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Feds Warmed MLB About Steroid Use
New York Daily News
Feb. 15, 2005
NEW YORK - Federal investigators warned Major League Baseball a
decade ago that some of its players were using steroids, but MLB
brass failed to address its looming drug scandal, an FBI agent told
the New York Daily News Monday.
Special Agent Greg Stejskal, who oversees the Bureau's Ann Arbor,
Mich., office, said he told baseball security chief Kevin Hallinan
that Jose Canseco and many other players were using illegal anabolic
steroids. Stejskal's warning was based on evidence gathered during a
far-reaching steroid investigation he conducted in the `90s, but the
agent says the lords of the game did not act on the information.
"I alerted Major League Baseball back in the time when we had the
case, that Canseco was a heavy user and that they should be aware of
it. . . . I spoke to the people in their security office. Hallinan
was one of the people I spoke to," Stejskal told The News.
Hallinan "seemed interested," Stejskal said, but the agent says
there was little baseball security could do about the problem. Major
League Baseball and the union did not agree to a steroid testing
program or disciplinary sanctions until 2002. A proposal during
negotiations preceding the 1994 players' strike went nowhere. The
FBI investigation focused on dealers rather than users.
Baseball officials denied Monday that they were informed of steroid
use, and angrily denounced Stejskal's charges.
"It did not happen," Hallinan said. "Not with this guy, not with
anybody else."
Stejskal said the FBI's investigation into steroid use by
bodybuilders and weightlifters was centered in Michigan but reached
as far as Canada, Mexico, Florida and California and revealed
widespread steroid use in baseball during the 1990s.
"There's little question the use of steroids was very widespread in
baseball," Stejskal said. "And Major League Baseball in effect, they
didn't sanction it, but they certainly looked the other way."
Had he been aware, Hallinan said, he would have pursued an
investigation.
"If a guy comes to me and makes a statement like that, I'm going to
squeeze him like a wet rag," Hallinan said. "The name doesn't ring a
bell at all. Some guy makes a statement like that, give me
specifics, I'm on it."
Stejskal said he first contacted baseball security in 1995 or 1996
to inform officials about steroid use by Canseco and other players.
He also contacted MLB after Canseco claimed in 1998 that up to 80
percent of ballplayers use steroids.
"The first time I talked with Kevin about it was in the mid-to-late
`90s," he said. "I wouldn't have talked to him about it when our
case was going on. I'm guessing probably `95, `96 at the earliest,"
Stejskal said.
Stejskal said he put Hallinan's office in touch with a convicted
steroid dealer who was connected to several players, including
Canseco, just a year ago.
Stejskal said the case started in 1989 when then-Michigan head
football coach Bo Schembechler contacted him, wondering how players
were getting steroids and what could be done to stop them. At the
time, Stejskal said, there were no active federal investigations
into steroid trafficking or use.
"Schembechler's concern was that so many college, even high school
football players were using them," Stejskal said. "We got involved."
At first, he said, he had no support from superiors in the FBI.
"They gave me six months and told me, `Don't even bother to ask for
an extension on this thing. You can do it, go have fun and then
close the thing down,' " he said. "About four or five months into
the first six-month period, the first President Bush called over to
the Department of Justice and made an inquiry as to what we were
doing regarding anabolic steroids. Everybody checked around and the
only case we had open was mine. All of the sudden I got a call from
headquarters that said, `How come you haven't put in for an
extension on this?' So we went on for three years."
In an investigation that involved wiretaps and undercover work in
the United States and Canada, Stejskal says about "70 subjects" were
investigated. Many athletes' names came up, he said, but the Bureau
only pursued dealers.
Some of the names dredged up in the investigation were listed in
Canseco's best-selling book, "Juiced," which was released Monday,
Stejskal said, but he would not say who they were.
Canseco was a well-known steroid user, he said, but as for Mark
McGwire, he could not say whether he used steroids or not.
"His name came up, but beyond that, it was more in terms of street
talk and stuff," he said.
MLB vice president for business and labor Rob Manfred and Hallinan
said baseball was not aware that players were juicing at the time
and a proposal to test for steroids was dropped during the 1994
bargaining sessions. The problem started to emerge in 1998, they
said, when McGwire was discovered to have used androstenedione, a
steroid "precursor" that was legal at the time but banned by most
sports federations.
"You couldn't test them so I don't know how you'd catch them, short
of walking in on them when they were injecting themselves," Stejskal
said.
MLB and the Players Association agreed to a beefed-up testing policy
earlier this year.
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[Definitie:] "An ergogenic aid is any substance or phenomenon that enhances performance."
(Wilmore and Costill) 
