|
WASHINGTON: The Federal Bureau of Investigation
(FBI), prompted by Congress, said Thursday that they would
investigate whether star baseball pitcher Roger Clemens lied under
oath when he denied using performance enhancing drugs.
Clemens, a seven-time Cy Young
Award-winner, testified before the House Committee on Oversight and
Government Reform on February 13 that he never took steroids or
human growth hormone (HGH).
But former trainer Brian McNamee
told the committee that he personally injected Clemens with steroids
and HGH many times between 1998 and 2001.
The wide contradiction in their
testimony prompted committee chairman Henry Waxman to ask the US
Justice Department to investigate.
“The request to open an
investigation into the congressional testimony of Roger Clemens has
been turned over to the FBI and will receive appropriate
investigative action by the FBI’s Washington Field Office,” FBI
spokeswoman Debra Weierman said.
Clemens’ lawyer Rusty Hardin
said the FBI’s investigation did not come as a surprise.
“We’ve always expected they
would open an investigation,” Hardin said. “They attended the
congressional hearing. So what’s new?”
Clemens was initially linked to
performance-enhancing drugs in the Mitchell Report on December 13.
McNamee told former US senator
George Mitchell that he injected Clemens with steroids 16 times over
several years, the blockbuster revelation of Mitchell’s report on
baseball doping released in December.
McNamee changed some of the
details of his story before the congressional committee, saying that
the number of injections he gave Clemens were “greater than I
initially stated.”
Andy Pettitte and Chuck Knoblauch,
both former teammates of Clemens, were also named in the Mitchell
report based on information from McNamee and both have acknowledged
using HGH.
--AFP
|
