The Russian Doping Scandal: Protecting Whistleblowers and Combating Fraud in Sports February 22, 2018 Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe Washington, DC
The briefing was held at 3:30 p.m. in Room 385, Russell Senate Office Building, Washington, DC, Paul Massaro, Policy Advisor, Commission for Security and Cooperation in Europe, presiding.
Panelists present: Paul Massaro, Policy Advisor, Commission for Security and Cooperation in Europe; and Jim Walden, Attorney for Dr. Grigory Rodchenkov.
Mr. MASSARO. All right. Smack dab 3:30, so let’s go ahead and get started. Everybody, wake up. Hello, and welcome to this briefing of the U.S. Helsinki Commission. The commission is a unique entity of Congress, mandated to monitor compliance with international rules and standards across Europe, ranging from military affairs, to economic and environmental issues, to human rights. My name is Paul Massaro, and I am the international economic policy advisor at the commission, responsible primarily for anticorruption and sanctions-related issues. I am joined today by Jim Walden, the attorney for Russian doping whistleblower Dr. Grigory Rodchenkov, for this look into the dark underworld of fraud in sports, and what we can do about it. As an administrative aside, I would like to mention that camera crews are permitted to record the briefing in its entirety.
Our topic today is the Russian doping scandal, a story of corruption and fraud on an unprecedented scale. It has now been demonstrated beyond a reasonable doubt that the Russian State was behind a systematic effort to dope their athletes and defraud the Olympics. No one can see how deep this rabbit hole goes, and how long these corrupt practices have gone on. But what we can say is that it is a microcosm of the conflicts playing out across the world. As clean athletes compete against cheaters, so do legitimate businessmen face off against oligarchs and governments based on the rule of law do battle with authoritarian kleptocrats. And much like at the Olympics, without the benefit of transparency and the bravery of those few who stand up and say enough is enough, it becomes immeasurably more difficult for democracy, human rights, and free markets to succeed.
Dr. Rodchenkov is one of these brave few. Formerly the director of Russia’s antidoping laboratory, Dr. Rodchenkov was the lead architect of Russia’s state-run doping program, working with the FSB, the successor to the Soviet KGB, to cheat the international checks put in place to prevent doping by Olympic athletes. That all changed in 2016, when Dr. Rodchenkov blew the whistle on the program he had once helped facilitate, resulting in suspension of Russia from the 2018 Winter Olympics. His revelations also generated a revitalized debate on the need to combat corruption in international competitions more generally.
Dr. Rodchenkov now lives a precarious life in the United States, relying on whistleblower protections and fearful that Russian agents may one day come knocking. He seldom gives interviews or makes statements due to this very real threat on his life. But we are lucky enough today to have Jim with us, who will read an original statement from Dr. Rodchenkov, as well as speak to the man’s story, his hopes and fears, and the centrality of whistleblowers in the fight against globalized corruption.
To conclude, I would like to remark that the word corruption is mentioned 14 times in the National Security Strategy, which I have with me today and would like to show off. [Laughter.] Many across the U.S. Government and the D.C. policy community are coming to terms with the tremendous threat that globalized corruption and kleptocracy pose to U.S. national security, and the need to build not only a 21st century financial and legal architecture, but also an ethical society capable of resisting expediency and opportunism at the expense of the values we hold dear. This sort of society is exemplified by whistleblowers. And I am humbled to speak today with Jim, who represents one of the most impactful and courageous such whistleblowers in recent years.
Before I hand the floor over to Jim, we would like to show the trailer for the Oscarnominated documentary ‘‘Icarus’’ to bring you all up to speed, for those of you unfamiliar with the case. ‘‘Icarus’’ tells the story of Dr. Rodchenkov’s decision to reveal Russia’s staterun doping operation, and the implications of this decision for him and the world. Thank you.
Mr. WALDEN. Okay. Well, first of all, I want to thank Paul and the Helsinki Commission for having me. It’s a pleasure to be here. The original invitation was for Dr. Rodchenkov. And for reasons I’ll describe, he can’t be here. But I will read a statement from him. But it’s a great honor to come to a congressional commission to talk about the importance of Dr. Rodchenkov’s work and specifically to talk about the critical juncture that we are in when it comes to clean sports.
Now, as you now know from Paul and from ‘‘Icarus,’’ and probably from the newspapers, Dr. Rodchenkov served for about 10 years as the director of the Moscow Anti- Doping Center, a collection of laboratories that was supposed to enforce a strict WADA code to help catch cheaters. Now, the World Anti-Doping Agency, or WADA, is the critical vanguard in the fight for clean sport. They are the ones that are supposed to be the gatekeepers. And you will not be surprised to learn that WADA’s budget is made up of money from both the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and many individual nations. You will further not be surprised to know that the United States is one of the largest contributors to WADA’s budget. Its $2.3 million annual contribution is the second largest, only behind the IOC.
Now, as the world now also knows, while Dr. Rodchenkov was working to catch cheaters under the WADA code, he harbored a dark secret. His bosses in the Kremlin—by the way, who were supposed to be completely independent of the Moscow Anti-Doping Center—ordered him to contrive an elaborate doping system to allow Russian athletes to cheat clean athletes from around the world at world competitions including, but not limited to, the Olympics.
Now, it would take me about three days, eight hours a day, to explain to you how sophisticated and how many people were involved in this system. But given the time constraints I’m going to boil it down to six main components. I’m going to separate them into two categories: Out-of-competition testing—meaning when there’s not a competition going on—and in-competition testing. And when I talk about in-competition testing, I’m really talking about the two events in 2014, the world championships and the Olympics in Sochi.
Now, with respect to out-of-competition testing, Dr. Rodchenkov disclosed that Russia had long had a system that was referred to as the disappearing positive. For protected athletes, meaning those people that were on national teams, they would take performance-enhancing drugs but then, from time to time, be required to give urine tests—the primary method to detect cheating. Those athletes, when they came into the Moscow lab for out-of-competition testing, would be pre-tested—meaning, before the official tests began.
And if their urine sample tested positive—meaning it was a dirty test—that test was never downloaded to the ADAMS system, which is a system that links to WADA. Once a dirty sample is downloaded into ADAMS, WADA becomes aware of it and action to suspend the athlete then occurs. Now, according to Dr. Rodchenkov, the disappearing positive methodology was in place for Russia for virtually the entire time that he was the director of the Russian Anti-Doping Center, and was ordered not by him, but by his bosses in the Kremlin. And it was helped—the orchestration was assisted by both the Center for Sports Preparation and the FSB which, as Paul said, is the successor agency to the KGB. So that covers out-of-competition testing.
For in-competition testing—meaning testing that occurs while the games are going on—the system was dizzying in its checks and balances to ensure that Russians didn’t get caught. Before the games, athletes were given a very sophisticated cocktail of three performance-enhancing drugs. Now, the main problem, as many of you may know, with taking performance-enhancing drugs is the time during which it stays in your system. But Dr. Rodchenkov devised a way to mix the performance-enhancing drugs with alcohol, and have the athletes swish it in their mouths for a while and then spit it out, so it would be absorbed under your tongue, sublingually. And that would keep the performanceenhancing drugs out of your digestive system and make it harder to detect. That was the first innovation.
But because athletes were going to be taking these performance-enhancing drugs leading up to, and sometimes during, the competitions, the athletes were instructed to give clean urine—meaning urine that they provided when they weren’t taking performance-enhancing drugs—so that there could be a way to switch their dirty urine, taken during the games, with clean urine that had been collected before. Now, there was one major obstacle to this problem. For those of you who don’t know, during competition testing when an athlete gives urine, the athlete gives two samples—an A bottle and a B bottle. The A bottle is used for testing during the games. The B bottle is used in case there’s a positive test in the A to check the B bottle to make sure that it wasn’t a false positive.
The problem was these bottles are tamper-proof. They’re made by a Swiss company who has developed an incredible technology for caps, such that if you remove the cap, the cap breaks. And you can’t use a different cap because the cap has a serial number that’s the same as the serial number on the bottle. But the greatest innovation was when the FSB found in 2013 that they could open the B bottles, which everyone, including Dr. Rodchenkov, believed was impossible. Because if you could open the B bottle, then you could put clean urine in it and put the cap back on. They opened the bottles without breaking the cap. That was the next innovation.
Then during the games, as testing began, the FSB could open the bottles, replace the dirty urine with clean urine, restore them to the lab, and then test them. And the idea was that they would then test clean. But there was another problem. The FSB could not control for surprise inspections on athletes, both in-competition and out of competition. And from time to time, WADA would send doping officers to take random samples for athletes. And so, in those instances, the FSB had a team of people that would intercept the samples once they went to DHL and confiscate them. So that, in five minutes, in a system that had so many other components to it, it’s too complicated to go through.
Now, Dr. Rodchenkov. Let me be clear about this: Dr. Rodchenkov had no choice but to participate in this system if he wanted to stay alive. And in fact, despite his service to the Russian Federation, when German media started to leak details of the Russian doping system from other whistleblowers, and it became a major problem and the WADA investigation started in 2015, Dr. Rodchenkov learned that the Kremlin was hatching a new secret plan, a plan to blame him as the lone wolf. And they planned to execute this, by executing him, and staging his suicide. And when he learned this from a friend of his at the Kremlin, it did not take him long to decide what to do.
Within two days, as you saw in the trailer, he was on an airplane to Los Angeles, determined to tell the truth about the Russian state-sponsored doping system. But he didn’t come alone. He brought with him powerful evidence to corroborate the truth of his claims. He brought a hard drive. He brought flash drives. He brought the telephone that he used when he was at the Moscow lab. And what he did with that evidence was to turn it over to anti-doping authorities. And what they found was a goldmine. Details that have only come at the—you’ve seen the tip of the iceberg in some of the media reports that you see. Emails between himself and other co-conspirators about, among other things, the disappearing positive methodology. Memos that he wrote to his bosses at the Kremlin and within the FSB detailing some of the problems and issues with the doping system in Russia. And copious handwritten daily diaries that he has been keeping since he was a boy of every detail of every day at the Sochi Olympics, including information about what he was doing for the doping system and what his supervisors were doing for the doping system.
Since he came to the United States, Dr. Rodchenkov has told the truth, first in the documentary ‘‘Icarus,’’ and then to The New York Times, and then to an independent commission established by WADA, headed by a renowned investigator named Professor Richard McLaren. Now, Professor McLaren didn’t work alone. He assembled a team. He assembled a team of experienced investigators, hardscrabble people that were skeptical of Dr. Rodchenkov’s claims. And because he knew that he couldn’t just rely on Dr. Rodchenkov’s word, he hired people to review all the evidence and also to look at stored samples of Russian athletes, the B bottles, that had been taken from the Sochi lab and moved to a lab in Lausanne.
And what did Professor McLaren and his team of investigators find? They found that Dr. Rodchenkov was completely credible and, moreover, that his evidence was fully corroborated by the documents which they determined to be authentic, and by a rigorous and expansive testing protocol for the samples, which showed clear evidence of tampering— both of the bottles themselves, because of scratches and marks, and because adjustments made to the urine to make the salt levels match the salt levels that the athlete gave at the time of the in-competition testing—telltale signs that Dr. Rodchenkov was telling the truth.
And, most importantly, Dr. Rodchenkov produced the actual list of protected athletes. And the metadata for that list showed that it was not created by him. It was created by the Center for Sports Preparation, one of the main organizers of international sports and a key conspirator. And it just so happens that the scratches and marks and the salt found in samples of Russian athletes—because they tested many, many samples beyond the people on that list—the only people that had scratches, marks, and salt manipulation were the very people on this famous duchess list, which is what the list was called.
After Dr. Rodchenkov’s truth was upheld by Professor McLaren, Dr. Rodchenkov’s cooperation did not stop. The IOC then set up two disciplinary commissions. And despite the fact that they delayed significantly interviewing him and ultimately getting evidence from him, they themselves set up a completely different forensic testing system of the same bottles that McLaren had tested, and largely confirmed McLaren’s reports. And Dr. Rodchenkov committed himself to submitting over 200 pages worth of affidavits, with meticulous detail about not only the Russian doping program in general, but the very officials within Russia which were pulling the strings of the puppet, and the involvement not only of officials but of coaches and athletes.
Now, let’s just stop here for a second. None of Dr. Rodchenkov’s revelations should have been news to anyone, because the evidence of a Russian state-sponsored doping system has been mounting for years. And it would take a day to go through all that evidence. But let me give you a couple of snippets. In 2008, there were Olympics in Beijing. And before the Beijing games, seven Russian athletes were suspended for doping violations—after, in the previous year, a whole flock of other Russians has been suspended. And The New York Times ran an article because of the mounting suspicion. And they said—and I’m paraphrasing—because of the number of suspensions and the varied sports of the suspended athletes, troubling questions are starting to mount about a state-sponsored doping system in Russia.
But then in 2013, WADA became concerned that doping was on the rise. And starting in 2013, they published a yearly report of the countries that had the most, what’s called, an analytical adverse finding—a doping violation. And guess what the report showed? Russia had a staggering 225 adverse analytical findings in 2013—20 percent more than the second-ranked country on the list. So, in 2014, WADA did it again. And what did they find? Russia had 148 adverse analytical findings, 20 percent above the next highest ranked country. They did it again in 2015. What did they find? Russia had 176 adverse analytical findings, 36 percent more than the next-highest country.
And so think about that for a second, ladies and gentlemen. In three years’ worth of time, Russia had almost 550 adverse analytical findings. And if that, in and of itself, is not compelling evidence of a state-sponsored doping system, I don’t know what is. But I know what the IOC determined. The IOC determined that Dr. Rodchenkov was credible and, based on his evidence, they banned 43 of the athletes from the duchess list for lifetime bans against any further Olympic competitions. And so it’s obviously important to talk about the corroboration and the verification that he’s telling the truth.
But you know what a truthful person does? A truthful person tells the truth no matter whether the truth is guilt or innocence. And the IOC also did something important based on Dr. Rodchenkov’s information, because he exonerated some athletes. There were two wrongly accused Russian athletes. And rather than simply trying to blame everyone, Dr. Rodchenkov called it out and said: IOC, you’ve gotten this wrong. I have no reason to believe that these two people were involved. They weren’t on the duchess list. They didn’t have scratches and marks. They didn’t have salt content. And I don’t have any recollection of being told that they were protected athletes. And based on Dr. Rodchenkov’s evidence, the two athletes are now competing again.
But the IOC did something else important. It suspended not only a number of coaches, but a number of Russian officials—including the current Deputy Prime Minister of Russia Vitaly Mutko, who orchestrated the state-sponsored scheme, ordered it after the dismal Russian performance in the Vancouver Winter Olympics. And the IOC determined that he was legally responsible, culpable, for the state-sponsored doping system. So that’s the good news. Now, here comes the bad news. Where are we now? It’s not good. Despite all of the extensive cooperation and evidence, what result, at the end of the day, has the conflicted self-policing system of the IOC—what has it delivered to the mission of protecting clean athletes and upholding whistleblowers like Dr. Rodchenkov? I’m sorry to tell you the situation is simply shameful. Now, recall something, the IOC has a track record with respect to violations where a foreign government unduly influences either a national Olympic Committee or a lab. The example’s Kuwait. In 2014, Kuwait passed a law. And the law, in the IOC’s view, unduly harmed the independence of the Kuwaiti Olympic Committee.
And the IOC found that this was a terrible transgression, such that the banned Kuwait from the Olympics in 2015. And the ban still exists, all right? Okay, so there’s the example. What does the IOC think of what Russia did? Well, let’s judge the words by the actions. At the time that these revelations first came out in The New York Times and then were confirmed by Professor McLaren, IOC president Thomas Bach called Russia’s actions, and I quote, ‘‘A shocking and unprecedented attack on the integrity of the Olympic Games and Sports.’’ And what’s more, he promised action. He promised that he would, quote, ‘‘Not hesitate to take the toughest sanctions available against any individual or organization implicated in the criminality.’’ So, surely you would think an unprecedented attack would result in an unprecedented set of disciplinary measures.
Obviously, only a complete ban would have the dual purpose of punishing Russia’s systematic doping system and deterring other cheaters. And when he announced, on December 5th, that there would be a ban, there was much international acclaim. And I confess, I was part of the choir. I believed the words. And so did everyone else, until they read the fine print. The ban wasn’t a ban at all. It was hardly a slap on the wrist. And in retrospect, it looks like a carefully crafted PR stunt, a sham, and one that has earmarks of extensive negotiations with Russia. I mean, after all, think about it. In the current Olympic Games in Pyeongchang, Russia is fielding one of the largest Olympic teams, despite the fact that it’s, quote, unquote, ‘‘banned.’’ And they’re not just competing and neutrals, the way other suspended countries—and for those of you who don’t know what neutral means, it means no national insignia.
You’re competing under the Olympic flag as Olympic athletes—but Russia got a special dispensation. Their athletes are wearing uniforms bearing Russia’s name. And this ban, which is really just a temporary suspension, is going to be lifted in this Olympic game. And mark my words—[laughs]—by Tuesday, Thomas Bach is going to lift the ban and the Russians are going to march at the closing ceremony under their own national flag, despite this horrific behavior.
The Olympic self-policing system has had other catastrophes as well. Most of the 43 lifetime bans that I spoke about before, imposed by the IOC, have now been overturned by the highest court in sport, which is called the Court of Arbitration for Sport, allowing most of the athletes to compete again. But, most egregiously, Russia has been permitted, remarkably, to stonewall the IOC and WADA. Despite almost on a daily basis protesting their innocent and decrying the doping scandal as a byproduct of some Western conspiracy—in which, I assume, I must be a conspirator—Russia refuses to turn over critical evidence that was ordered by WADA more than a year ago.
Why? If they’re innocent, and there’s no doping system, then why not turn over the evidence? And let me just unpack that a little bit for you when we talk about the evidence. There are a lot of things that can be manipulated within a doping laboratory. But there’s one thing that can’t be. The testing equipment itself, as long as you’re not running a pretest, records the results of the test on the computer drive for the testing equipment. And you can’t change that, right? There is no way to alter it. There’s no way to fake it. There’s no way to change it at all. It’s a permanent record. And WADA told Russia to turn over that data. And they’ve refused. And if that’s not an admission of guilt, I really don’t know what it is.
But let’s ask another question: Honestly, has Russia accepted a scintilla of responsibility for this, despite the fact that, at least now, with respect to 11 athletes, the bans were in fact upheld by the Court for Sports Arbitration? Well, this comment from Pyotr Tolstoy, a leading member of Russia’s state Duma, which is the lower house of their legislature, typifies Russia’s reaction. I’m going to quote: ‘‘We won’t apologize. We won’t apologize to Bach, who prepared this report’’—banning the Russian athletes—‘‘so sweetly.’’
We have nothing to apologize for. And neither do our athletes. And what’s more, putting aside the lack of any acceptance of responsibility or contrition, Russia has sought to retaliate against Dr. Rodchenkov again and again. Only, by the way, after his cooperation was revealed—Russia indicted him twice for politically motivated crimes. And let’s be clear, in order for this sort of system to exist, obviously many people had to be involved. It couldn’t have possibly been one man. No lone wolf could do all the things that were necessary in order for even a system that was less sophisticated to succeed. There had to be athletes participating, coaches participating, people swapping samples, people helping to cover it up.
Russia, not surprisingly, singled Dr. Rodchenkov out for these criminal charges, right? So that shows the motivation. The motivation is to silence him. Russian officials have harassed his family, confiscated his property, and even declared—and I’m going to quote here—that he should be, quote, ‘‘Shot as Stalin would have done.’’ And to discredit Dr. Rodchenkov, even Russian President Vladimir Putin has gotten in the game, on the one hand accusing the FBI of drugging Dr. Rodchenkov to elicit a false confession, while at the same time calling Dr. Rodchenkov an imbecile and mentally unstable.
Now, I was an organized crime prosecutor for many years. So I’m very used to seeing people who cooperate be discredited, or attempt to be discredited, by people that were their conspirators. So let’s be clear about this. The U.S. didn’t pick Dr. Rodchenkov. Russia did. They made him the director of the Moscow lab. When opponents of Vitaly Mutko started an investigation of Dr. Rodchenkov back in 2011, allegedly for distributing performance-enhancing drugs—which was his job—it was the Kremlin that quashed those charges so that Grigory Rodchenkov could continue the work that they had authorized.
So Russia picked this witness. Nobody from the West did. And to cap things off, just to make it extra sweet, just this week Dr. Rodchenkov—you’re not going to really believe this unless you’ve seen it in the newspaper—was sued in New York State Supreme Court for defamation from three of the Russian athletes who had the most evidence against them in the McLaren report, in a lawsuit no doubt backed by the Kremlin. And I will say, just on a personal note, I have read media reports that an owner of an NBA franchise is helping to finance this frivolous lawsuit. And I hope that those reports are inaccurate, because if an NBA franchise owner is using NBA revenue to finance a lawsuit to attack and silence a whistleblower who’s trying to bring integrity back to sports, I think that every American and every basketball fan would be galled by that. And I certainly hope that the NBA is monitoring this closely, because this sends a terrible message—a terrible message to the players, the fans, and the kids that watch that team.
So this whole litany of retaliation, right, spanning the last year and a half, which I’ve only just summarized—believe me, if you want to ask me questions I’ll give you 15 more examples—what has the IOC done? Because the IOC has power, right? The power is right now the Russian Olympic Committee is suspended. And the IOC retained for itself in this ban the ability to continue that suspension if Russia didn’t behave, if it didn’t honor the IOC’s decision. So all the IOC has to do is to pick up the phone and call Vitaly Mutko and say: This ban is going to continue in these Olympic Games and future Olympic Games, unless you leave our main witness alone. After all, he’s testified, given affidavits, submitted evidence, been corroborated. I think that’s the least that they could do, is make a phone call.
And what has the IOC done? Nothing. They’ve sat by and watched this abhorrent behavior and done not a single thing to stop the Russians. So let me ask you a question, do think that that emboldens the Russians when they act in this way and no one stops them? Well, you tell me, because according to press reports, assuming that they’re true, Russian responded by retaliating against the IOC and WADA, right? [Laughs.] According to press reports, they hacked WADA’s and the IOC’s computers. They leaked their confidential documents. And some Russian Government officials have promised to impose sanctions on IOC members and WADA executives in retaliation for the ban. Does that sound like behavior that deserves its place among other nations upholding Olympic ideals?
Well, in the midst of all this—just funny twists and turns of this case, no one would have guessed what would happen next, right? [Laughs.] Because another whistleblower, in the midst of this whole thing—not Dr. Rodchenkov, not anyone that he had control of, he doesn’t even know who it is—someone within Russia leaked a confidential database dating back before the Sochi games that the Moscow lab had been using to record all of the adverse analytical findings before they made them disappear. This is exactly the evidence that Russia wouldn’t produce. And the whistleblower disclosed it.
Now, WADA acted. WADA spent much time and ultimately authenticated it as a true and exact copy of what’s called the LIMS database, the laboratory information management system, within the Moscow laboratory. And I’ve been assured by WADA that it is analyzing the thousands and thousands of adverse analytical findings stored in that secret database, and it will disclose the identities of those athletes to the international federations. And if the international federations do not bring cases against every single one of those athletes, Olivier Niggli said that WADA would do it. And I believe him. So WADA has acted.
But after the disclosure of the LIMS database, what did the IOC do? What did the IOC say? It’s been crickets—simply crickets. Not a thing. The IOC didn’t even disclose the LIMS database to the Court for Sports Arbitration, despite the fact that, as I’ve been told, there are 10 or 12 athletes whose appeals were being heard who had adverse analytical findings that had already been identified in the LIMS database. So it would have been critical corroborating information, but the IOC did nothing. So, despite the overwhelming proof of a state-sponsored doping system and epic obstruction and retaliation, IOC President Thomas Bach still plans to lift the ban—the suspension, really, of the Russian team. And so it’s little wonder at this point that information about infighting within the IOC executive committee is starting to leak. And there’s been really one critically important a