Online today on the United States Anti-Doping Agency site is the “Reasoned Decision” against Lance Armstrong.
The document was put first put online by RaceRadio.
From a brief scan, the entire 220-page document is composed mostly of hearsay testimony by a number of Armstrong’s previous team mates, friends, and 
employees.
There are no real surprises in the list of testimonials, because most of the names were revealed this past summer by enterprising journalists covering the Tour de France.
In a statement released today the USADA said the report contains “eyewitness, documentary, first-hand, scientific, direct and circumstantial evidence [that will] reveal conclusive and undeniable proof that brings to the light of day for the first time this systemic, sustained and highly professionalized team-run doping conspiracy.”
But what is a surprise is just how old and dated some of the information is, and how much of it is composed of innuendo and rehashed, republished allegations that we saw and read years ago.
As an example, some of those allegations were revealed by Emma O’Reilly, the U.S. Postal Team’s masseuse in the book, “From Lance to Landis,” by David Walsh published in 2007–wait, that’s 5 years ago! We read the book and there was not one shred of hard evidence in it anywhere. Not only that, O’Reilly was paid by Walsh to make her allegations public.
Paying for testimony by journalists is considered not only morally wrong, but also subjects their words to scrutiny: did they say this because they were paid to?
We don’t know if there are any new revelations from O’Reilly in the USADA document–we haven’t read all 220 pages yet. But this much we know, when we read the book by Walsh, the allegations, though a good read, were unsupported.
We also know the back story to O’Reilly, because we heard it from her brother, in person, in New York City before the book was published. At the time he said his sister was fired because she wrote details of the going’s on at the U.S. Postal camp in her diary, which included not an account of doping, but an account of cheating by one husband or more against their wives.
That diary was found by one of the alleged husbands, Johan Bruyneel. She was fired, and became a juicy tale-bearer for Walsh.
O’Reilly’s allegations, which can’t even be proven, were refuted by Armstrong long ago. No wonder he didn’t have the energy to deal with a fresh new round of old allegations again.
But just to be sure, we’re going to read it and get back to you. If there is more than a smoking gun therein, you’ll be the first to know.
