Vs. Lance Armstrong: Determining Who Knew What and When They Knew It

John Gleaves
Professor of Kinesiology
California State University, Fullerton

In May of 2013, lawyers for Lance Armstrong invited me to provide testimony in the fraud case between Armstrong and the U.S. Government. The fraud case alleged that Armstrong’s doping coupled with his public denials of doping defrauded his sponsor, the U.S. Postal Service, and consequently American citizens. If found guilty of fraud, Armstrong would have to repay three times the total sponsorship U.S. Postal had paid the team, a sum nearing $100,000,000.00 USD.

Serving as both a “Summary Witness” and “Expert Witness,” my testimony was meant to illustrate what was publicly known (and knowable) about doping in cycling. Specifically, I was asked to offer an expert opinion on three questions: (1) whether the use of performance enhancing substances was widespread in the sport of professional cycling, including during United States Postal Service’s (“USPS”) sponsorship of the cycling team; (2) whether the USPS employees with responsibility for the cycling sponsorship could and should have known, or knew, that professional cyclists, including cyclists on the USPS cycling team, were using performance enhancing substances; and (3) whether, during its sponsorship of the cycling team, the USPS had access to information regarding the use of performance enhancing substances by professional cyclists, and also by members of the USPS cycling team, and did anything to investigate further. Answers to these three questions would help determine whether Armstrong had met the legal standard for fraud.

In preparing this testimony, a number of methodological and epistemological questions arose. Because doping occurred in secret, efforts to prove what people knew or could have known about doping presented a number of methodological challenges. Moreover, those whose knowledge mattered most—staff of the U.S. Postal Service and cyclists for the U.S. Postal Service team—had stakes in remembering or not remembering what they knew about doping in cycling.  Navigating these challenges revealed potentially useful methodological approaches to understanding and describing doping behaviors. This presentation will attempt to outline how I went about answering these questions and what conclusions I ultimately offered the court.