NY Daily News: Feds Confirm MLB Knew of Steroid Problem

[CubsFan1982]

Feds confirm baseball knew

BY CHRISTIAN RED
DAILY NEWS SPORTS WRITER

A decade before he penned his tell-all book about the rampant steroid abuse throughout America's pastime, admitted user Jose Canseco had been placed in MLB's security office crosshairs by the FBI.

As reported exclusively by the Daily News last month, special agent Greg Stejskal, who is based in the Ann Arbor, Mich. office of the FBI, reached out to MLB security chief Kevin Hallinan more than a decade ago with a warning that Canseco and other MLB players came up in Stejskal's three-year steroids trafficking investigation.

MLB and Hallinan vehemently denied having been told by Stejskal that baseball was facing a steroid problem and that names had surfaced in "Operation Equine," the FBI's investigation into steroid trafficking by bodybuilders and weightlifters. But according to retired FBI agent Bill Randall, who worked alongside Stejskal in Operation Equine, the FBI has records of Stejskal's meeting with Hallinan in Quantico, Va., at an agents convention in September of 1994. "The fact is, Greg (Stejskal) met with Hallinan and MLB, and told him about Canseco and other names," Randall said.

Stejskal didn't end his contact with MLB after that initial meeting. In the past year and a half, he recommended that MLB speak with former dealer and user Curtis Wenzlaff about the steroids in sports. Wenzlaff confirmed to the News that he spoke with Marty Maguire, a former DEA officer and the Chief Investigator for MLB.

"Greg Stejskal called me three years ago, out of nowhere," Wenzlaff says. "I was in northern California at the time, and he asked me, would I be willing to talk with Major League Baseball. If I didn't talk to (Maguire) an hour, I talked to him an hour and five minutes.

"He was asking me questions on behalf of Major League Baseball. Jose's estimation on 80% (of players using), I would still have to agree with that, from what I knew years ago. I was just giving him info. I explained, all you have to do is know a pharmacist. Or a veternarian and you can rule the world. He was simply pumping me for information. I certainly let him know about the easy access. And how rampant, in my opinion, that it was."

Wenzlaff went on to testify before a Senate panel last summer - on Stejskal's recommendation - during which he told Sen. Joe Biden (D-Del.) and Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) why athletes would be inclined to use steroids. He was also contacted last week by a Congressional staffer who asked him questions relating to upcoming hearings, including Thursday's hearing before the House Government Reform Committee in which seven current and former players, including Canseco and McGwire, have been subpoenaed.

Originally published on March 12, 2005