WASHINGTON — An anxious wife drove Brian McNamee to hold what he says is evidence of Roger Clemens’ steroid use for self protection, the former trainer testified at Clemens’ perjury trial Tuesday.
“She kept saying in the midst of a battle royale you’re going to go down,” McNamee said. “If something ever happens.”
So as a measure of insurance, McNamee said, he held on to a beer can in 2001 filled with a used needle, a syringe and a glass steroid ampule that he fished out of Clemens’ recycling bin. McNamee said he put the waste in a FedEx box and stashed it in a closet at his Queens home.
The waste now forms critical evidence in Clemens’ trial, as the government contends it contains traces of his DNA and steroids, tying him directly to a drug. And that, prosecutors argue, means he lied in 2008 when he told a congressional committee he never had used steroids.
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What McNamee and his wife feared did happen six years after he stashed the evidence when a federal agent, Jeff Novitzky, phoned McNamee and said he wanted to talk about steroid abuse in baseball. In his first meeting with the investigators, McNamee said, he agreed to cooperate, but tried to protect Clemens as much as possible and kept the physical evidence secret.
But the relationship between the two men broke down, McNamee said, in early 2008 when Clemens played a recording of a phone conversation in which they discussed drug use and McNamee’s son Brian’s medical history at a televised press conference.
Enraged by the breach of his son’s privacy, McNamee said he turned over the physical evidence to his lawyers, who passed it on to the government.
Before 2008, the issue of steroids did not seem to threaten to divide Clemens and McNamee. After a 2006 article in the Los Angeles Times reported that Clemens and McNamee were named in a federal affidavit as being tied to steroid use in baseball, the two exchanged emails, which were shown to jurors.
McNamee said he would not “rat” or “flip” on his friend, and Clemens replied, calling the Times reporter a name and accused whoever leaked the affidavit of starting a “witch hunt.”
The original story later proved to be inaccurate when court records were unsealed — Clemens was not named in the affidavit — and was corrected by the Times.
Before the end of the day’s proceedings, McNamee faced a few sharp questions from Clemens’ lead attorney, Rusty Hardin, who has signaled that he will make an all-out attempt to damage his credibility.
And earlier in the day, Clemens lawyer Mike Attanasio struggled to keep his annoyance with McNamee concealed, after McNamee made indirect references to supplying HGH to Andy Pettitte, references Judge Reggie Walton has banned.
“To have this man, of all people, try to undermine what the lawyers and the court have done is shameful,” Attanasio said.
He added that the defense will seek remedy for McNamee’s slips. Clemens’s first trial last July collapsed after a government error led to jurors seeing inadmissible evidence.