USADA faced major scramble in Armstrong doping case

• The anti-doping agency collected 24 of 26 witness statements against Armstrong in two months.
• Armstrong attorney says witnesses signed statements because they had no fear of cross-examination.
• USADA attorney says witnesses made same statements they had made in previous interviews

The massive file of evidence released against Lance Armstrong last Wednesday contains several agreements signed by key witnesses as recently as the day before, including those of fellow cyclists George Hincapie and Levi Leipheimer.

Additionally, 24 of the 26 sworn witness statements against Armstrong were signed within the previous six weeks – all in September and October.

Did the U.S. Anti-Doping agency, which filed doping charges against Armstrong on June 12, scramble to pin down the evidence against him in just the past few weeks? A USADA attorney says no, the agency was simply gathering written versions of what witnesses had previously pledged to say in a hearing.

Still, Armstrong's legal team is howling about it.

"It is now clear that none of this evidence was in hand until months later," Armstrong attorney Mark Fabiani said.

USADA says the explanation is simple. On Aug. 23, Armstrong surprised many by announcing he would not fight USADA's doping charges in arbitration, where several witnesses were expected to testify against him. The hearing probably would not have happened until December or later.

"We were expecting we were going to have a long hearing, and we were going to put witnesses on the stand for live testimony at a hearing," said Richard Young, an attorney with the law firm Bryan Cave LLP, which represents USADA. "We interviewed them (previously) and knew what they were going to say, but when it turned out we weren't going to have a live hearing, we had to produce everything that was going to be oral at the hearing into a written form instead."

It became a massive undertaking. Besides gathering all the affidavits, USADA had to get signed agreements with six active riders who had agreed to testify. Those riders received the minimum six-month suspension in exchange for confessing about their roles in the alleged doping conspiracy with Armstrong.

While USADA faced no strict deadline, public pressure was building to release the evidence. A day after Armstrong's decision to reject arbitration in August, USADA treated it as a "no contest" plea and automatically banned him for life and stripped him of his seven titles in the Tour de France.

Armstrong's fans questioned where the evidence was to back such harsh sanctions. So did Armstrong's attorneys and the International Cycling Union (UCI), which has the right to appeal the case.

They also suggested it was taking too long. USADA had filed charges against Armstrong in June, accusing him of using banned drugs and blood transfusions to gain an edge for several years.

Fabiani noted that all of the key witnesses in the case "only swore under oath after they knew that Armstrong was not contesting the USADA allegations."

"In other words, not a single key witness was willing to swear under oath until they were absolutely sure that there would be no adversarial proceeding, until they were absolutely sure that they would not be subject to cross examination, and until they were absolutely sure that their testimony would not be impeached by third parties or by special deals that the witnesses had made with USADA," Fabiani said.

Young says that is not true. He says USADA interviewed the witnesses prior to the June charges and they all agreed to testify at the hearing, whenever that would be. When Armstrong declined the hearing, the agency had to get the testimony in writing.

An attorney for Hincapie referred questions about the process to USADA. Others didn't immediately return messages seeking comment.

By rule, USADA was required to "promptly" give its Reasoned Decision to UCI, the cycling's international federation. After receiving it, UCI has 21 days to appeal the sanctions to the Court of Arbitration for Sport in Switzerland.

In its "Reasoned Decision" in support of the sanctions, USADA defended its time frame, saying that "given the volume of materials that USADA has addressed, the 47 days it took to organize these materials in an appropriate fashion was reasonable."