It is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma…
— Sir Winston Churchill, 1939
The more I look into the history of the hack attack on France’s anti-doping lab, LNDD, in 2006, the more murky the story becomes. For those who don’t remember, this was the incident where a hacker allegedly infiltrated the LNDD’s computer network some time during the autumn of 2006, located a number of embarrassing documents, and sent those documents to various members of the media, Floyd Landis’ legal team, the US Anti-Doping Agency, the World Anti-Doping Agency, various international sports federations, and at least one other WADA-accredited anti-doping lab — the Canadian national anti-doping lab in Montreal. When news reports about the contents of the documents broke, the information cast the lab’s practices and abilities in an unflattering light.
A few recent stories, including one by Mark Zeigler of the San Diego Union-Tribune and another by Shane Stokes of CyclingNews.com (French authorities summon Landis and Baker, about two-thirds of the way down the page), cover current developments in the case. Both articles are follow-up stories to an article that originally appeared in Le Monde (machine translation courtesy of Jean C here).
The bottom line to all three of these stories is that French officials want to question Floyd Landis and Arnie Baker about what they may or may not know about who hacked into LNDD’s computer network in 2006. They really want to talk to the two. So much so that Pierre Bordry, who heads the AFLD (France’s anti-doping agency), says he isn’t afraid to seek an international arrest warrant in order to compel them to do so. (Whether such an arrest warrant could or would be executed in the United States is open to question, and likely doubtful. But it’s a pretty safe bet that neither Landis nor Baker would be able to travel safely outside the US, should such a warrant be issued.) One has to wonder why it would be necessary to make Landis and Baker travel to France to answer questions, rather than take depositions in the U.S. or even to conduct interviews via conference calls.
In order to understand the story — as much as we might be able to, that is — we need to go back to what was written back in 2006. This article from the November 15, 2006 edition of Australia’s The Age, tells us:
“Some emails have been sent as if they were from the laboratory to other (anti-doping) laboratories, including Montreal’s,” French Anti-Doping Agency (AFLD) boss Pierre Bordry told French Radio France Info.
“These emails were meant to show the laboratory was bound to make mistakes,” Bordry added.
The head of the Montreal anti-doping laboratory, Dr Christiane Ayotte, told sports daily L’Equipe on Tuesday that she had received an email saying the French laboratory specialised in repeated errors in doping analyses.
“Some ‘interesting’ documents were attached, as well as an email from (WADA chief scientist) Olivier Rabin addressed to the LNDD,” Ayotte was quoted as saying.
“The form was suspicious, the emails supposed to come from the LNDD were not signed by (lab head) Jacques De Ceaurriz.”
The article isn’t clear, however, on exactly when those emails were sent. However, a couple of days before, VeloNews ran an Agence France Press article, which suggests Ayotte received those “suspicious” documents in September or October 2006. Ayotte then reported the suspicious documents to her colleagues at LNDD in late October. Sam Abt of the International Herald Tribune reported a different story about the documents he received in early November 2006. This post, which I wrote on November 16, 2006, includes the following summary:
This much we know is true: A “hacker” got into LNDD’s computer system and printed out or removed various documents, which were then sent to a long list of people, including the IHT’s Sam Abt. The documents were sent in brown envelopes with no return address, and postmarked November 9th from Aulnay sous Bois, a suburb of Paris which happens to be close to Châtenay-Malabry, which is the home of LNDD.
Abt gives details of the documents (mostly letters about various test reports) he’s seen. Letters to such places as WADA, the World Squash Federation, the International Union of Associations of Alpinism, FINA (the international swimming association) and the French Swimming Federation.
The original link I had to Abt’s November 2006 article no longer works, due to some changes in the IHT’s and The New York Times’ (the IHT’s parent company’s) online archives. I have yet to find the current link to his orignal article. But this article, written by Abt as a follow-up story, contains a response by Landis’ then-spokesman Michael Henson, stating that no one connected to Landis was responsible for the hacking.
From the information in VeloNews’ article and the information in Abt’s original article, it appears that the hacker/leaker sent documents out at two different times. One time in September or October 2006, and another time in November 2006. Moving on, let’s look at the Arnie Baker connection.
Mark Zeigler’s recent story in the San Diego Union-Tribune includes this:
[Arnie] Baker also included some of the documents in “The Wiki defense,” a series of Power Point presentations at bike shops and ultimately an online book he authored to vouch for Landis’ innocence.
But French authorities became suspicious when one of the recipients of the stolen documents, Montreal anti-doping lab director Christiane Ayotte, conducted a history search on the file – a copy of which she provided to the Union-Tribune. The previous user is listed as “Arnie.”
This is an interesting revelation, for a number of reasons. If the copy that Ayotte provided to Zeigler is the same as the one emailed to her sometime in September or October 2006, then the French authorities knew that one (publicly) un-named person somehow linked to the hacking might be named Arnie SomebodyOrOther. If they had credible evidence that established a link to Landis, this might lead the authorities to conclude that the “Arnie” is Arnie Baker.
If you look at various PDF documents on Baker’s web site, you’ll find in the PDF properties that it names either “Arnie” or “Arnie Baker” as the “author” or “creator” of those files. Various PDF documents have been available through his site since before the Landis case began, so anyone interested in looking could have seen how Arnie Baker identified himself in those document properties. And anyone with a mind to could mimic that. So this, by itself, is not conclusive of anything.
What’s more intriguing is Zeigler’s statement that a “previous user” was listed as “Arnie.” In some programs, the file properties will note who previously wrote or edited a document, producing a trail of who touched a document at what time. Within Microsoft Office, one can see who last saved a file, in addition to who created the original file. But unless a certain feature is enabled, it’s not always possible to see who was responsible for what writing within the document. One source confirmed that the the notation Zeigler refers to is the name of the last person to save the file.
If this is correct, we still don’t know who created the document Ayotte received. Without knowing that, we don’t know whether this “Arnie” edited and/or saved a copy of something that he received and then someone else forwarded it on to Ayotte, or whether he actually created the document that was sent to her. Beyond that, we don’t know for certain whether the document was a scan of a printout. If it’s a scan, then it’s still not clear who created the original. And we don’t know when the document was originally created, or when this “Arnie” saved it. Or under what circumstances he saved it.
We don’t know who sent the email message that included the documents, or under what name the message was sent, or what that individual said, or the route the message took from its origin to Ayotte’s mailbox. All of which may — or may not — help identify whoever the emailer was, depending on just how savvy he was in concealing his identity.
There are a few things we can glean from something that Baker did produce, though, and that is the Wiki Defense slide show. In that presentation available on his web site, Baker included what appear to be scans of the material received by Landis’ defense team in early November 2006. Baker’s discussion begins on slide 42, and includes this preface, as VeloVortmax notes:
“The documents in the following slides have been sent to me [Arnie Baker], multiple times, from whistle blowers. Although I cannot be certain of their authenticity, they appear genuine.
I base the discussion that follows evaluating the substance of the letters. If the letters are fabricated, this discussion is moot.”
Interesting that Baker makes the caveat right up front that the discussion of what he calls the whistleblower documents is meaningless if the content in those documents is false. If you take a good look at the images of the letters, on slides 43 through 47 of Baker’s presentation, you can clearly see that the letters were folded in a way consistent with being sent in a standard business envelope. This suggests that Baker’s source material for the images in his slide show were printed letters, much like the ones Sam Abt described receiving in November 2006. Most likely, Baker or someone else on the Landis defense team scanned the letters into the files that Baker then copied into his PowerPoint presentations.
But scanning a letter into a file does not mean that you created the original. It’s more like creating an electronic duplicate of the letter, much like you could make a duplicate of the letter at your local Kinko’s.
Back in early December 2006, several sources told me that the Landis defense team had received printed documents, in a brown or manila colored envelope. Unfortunately, my notes from the time don’t indicate whether the envelope received by Team Landis was also postmarked in France, as Sam Abt’s letter was. Baker’s images in his Wiki Defense slide show appear to confirm that the Landis defense team received printed copies of the documents.
One of my sources back then described the cover letter that arrived with the documents. From what I’m told, 10 or 12 people/groups were listed, including Christiane Ayotte and Landis’ defense team. Arnie Baker’s name, however, did not appear on the list, which again suggests that the documents in the Wiki Defense slide show probably came from Landis’ lawyers, since Baker was a part of the Landis defense team by then.
There is no notation in the cover letter, according to my source, that any electronic files were sent by the hacker/leaker to any of those people or organizations on the 9th of November 2006. The hacker/leaker may have done so at that time (or before), but there’s nothing that explicitly states any electronic files were sent.
Backing up just a bit, there is the question of when the hacker was hired and who might have hired him. From various news reports, including both Shane Stokes’ article for CyclingNews.com and Zeigler’s article, the hacker is identified as Alain Quiros. As Zeigler writes:
The man accused of gaining unauthorized access to the French lab’s computer, Alain Quiros, reportedly said he was paid 2,000 Euros (about $2,800) by Kargas [a consulting firm identified in this article as being run by a former French secret services agent], but it remains unclear whether there is direct evidence that Baker or anyone else in the Landis camp commissioned the job. Le Monde wrote that detectives linked Baker through an IP (Internet Protocol) address.
So it appears French authorities have a good idea who hired the hacker. And via the IP address, they believe they found a trail that points in Arnie Baker’s direction. It should be noted, however, that such trails can be forged by someone who is clever enough. And anyone capable of breaking into LNDD’s computer network ought to be clever enought to create a trail that leads to the wrong place.
The identity of who hired Kargus is vague, other than some reports that refer to an “Anglo-Saxon” client. For documents to be emailed by the hacker sometime in September or October (one source tells me mid- to late October), he must have been hired earlier than that, which means that whoever hired Kargus did so earlier still. Assuming that the documents were sent out in mid-October, the hacker must have been hired at the latest by the end of September 2006 or early October 2006.
Exactly when did Arnie Baker get involved in the Landis case? That happened after the Landis defense team received the “laboratory documentation package” containing information about the results of Landis’ A and B sample tests. (Some time in very late August 2006 or early September 2006.) As Baker recounts on his web site, he offered to look over the lab documentation when he saw Landis at the funeral of David Witt, Landis’ good friend and father-in-law not too long after the whole scandal broke.
To play devil’s advocate for a few moments, suppose someone from Landis’ defense team decided to hire private detectives in France to dig up any helpful information that could bolster Landis’ defense. Who would do that? I can think of several possible scenarios, but in all of those scenarios, Arnie Baker is the least likely person to be taking on such a role. He has too much to lose, assuming something went wrong and he were fingered as the mastermind.
Also, in the few times I’ve met and talked with him, Baker just doesn’t seem the type. What seems more likely to me is that if a member of Team Landis was involved, Arnie Baker may know who that person is. And more likely than not, the French authorities are trying to pressure both Baker and Landis into spilling the beans.
Apparently, there is some link to Baker, which has to do with a trace of an email message sent to Ayotte. What none of the articles state is when the email message containing the document supposedly linked to Baker was sent, or what the message to Ayotte said. Is it possible that Baker sent the documents to Ayotte? Yes, it’s possible. Is it possible that a document that Baker had received and/or had recently saved was sent to Ayotte? Very possible. But it’s also possible that someone made the document appear to have been saved by Baker, when in reality he may never have seen or touched it.
Back in April, I contacted Arnie Baker after Jean C left this translation of an article regarding the whole hacker business as a comment on a previous post. I asked him what his response to the story was. What Baker wrote back to me is this:
Thank you for bringing this to my attention.
I did not hack into, nor did I help or hire anyone to hack into the LNDD computer system.
Baker’s response to the April story is unequivocal. If the hacking into LNDD’s computer network really was something arranged by a member of Team Landis (and it’s not clear if that’s the case or who would have done so), Arnie Baker may well be in the uncomfortable position of not being able to say who it really was, while at the same time watching his own good name being dragged through the mud.
Good God. I had forgotten all about this. Why can’t they just drop it and put it all behind them? They “won” for crying out loud. They drained Floyd of his money and gave him a longer suspension that Vino and all the blood dopers!!
This is just like OP rearing it’s ugly head from time to time when it suits someone!!
I am not sure what the possible motivation of the AFLD might be at this point other than to keep Landis out of European racing.
Landis’ defense made a monkey out of the LNDD, and they intend to see him pay more somehow. It all sounds disgustingly familiar, start a rumor, or make an accusation, and half the world will believe it’s true. It’s hard to imagine that at this late date they could actually think they are further sullying Floyd Landis’ reputation. All they’d have to do to see this is read any current piece written about his racing exploits with OUCH. They all begin by describing his doping allegations and subsequent TdF yellow jersey loss.
No worries Pierre, the world will not forget what Floyd Landis lost everything for, file all of this under “piling on”.
str
One thing I should have addressed in the main article (I’ll probably tack an update on to the end), is this: How is it that it’s taken two-and-a-half years to try and question Landis and his “associate” about this? They’ve known the connections all along, from what I’ve been hearing. Other than tracking down Kargus and the actual hacker, what were they waiting for? And, if there really was a Landis connection of some sort, perhaps they might have found Kargas and Quiros sooner.
Rant,
I try to post many times but I was blocked by the anti-spam, not sure if this one will succeed. Maybe it’s linked to the content of the post… or something else
I don’t give too much weight to the “Arnie” name appearing inside the documents, until the IP adress is confirmed. L’Express in April and Le Monde did not mention it.
From what we have read until it seems that they have got that IP adress from mail exchange, so difficult to tamper that adress.
As some people pointed earlier it’s not easy to know IP adress of Baker so :
how would the hacker have got Baker IP adress?
and why would the hacker have put that IP adress in the mail?
If it had taken 2 years than is probably because they have found a much bigger fish and as we have read it in L’Express that come out after the revelations on EDF-Greenpeace affair.
Theresa, Strbuk
Landis’ case is finished. Now that is a police investigation about LNDD hacking so break of law with stolen materials.
What will append that would have no effect on Landis’ sport situation.
Jean,
My apologies for the problems you had posting your comment. If I find an answer to why you were blocked, I’ll let you know.
In the headers of an email message, one can often see the IP address of the computer where the message originated from, along with the IP addresses and other identifying information about the mail servers that the message passed through on its way from one place to another.
Suppose that the hacker had emailed Baker at a certain point in time and Baker responded. Baker’s IP address at the moment he responded would be in the headers of the email message. Whether his computer has a fixed IP address (same one all the time) or whether he has the more common dynamic IP address (assigned when he logs on to his Internet Service Provider), I don’t know. If it’s a fixed IP address, then part of the problem is solved.
The point about not knowing Baker’s IP address is that it takes a bit of subterfuge to get it. Just randomly guessing or filling in a value that might work for a provider in a given location wouldn’t be enough to pin it on Baker or anyone else.
I see your point about going after bigger fish. That may be why the authorities have taken so long to get around to questioning Arnie Baker and Floyd Landis.
Rant,
I just complained about post being blocked to improve the system, I know that you are not responsible of that and have few power on. I am using a proxy to be allowed to post. Thanks.
As you point it to obtain baker IP the hacker needed to be in contact with Arnie or someone using Arnie IP connection!
So if baker was contacted by the hacker, and after the hacking was reported in press why Baker didnt’t inform LNDD about that contact? Even if he don’t want to help LNDD, that can only be getting worse as we see it now.
Jean,
Out of curiosity, how many links to other sites did you have in the posts that didn’t get accepted? I know of a couple of places within the spam filters where the number of external links may cause some heartburn. I’ll have to look into what affect using a proxy would have on posting comments.
You ask a good question. The answer is that it depends on whether he knew the person was the hacker. Suppose the person merely asked a question about one of Arnie’s books, or asked for a bit of training advice, or any of a number of other seemingly harmless questions. Arnie might not have known who he was dealing with. On the other hand, if he did know the hacker’s identity, what you suggest would have been a better approach to handling the situation.
Hi Rant.
http://www.cyclingnews.com/news.php?id=news/2006/nov06/nov14news2
says that Bordry’s complaint was filed on August 7th, 2006, which is two days before the postmarks you give above. So the emails went out first. The article lists the UCI, IOC, and WADA as some of the other email recipients. I believe I read an article somewhere that suggested it was only a few days from the time Bordry was informed until he filed the complaint, although I can’t find that reference right now.
http://www.linuxquimper.org/forum/viewtopic.php?pid=8378
This is a copy of an article in some forum. It’s the most detailed I’ve seen and I suggest people seek google and babelfish (which I prefer) translations on their own. It states that the LNDD hacking occurred in September. It has lots of information on who was involved. Alain Quiros was allegedly hired by Jean Francois Dominguez with Thierry Lorho (head of Kargus consulting) acting as an intermediary. It claims that Dominguez gave Lorho an email address and a list of keywords in english and Lorho passed those on to Quiros, who performed the search. Lorho says that Dominguez told him it was an Anglo-Saxon, and that Quiros told him that it was regarding an American or English cyclist (unclear how he would know this, being so far removed from whoever did the hiring).
Quiros was caught in July 2008 in Morocco where he confessed to a judge on some kind of court order. This was from the first article that named Arnie Baker about a month ago. The timing from then until now seems a reasonable slow case progression given the other things they’ve turned up about Quiros’ hacking activities. But why did it take almost two years to track him down? And why has there been no visible effort to work the case from the other end (Arnie and Floyd) until now?
tom
Tom,
Thanks for the links. I think you meant November 7th, rather than August 7th, though. That does sound like a reasonable timeline. But like you, I’m puzzled why they didn’t work the case from the other end. Especially given that back in November 2006 there were a number of stories claiming that the hacking was connected to “an associate of Landis.”
I’ve posted previously that there are hundreds of ways to falsify identities on the internet. Expand that to include falsifying identities electronically, and in the course of the discussion on this topic, Rant has illustrated a few. If the French authorities have not eliminated the more obvious ploys to incriminate Baker and/or Landis before summoning them to France, then they are acting incompetently and not doing their job.
There have been some notable quotes about the LNDD “hacking”, with the underlying theme being the notion that the lab is not substandard because its records were stolen. As a stand alone, I might agree? However, when taking a more holistic view, confidential information streams from that lab with regularity and that’s just one indication it’s a badly run lab. I’m left to marvel that the French authorities find such a damning distinction between leaks of confidential information with the seeming approval of the lab’s hierarchy (which should be criminal) and leaks of confidential information (that perhaps should have been made public to restore the reputations of wrongly accused athletes?) and which were seemingly not approved for leaking by the lab’s hierarchy.
If Baker and Landis are innocent recipients of leaked documents, as it appears they are, then they have not been involved in criminal activity and should not be bothered by French authorities. If they were involved in taking confidential information from LNDD, when confidential information is regularly leaked by the lab, then that’s a mighty fine distinction and they should arguably be left alone by French authorities. It would be better that LNDD get its own house in order. At some point, enough is enough and we have clearly gone beyond that point here. Floyd has been more than sufficiently punished for something he didn’t do in the first place and more than sufficiently punished for having the audacity to show up the system that punished him for the corrupt system that it is.
And thanks or the link Tom. I’ll get a translation and read it soon.
Rant,
I had no link to external sites. I just posted the same thing through proxy added with the spam comment. Maybe it’s just a temporary problem with the spam protection. Don’t worry for me I know how to beat testing !
Back to the main subject, why would a hacker use IP of one of his “customer”?
He has no interest to have one of his customers caught, that can only open more rooms to police to identify. Hacker’s best interest is the most confidentiality.
Jean C,
Rant has explained why it is unlikely Baker was the hypothetical client.
The IP address issue may very well be a ploy used to justify calling Baker/Landis. In the states, it’s generally a crime to lie to the police, however the reciprocal is seldom true during the process of police gathering information for an alleged crime. I’m not fluent in French law, and would defer to you on this point, but don’t imagine French police are more constrained than their counterparts in the states. Until I see something more definitive, I’m not ready to assume the IP address issue as fact.
Jean,
Taking the information Tom posted a bit ago, it sounds like the hacker didn’t know who Kargus’ client was. I’d agree that it would be foolish to leave a trail back to his customer. But it wouldn’t be so foolish to leave a false trail that implicates someone who had nothing to do with the hacking, as a way of diverting attention from the real person responsible.
If anyone on the Landis defense team was involved, it’s possible that by pure accident the hacker left a telltale trail behind. It’s also possible that someone not connected to Landis, but who was behind the hacking of LNDD, felt that Arnie Baker would make a good fall guy. If so, that would be despicable. Doubly so if it actually were someone else connected to Landis’ defense.
Do we trust LNDD enough to really believe that they were hacked? I guess I’m so jaded at this point that I wonder if the documents were just leaked by an employee who was not following the party line, or thought the lab management were smucks! Hopefully the french police are competent enough to have proff the lab was really “hacked”!
Hello Rant:
Glad to see your site is still active.
Here are some questions to ponder.
If someone from Landis’ defence team was behind the “hack”, why would they have disclosed the information so publicly and to the parties listed? Would this information not have been better used as surprise testimony during the arbitration? And if so, would they have had to disclose how the information was acquired during the arbitration?
If they were behind the “hack”, and they were behind the disclosure as it occurred, would they not have fought more tenaciously knowing the information was true?
Peter.
Mike,
You can ask why IOC and Italian Justice have chosen LNDD to retest their samples. They had the choice, there is more than 20 accredited lab to do it. Didn’t follow Landis’ case? Suer they did and they came probably with an other conclusion that Landis’ fans.
Peter,
If I recall it correctly, every party has to give his own pieces to the other party before hearing, so it would not be a surprise. And to do that kind of surprise, you have to be sure that the pieces are authentic…difficult to be sure when you are just the orderer and not the hacker who could have forged the pieces after failing his task.
Rant,
As metioned in the linux forum, Baker IP was found in an email. Of course that could have been forged in the mailbox…but difficult to imagine that a hacker would not know how to protect his computer, and who would put that IP in his computer and just in a such email… too much unlikely.
So the most real question is : who has used Baker IP connection to send that or (those?) email?
Rant
I have found why I was seen as spammer, that is because my firefox is configured to send a null field as REFERER (http protocol).
I used to do so since a while so probably something has changed somewhere…
Jean,
I removed those two test comments. Hope you don’t mind. Interesting about the REFERER. The people who created the two spam filters I use update them every so often (sometimes on an almost daily basis), so some change could easily have occurred in the recent past. Interesting about where the IP address was discovered. Pretty much what I expected.
With regards to the IOC and Italian retesting, I believe that’s because LNDD developed the test for CERA. EPO testing is something the lab is well-respected for, even if other parts of the lab have migh have certain, shall we say, “challenges.”
Peter,
I think Jean is partially right. By design, the process shouldn’t have any Perry Mason-like, “Surprise!” moments. And information should be shared between both sides. That said, because the prosecuting side is not required under WADA’s rules to give everything it has to the defense, there could be some surprises during an anti-doping arbitration hearing. So, on the other side, there might also be a tendency to withhold information, too.
I don’t see the value that the documents would actually have added during arbitration. Just like certain bits of testimony from prosecution witnesses were thrown out as not having direct bearing on the particulars of the Stage 17 test result, so would the hacker documents have been thrown out. At best, the documents might be useful in the court of public opinion. But by the time they came out, the damage done to Landis’ reputation was already pretty great. It might have mitigated a bit of the damage, but unless Landis won the arbitration at both levels, it wouldn’t really set up the kind of narrative that might redeem his reputation in the public eye.
Ah, the ole “Let it go! Move on!” The mantra for doping apologists.
See how long it’s taken to get this far, to even find this out? Floyd was involved with the Le Mond smear at the trial, Floyd was involved with the hacking most indubitably. But because the unscrupulous, immoral and unethical activity of these athletes who undoubtedly go to such lengths to perpetuate their lie makes you feel uncomfortable the mantra of “Let it go! Move on!” is repeated ad naseum.
Justice would be a warrant with a trial. What will the defence then be – Arnie’s dog was behind the hacking? Silly me: let it go move on.
Elizabeth,
Our family dog did once chew my homework, but I just took it on the chin as I knew my teacher would never believe me.
You seem to be confusing the whole of the anti-doping movement with the act of the LNDD “hacking”. Looks like you also added some venom aimed at Floyd for grins and giggles.
As an isolated incident, not particularly pertinent to either the Malibu hearing or CAS appeal, who or what did the “hacking” damage? Given the free flow of confidential information that is routinely allowed to be leaked from LNDD, you might appreciate that some could be confused LNDD “confidential” information is there for the taking. I’ll be more than willing to stipulate the unauthorized taking of confidential information from LNDD was technically illegal if you are willing to stipulate the routine releasing of information that was meant, by code, to remain confidential, was unethical, possibly illegal, and certainly grounds for LNDD having its accreditation pulled for a period of time. I’ll agree the “hacker” and his/her co-conspirator(s) should be brought to justice if you’ll agree Damien Ressiot and his co-conspirator(s) within LNDD should be brought to similar justice. The actions in each example were roughly parallel.
There is also the notion of “no harm, no foul”. If LNDD’s argument with the “hacker” is that the hacking damaged the lab’s reputation, I’d say that ship sailed long ago. Unless the “hacker” did damage to LNDD’s computer system, not including the need to install and run proper security software, then there was no damage other than dispersing confidential information. The rub, of course, is that LNDD long ago established it is a lab that is incapable of keeping confidential information confidential. Ergo, no harm and no foul as far as the reputation of LNDD goes.
As far as the total of the anti-doping movement, it has been an abject failure, other than to bolster the careers of a hand full of bureaucrats and hangers on. This is because WADA was created to protect the monetary value of the olympic brand. That is, and always has been WADA’s true mission, not the bs mission statement garbage you can find on WADA’s website.
Our current incarnation of the anti-doping movement is something of a witch-hunt mated with the inquisition and styled after medieval barbers, complete with random acts of blood letting and the severing of limbs. Throw in some eating of its own young, and that paints a fairly accurate picture of the current state of anti-doping. A more ethical anti-doping movement could take lessons from the reconciliation efforts made in modern day South Africa. Offer amnesty for admission of past offenses. Learn from the past, but don’t allow the past to consume your future. Learn, apply your lessons, heal, and move forward.
Elizabeth,
I’m not sure exactly who your comment was directed to, but I wouldn’t call anyone who visits and comments here a “doping apologist.” One thing I think everyone here agrees on is that doping exists in cycling and many other sports, and that depending on the method under discussion, it can be harmful to an athlete’s health. Not to mention against the rules and a form of cheating. The disagreements here have more to do with whether various athletes have been proven to dope, how the current system of testing and adjudication functions (and how it should function), and what the punishment ought to be for those caught doping.
Rant,
Thanks for removing the 2 useless comments.
About LNDD, IOC and Italians Justice could have chosen exclusively the german or the swiss lab which are able to realise that kind of tests too, and maybe there were still others. So that gives a lot of respect for their work, German and Swiss are rarely considered as sloppy.
Of course, that will never exclude mistake, no one is able to avoid them, but surely they are not doing a lot. (or at least less than other labs ;D).
I suppose that Italian police want to have results that correspond to Justice standard which should be higher than sport standard.
Recently Ashenden said that the work done on EPO samples of Lance were done within higher standard than the normal EPO testing but that was never reported by Vrijman who preferred to push that point under the rug and to focus on the fact that the testing was not done according the UCI requirements, a point that no one contested. No one want to write a report on the crash testing of a F1 to conclude that it was not done within the requirement of the crash test of a normal car.
I understand Elizabeth’s reaction motivated by some comments which are sometimes very far of reality and often not backed by facts or clues. That is just thoughts extremely difficult to understand for people like me. Maybe that could be what is called troll.
Arnie Baker’s IP is easily found:
nslookup arniebakercycling.com
The time frame is confusing to me. Bordry make a complaint in August about a hack that occurred in September?
According to the TBV timeline, http://trustbut.blogspot.com/2003/09/tbv-timeline.html…
David Witt committed suicide on 12-Aug. The LDP was received on Aug 31. On 11-Sep the Landis ADRB response was filed, with the ADRB decision announced on 22-Sep. He has hip surgery on 27-Sep, and the public hearing request was made on 29-Sep. The first Ferret document TBV got was on 30-Sep.
Among the “hacker” letters distributed is one dated 13-Sep, so some hacks must have occurred after 13-Sep. Based on news accounts, I think LNDD became aware sometime in Sept, either by detecting intrusion, or by having received distributed things, I’m not sure, however, no complaint appears to have been filed with police until 7-Nov, and Abt’s copy seems to have been physically mailed on 9-Nov. The story breaks publicly on 12-Nov.
Arnie has denied being involved in obtaining the documents, but not their later distribution; we might usefully separate the two.
Some questions seem to include who initiated the operation with Kargus, when the operation started, and whether the email to which Quiros sent the results of his search were Baker’s. I tend to doubt the latter, as a disposable yahoo/hotmail/gmail account would seem more likely. If Baker was the recipient, it wouldn’t necessarily mean he was involved in setting up the operation, only that he’d been identified as a party to get things.
I can’t say that going after government associated computers would ever have been a good idea. Governments tend to take a dimly humorless view of such things, even more when done by outsiders than internal whistleblowers.
I can see in retrospect there was tremendous amount of escalation going on around the time this happened, which would only have served to increase the locked and bitterly hostile positions that continued. The Alphabets thought Landis was a doper, generally bad actor, and maybe involved with this hack; Landis claimed to be innocent, may have felt they’d pushed Witt over the edge, thought they were lying, hiding things and playing dirty on their own.
And none of this really seems to affect the underlying merits of the doping case, which remain as litigated.
TBV
Whether or not any harm was done, in all likelihood hacking into LNDD’s (or anyone else’s) computer system is more than likely a crime in France as well as here in the US. Whoever was involved should be held accountable, assuming proper evidence exists.
TBV,
Thanks for writing that timeline up. Good points you bring up, too. There was a lot of escalating tension between the two sides at that time, and it only got worse as time went on. You’re right, none of this current contretemps has any bearing on the original case. The authorities in France are on to an entirely different case — the people responsible for the hacking of a government-owned computer network.
William,
My “no harm, no foul” paragraph was meant to point out the irony regarding the zeal with which French authorities are going after the “hacker”, who released confidential information from LNDD’s computer system that exonerated athletes due to serial lab mistakes vs. the cottage industry of leaks conducted by someone within LNDD, in partnership with Damian Ressiot and others, where the leaks of confidential information tend to incriminate athletes, and no one in authority seems interested in shutting that operation down.
Jeff:
I understand now where you are coming from. On the other hand I can also see why French authorities are perhaps more concerned about the hacking than the leaks. While leaks can reveal potentially harmful information about athletes, a hacker could conceivable alter information. I don’t know about French law, but my guess is that for an employee to leak information is not necessarily a criminal offense, more likely either a civil matter or an employment issue. But hacking is more than likely a criminal offense there as well as here in the US, even if all you do is look around in the system you hack into.
Then I am not really sure that all the various leaks are from LNDD. Wasn’t there a leak about the Aussie swimmer Thorp? I doubt LNDD was involved with that.
tbv,
nslookup
nslookup arniebakercycling.com gives the IP adress website, and probably not the IP adress of mail sender even if he uses a mailer server running on the website computer.
The 2 adresses would be the same in case of Arnie’s website would be running on his internet connection, that would meant he has his own website in his house or office.
William,
Even if the leaks, and that is unlikely, were coming from LNDD, there is no reason to investigate them without a complaint.
The leaks are very unlikely from LNDD (or not only from LNDD) because to leak the name of a positive sample, his identity should be known. One who can match key samples and athletes’ names can only be accomplice.
With the usual cover-up of doping cases inside federations like UCI and their internal fight, it’s very probable that they come from Aigle’s office, or Aigle’s office are accomplice. (Aigle is the very little swiss town near Leman’s lake were UCI is established).
Why has non one still complained? Probably because no one wants to see the truth revealed?
Accuser “Defendant, why were you leaking the doping case? ”
Defendant “because I was tired to see so many doping cases pushed under the rug by the President, especially those of big names like ….”
Everyone can make the link with Ben Johnson who should have bee cover up without the leak of Korean people astonished by IOC will.
Jean C,
You are a “clue” guy. WRT the serial LNDD leaks, many involving Damien Ressiot, follow the clues.
One of the many flaws in the previous testing, was the limited number of sample subjects to be tested following each stage of a GT. (stage winner, runner-up, third place, jersey wearers, and a random three was generally the max, often there were fewer) Couple that limited sampling with various TUE’s, a few other factors, and the odds go up tremendously for correct guesses as to the identity of the tested athletes. Sometimes no guesswork was necessary. The TUE’s coupled with the limited field being sampled confirmed the identity of the athlete 100%.
While Ressiot and friends at LNDD didn’t frequently need help from corrupt practices of UCI officials, I’m not going to come close to arguing UCI officials don’t engage in corrupt practices. By the same token, it’s naïve, or worse, to place the blame for LNDD’s serial leaks at the UCI’s door. The UCI has other items to answer for. LNDD’s serial leaks are not on the list.
Goggle is your friend Jean. Many have complained about the leaks. Tickle your keyboard and tell us who.
William,
IIRC, Thorpe’s samples were not handled by LNDD and the leak was seriously investigated.
Since LNDD is not supposed to know the ID of any athlete’s sample, it is IMHO quite likely that UCI/WADA (or in the case of other sports, the controlling body) are to some degree complicit. Or at least someone within the organization, perhaps acting on his/hoe own account, providing someone at LNDD with the necessary IDs.
I don’t think that anyone at LNDD is that lucky at guessing. Assuming that the testing scheme is stage winner, top GC, and 2 other randoms; there would be a 1 in 4 chance of guessing correctly. TUEs should not factor into LNDD, as they should only come into play after a sample is tested positive. So if someone at LNDD knows who has TUEs, then someone is leaking that info. Or otherwise the ideal standard of blind testing is broken.
And my guess is that leaks are more motivated by profit than any attempt to reveal coverups. I am sure there are journalists who would be willing to pay for such leaks; pay enough to tempt some of the low-level employees who have, or can sneak, access to testing results and names.
Oh, and my remark about Thorp was merely to point out that was one leak (at least) that almost certainly can’t be laid at LNDD’s feet.
William,
I think you’ve got it. There may be leaks from LNDD — no doubt there are — but given that they don’t have all of the info to ID an athlete, someone else needs to take it a step further and provide the final clue. That’s where a source inside the various athletic federations would come into play. So, that said, Jean C and Jeff are both partially right. Damien Ressiot appears to have a number of sources — at LNDD, the UCI, the IOC, and in other places (probably FINA, in the case of Ian Thorpe).
There may well be a financial component to some of the leaks. I don’t know if Ressiot or L’Equipe pays their sources, but there are certainly journalists who do.
Hi Gang and Rant…
Two thousand euros? There’s a ‘hint’ there, in my mind…
Would you (Kargus and/or independent contractee) do a job for ‘only’ 2K euros, in which you knew the “recipient” (Landis) had a huge legal defense budget, and that if you were ‘caught’, you’d be facing a French Judge?
It seems bloody unlikely to me… when you’re already involved (for I would guess, a much higher price) with Electricité de France (EDF) against Greenpeace.
If anyone paid 2K to Kargus et al, that’s almost like buying a ‘loss leader’. EDF is still partially State-owned, I believe; I cannot in any way believe that Kargus would ‘hack’ Greenpeace on behalf of ‘the State aka EDF’, AND then hack ‘the State’ (AFLD) on behalf of ‘Anglo-saxon clients’…
I was right about Watergate the day after it hit the news (smirk), and this seems the same thing: something ripely ‘dead-fish’ is rotting…
Maybe it was a plant, maybe the ‘whistleblowers’ are protecting LNDD, by using a ruse?
As I wrote on WADAwatch:
“the French Legal system has more pressing legal crises to finance in this year of economic turmoil, than to allow itself to be ‘hijacked’ by Pierre Bordry and his obsessional intransigences… recently in Paris, three criminal cases were ‘dismissed’ due to the deplorable, Third World–ish sanitary conditions of the Palais de Justice holding cells… the funds spent by Bordry to harass Floyd Landis and Arnie Baker could be better spent replacing outdated machines and software, creating non–existent SOPs and improving computer systems protection within AFLD’s département des analyses.
Ensuring that this happens is why WADA exists.”
peaceZEN
Rant,
I’ll stand corrected on my statements indicating that LNDD leaks were the exclusive province of insiders at LNDD in conjunction with Ressiot. However, I still contend the leaks were primarily sourced by LNDD insiders collaborating with Ressiot, and the information was often obtained without further collaboration from officials of UCI or national federations.
As a case on point related to process of elimination, just look to the reporting on Landis in the days following the 2006 TdF. Both the heads of WADA and UCI exceeded their authority, and each violated their own organization’s rules by providing broad hints to the media that the rider in question was the winner of the tour. One or both were quoted that the process requires the national federation for the rider in question be notified and that requirement had already been fulfilled. From there all the various reporters had to do was to contact the national federations corresponding to the top finishing riders. They contacted the national federations of countries like Spain, Germany, Australia, Russia, and even France (France, go figure…). All dutifully denied being notified of a non-negative test result corresponding to one of their riders. When USA Cycling was contacted, they issued a “no comment” response and the presses got rolling.
LNDD’s process of elimination is seldom more difficult and often much simpler.
I’m also going to start to refer to the documents in question as the “whistle blower documents”. I’m not yet comfortably satisfied any hacking was done, but am comfortably satisfied the whistle was blown.
Jeff:
I can see your expanded scenario on the process of elimination could work, even in the absence of the hints provided by WADA and UCI re Landis in 2006. Someone at LNDD knows a positive result has been obtained, leaks same to some reporter, who then phones around to various nat feds, and after getting a bunch of denials, sooner or later gets a “no comment”. However, the fact that this could have happened is not evidence that it did happen.
We should give LNDD and its employees the same regard for due process that many of us would have for those accused of doping.
William,
I think it is more appropriate to give LNDD and its employees a regard for due process roughly parallel to that which it, and the WADA system, bestows upon the tested athletes, until such time as the system recognizes and employs the concept of due process wrt the athletes and stops treating them as chattel. That seems fair.
Jeff,
There are certainly times where a simple process of elimination could reveal the identity of a sample’s owner. Case in point would be Landis and his TUE for cortisone during the 2006 Tour. Assuming the lab techs read the newspapers and knew Landis had a TUE for cortisone, and assuming they found cortisone in a certain sample, it would be easy to guess whose sample it was. Or at least have a hunch.
So it is possible that a leak from LNDD might point a finger in a certain direction. But consider who actually tipped off the press as to the identity of the cyclist who tested positive — it was Pat McQuaid, he of the “worst case scenario” comment just days after the 2006 Tour ended.
In general, though, to give the devil his due, it appears to me that Ressiot is an enterprising reporter with a number of sources in a number of places. Ressiot uses each to piece together certain parts of his stories into a greater whole.
One thing can be said with a fair amount of confidence. Without an initial leak coming from the lab, Ressiot (or any other reporter for that matter) wouldn’t really know that there’s a story to track down. It’s the details the lab provides that make his stories sound plausible to so many. Otherwise, leaks from other places (like the UCI) have more of the air of rumors and character assassination, rather than cold hard “scientific” evidence.
Small point. Once the sample is taken, WADA owns it and to date, they will not allow an independent counter analysis.
Wherever the leaks come from, there is poor security and it’s a flawed system that works against the athlete and for WADA. FWIW, leaks didn’t slow much when AFLD was doing TdF testing and UCI was out of the loop.
Rant:
Don’t forget that Pat McQuaid leaked Floyd Landis’ name to the New York Times to circumvent a certain leak by LNDD to L’Equipe. Ressiot probably had a contact at LNDD, so it is plausible to think that LNDD also knew the identity of whom they were testing and that they were ready to leak the results to L’Equipe. Pat McQuaid certainly thought so.
Vrijman reports that the UCI gave Ressiot and L’Equipe the numbers of the 1999 Tour de France anti-doping control forms signed by Lance Armstrong under the pretext that L’Equipe wanted to prove that post-cancer Armstrong had never used a TUE, except cortisone for saddle sores. Ressiot used deception to obtain the anti-doping control form numbers and by analogy the rEPO sample results from LNDD.
LNDD has a history of leaking results for objective aims. Floyd Landis and Lance Armstrong seem to be the primary targets of these efforts.
Jon,
True, it was a “preventive” leak. McQuaid said as much at the time, if I recall. Ressiot definitely has a contact at LNDD — at least one — as he has a contact at the UCI, I suspect. He’d need both to put 2 and 2 together to make a positive identification of who’s results he was looking at. And, actually, the only person disciplined in a different case, the dustup in 2005 between LA and L’Equipe and LNDD and so on, there was only one person punished for his involvement. That was a UCI doctor who was suspended from his job for a month for violating confidentiality by releasing documents improperly.
No doubt that Ressiot used some deception in getting certain bits of information. If he’d actually told the UCI what he wanted the information for, I can’t imagine that they would give it to him. Then again, stupidity knows no bounds.
Even before McQuaid leaks the name of Landis, Lemond was told by McQuaid’ brother that the winner had tested positive.
Lemond made that statement in a conference at playthegame !
Jean,
That’s an odd story. Pat McQuaid’s brother told LeMond before the UCI leader made his public comments about “worst-case scenario”? I have a hard time believing that, but then again, truth can be stranger than fiction.
Rant,
Here is a link to that conference, I just watched a small part… I have difficulties to understand well Lemond english words.
Normaly it should be in that conference.
If someone may give the time where we can heard that allegations, thanks.
Sorry it would be better with the link
http://www.playthegame.org/conferences/play-the-game-2009/on-demand-streaming/presentation-by-three-time-tour-de-france-winner-greg-lemond.html
McQ’s stated reason for leaking the results was the idea he was “scooping” LNDD, but we will never know if LNDD would have actually leaked this had he not beaten them to the punch. Maybe they, or at least, someone employed there, would have leaked this; maybe a leak from another unofficial source; and perhaps there wouldn’t have been a leak at all.
I wonder if anyone has ever conducted a study of such leaks, looking at possible sources to see if any pattern emerges? As I mentioned above, it is almost a certainty that LNDD was not involved in the Thorp leak, as they weren’t involved in the testing.