Lance Williams and Mark Fainaru-Wada
Encyclopedia
Lance Williams and Mark Fainaru-Wada co-authored the book Game of Shadows
while they were reporters for the San Francisco Chronicle
. For their investigative work in the field of steroids, Williams and Fainaru-Wada were given the 2004 George Polk Award.
In the course of their investigative research, Williams and Fainaru-Wada were the first to report that:
On May 5, 2006, Fainaru-Wada and Williams were subpoenaed to testify before a federal grand jury about how they obtained leaked grand jury testimony. On May 31, the authors urged United States
District Judge Martin Jenkins
of San Francisco to excuse them from testifying. This appeal was supported by affidavit
s from Washington Post reporters Carl Bernstein
and Mark Corallo
, a former press secretary to former Attorney General
John Ashcroft
, but was denied on August 15, 2006.
On Sept 21, 2006, the journalists were sentenced to 18 months in prison for contempt of court. The two have repeatedly stated that they would go to prison before revealing their sources. The two avoided jail time, however, when attorney Troy Ellerman pleaded guilty on Feb. 14, 2007, to leaking the information, lying to prosecutors, obstructing justice and disobeying a court order not to disclose grand jury information. The two reporters were awarded the 2007 Dick Schaap Award for Outstanding Journalism
.
Fainaru-Wada left the Chronicle in November 2007 to join ESPN
. In August 2009, Williams left the Chronicle for California Watch
, a new West Coast division of the Center for Investigative Reporting
.
, Lance Williams was quoted as saying, "We always thought there was a disconnect between the government's interest in steroid use. There's no question that the people who put the case [against BALCO] together bent over backwards to protect the users of the drugs, first they condoned their use of illegal drugs, then they excised all of their names from the court filings. It goes on to this day -- this attempt to protect these wealthy athletes."
Fainaru-Wada also questioned the government's motives, "You have these high-profile athletes, multi-million dollar athletes in some cases, who were the users of the drugs and, wanting to clean up sports," he contended, "[Congress] probably [should] expose those people, and yet, all those athletes are protected and their names were hidden from public file, or retracted by using generic names such as 'A Major League Baseball player', 'an NFL player', those types of things."
, it has become a topic for debate as to whether it should be acceptable to profit from material illegally disclosed to them. Both Fainaru-Wada and Williams claim that they have received little-to-no profit from their book, to this point. "We haven't seen anything from royalties yet. All I can say is, we're not getting rich, we're not retiring, we're not buying new houses, we're not buying mansions or anything like that. I'm not going to change my status (Laughs). And I would just say, even if it did, it's not relevant. I didn't do this for the money, Lance didn't do this for the money; we did this because we love reporting, because this is a great story, and because it's an important one, and that's why we did it," Fainaru-Wada said in the RealGM
article. He also remarked, "Lance has a 'semi-joke' that, he did the math, and he makes, in a year, as a reporter for the Chronicle, what Bonds makes in three innings." Williams went even further, saying that they had actually received an advance-payment so that they could afford to take time off work to write Game of Shadows
.
, public controversy stirred concerning whether or not the two reporters should be forced to reveal their sources. While many contend that confidential sources have been utilized by the press since the beginning of its existence, others believe that by not revealing their confidential sources, Fainaru-Wada and Williams are, in effect, obstructing justice
and should be punished accordingly.
Those who believe that confidential sources are necessary in reporting often point to the work of Bob Woodward
and Carl Bernstein
of The Washington Post
and their mysterious source, "Deep Throat
," to whom they refer several times in their articles detailing the Watergate scandal
.
In an affidavit
, California Attorney General Bill Lockyer
stated that, "To jail a journalist because he protected his source is an assault not only on the press, but on Californians as well."
Eve Burton, who has been the Hearst Corporation
lawyer for the two reporters, said, "I think that they [Fainaru-Wada and Williams] have the constitutional right to protect their sources. I think law-enforcement's interest in determining who leaked the information to the press has to be balanced against the significant public-reporting that these guys did. Without the laws that have protected journalists for the past thirty years," she contended, "We wouldn't have had Watergate, we wouldn't have had BALCO
, and we won't have the next government corruption case that comes along. That's the importance to the public in this. The reporters [must] be able to provide public information, and without the use of confidential sources -- carefully conceived, properly used -- we will not learn about important matters that involve our government."
Lance Williams also expressed a similar concern, saying, "As far as the government coming after us, the world has changed since this story was published. In [the days of Woodward and Bernstein], the government was not going around the country subpoenaing reporters. This is a very new development. It's really an innovation of the current Attorney General
, as far as I can tell. But the number of reporters subpoenaed in the past decade is not very great. And the number subpoenaed recently is a large proportion of the number subpoenaed in the past 20 to 25 years. We didn't know we were risking jail, we thought [the government] would try to find out the sources, but we really did not anticipate that it would get to this point. Because as a matter of practice, that wasn't what they were doing in those days."
On Jan. 18, 2007, John Conyers
and Tom Davis
sent Alberto Gonzales
a letter asking him to withdraw the subpoenas.
Game of Shadows
Game of Shadows: Barry Bonds, BALCO, and the Steroids Scandal that Rocked Professional Sports is a bestselling non-fiction book published on March 23, 2006 and written by Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams, reporters for the San Francisco Chronicle...
while they were reporters for the San Francisco Chronicle
San Francisco Chronicle
thumb|right|upright|The Chronicle Building following the [[1906 San Francisco earthquake|1906 earthquake]] and fireThe San Francisco Chronicle is a newspaper serving primarily the San Francisco Bay Area of the U.S. state of California, but distributed throughout Northern and Central California,...
. For their investigative work in the field of steroids, Williams and Fainaru-Wada were given the 2004 George Polk Award.
In the course of their investigative research, Williams and Fainaru-Wada were the first to report that:
- track star Marion JonesMarion JonesMarion Lois Jones , also known as Marion Jones-Thompson, is a former world champion track and field athlete, and a former professional basketball player for Tulsa Shock in the WNBA...
purportedly received illegal drugs from the steroid supplier BALCOBalcoBalco can refer to:* the Bay Area Laboratory Co-operative - a controversial sports medicine/nutrition centre in Burlingame, California.* Balco balcony systems who develops, designs and manufactures balcony systems and glazing solutions.... - world record-holder Tim MontgomeryTim MontgomeryTimothy Montgomery is a former American athlete. In 2005, he was stripped of his records – including a now void 100m world record of 9.78 seconds set in 2002 – after being found guilty of using performance-enhancing drugs...
testified before a federal grand jury that he had used steroids - baseball slugger Jason GiambiJason GiambiJason Gilbert Giambi is an American professional baseball first baseman with the Colorado Rockies of Major League Baseball.He was the American League MVP in 2000 while with the Oakland Athletics, and is a five-time All-Star who has led the American League in walks four times, in on base percentage...
testified that he had used steroids
On May 5, 2006, Fainaru-Wada and Williams were subpoenaed to testify before a federal grand jury about how they obtained leaked grand jury testimony. On May 31, the authors urged United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
District Judge Martin Jenkins
Martin Jenkins
Martin J. Jenkins is a justice of the California Court of Appeal for the First District, located in San Francisco, and a former federal judge in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California.-Early life:...
of San Francisco to excuse them from testifying. This appeal was supported by affidavit
Affidavit
An affidavit is a written sworn statement of fact voluntarily made by an affiant or deponent under an oath or affirmation administered by a person authorized to do so by law. Such statement is witnessed as to the authenticity of the affiant's signature by a taker of oaths, such as a notary public...
s from Washington Post reporters Carl Bernstein
Carl Bernstein
Carl Bernstein is an American investigative journalist who, at The Washington Post, teamed up with Bob Woodward; the two did the majority of the most important news reporting on the Watergate scandal. These scandals led to numerous government investigations, the indictment of a vast number of...
and Mark Corallo
Mark Corallo
Mark Corallo is a political communications and public relations professional, who is currently the co-founder and co-principal of Corallo Comstock...
, a former press secretary to former Attorney General
United States Attorney General
The United States Attorney General is the head of the United States Department of Justice concerned with legal affairs and is the chief law enforcement officer of the United States government. The attorney general is considered to be the chief lawyer of the U.S. government...
John Ashcroft
John Ashcroft
John David Ashcroft is a United States politician who served as the 79th United States Attorney General, from 2001 until 2005, appointed by President George W. Bush. Ashcroft previously served as the 50th Governor of Missouri and a U.S...
, but was denied on August 15, 2006.
On Sept 21, 2006, the journalists were sentenced to 18 months in prison for contempt of court. The two have repeatedly stated that they would go to prison before revealing their sources. The two avoided jail time, however, when attorney Troy Ellerman pleaded guilty on Feb. 14, 2007, to leaking the information, lying to prosecutors, obstructing justice and disobeying a court order not to disclose grand jury information. The two reporters were awarded the 2007 Dick Schaap Award for Outstanding Journalism
Dick Schaap Award for Outstanding Journalism
The Dick Schaap Award for Outstanding Journalism was established in 2002 to honor the memory of one of Americas pre-eminent sports writers, Dick Schaap. The award is presented by the Nassau County Sports Commission and is given out to the journalist, in any medium, that best exemplifies the...
.
Fainaru-Wada left the Chronicle in November 2007 to join ESPN
ESPN
Entertainment and Sports Programming Network, commonly known as ESPN, is an American global cable television network focusing on sports-related programming including live and pre-taped event telecasts, sports talk shows, and other original programming....
. In August 2009, Williams left the Chronicle for California Watch
California Watch
California Watch is a nonprofit and nonpartisan investigative reporting group operated by the Center for Investigative Reporting. Writers and editors at the news organization track a variety of issues, including money and politics, the environment, health and welfare, public safety and...
, a new West Coast division of the Center for Investigative Reporting
Center for Investigative Reporting
The Center for Investigative Reporting is a non-profit journalism organization located in Berkeley, California. It was founded in 1977 by Lowell Bergman, , and David Weir to reveal injustice and abuse of power through the tools of journalism....
.
Quotes on Government Investigation
On August 21, 2006, in an interview with Forrest Wilkinson of RealGMRealGM
RealGM.com is a sports website created in 2000. The site was originally a basketball site but has since expanded its scope to provide information about ice hockey, baseball, and American football. According to Alexa, the site ranks in the top 5000 of most visited sites, as of January 2009. The...
, Lance Williams was quoted as saying, "We always thought there was a disconnect between the government's interest in steroid use. There's no question that the people who put the case [against BALCO] together bent over backwards to protect the users of the drugs, first they condoned their use of illegal drugs, then they excised all of their names from the court filings. It goes on to this day -- this attempt to protect these wealthy athletes."
Fainaru-Wada also questioned the government's motives, "You have these high-profile athletes, multi-million dollar athletes in some cases, who were the users of the drugs and, wanting to clean up sports," he contended, "[Congress] probably [should] expose those people, and yet, all those athletes are protected and their names were hidden from public file, or retracted by using generic names such as 'A Major League Baseball player', 'an NFL player', those types of things."
Profit from book
After having published Game of ShadowsGame of Shadows
Game of Shadows: Barry Bonds, BALCO, and the Steroids Scandal that Rocked Professional Sports is a bestselling non-fiction book published on March 23, 2006 and written by Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams, reporters for the San Francisco Chronicle...
, it has become a topic for debate as to whether it should be acceptable to profit from material illegally disclosed to them. Both Fainaru-Wada and Williams claim that they have received little-to-no profit from their book, to this point. "We haven't seen anything from royalties yet. All I can say is, we're not getting rich, we're not retiring, we're not buying new houses, we're not buying mansions or anything like that. I'm not going to change my status (Laughs). And I would just say, even if it did, it's not relevant. I didn't do this for the money, Lance didn't do this for the money; we did this because we love reporting, because this is a great story, and because it's an important one, and that's why we did it," Fainaru-Wada said in the RealGM
RealGM
RealGM.com is a sports website created in 2000. The site was originally a basketball site but has since expanded its scope to provide information about ice hockey, baseball, and American football. According to Alexa, the site ranks in the top 5000 of most visited sites, as of January 2009. The...
article. He also remarked, "Lance has a 'semi-joke' that, he did the math, and he makes, in a year, as a reporter for the Chronicle, what Bonds makes in three innings." Williams went even further, saying that they had actually received an advance-payment so that they could afford to take time off work to write Game of Shadows
Game of Shadows
Game of Shadows: Barry Bonds, BALCO, and the Steroids Scandal that Rocked Professional Sports is a bestselling non-fiction book published on March 23, 2006 and written by Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams, reporters for the San Francisco Chronicle...
.
Forced to Testify
On August 15, 2006, U.S. District Judge Jeffrey White ordered Fainaru-Wada and Williams to comply with their subpoenas and testify, saying that, if they do not, they will be held in contempt and incarcerated until such time as they decide to talk or if the grand jury expires and has to be thrown out. They may also be freed from this obligation if a higher court reverses the ruling. The reporters have previously stated that they would rather go to jail than testify.Controversy
Following Judge White's decision to uphold the subpoenaSubpoena
A subpoena is a writ by a government agency, most often a court, that has authority to compel testimony by a witness or production of evidence under a penalty for failure. There are two common types of subpoena:...
, public controversy stirred concerning whether or not the two reporters should be forced to reveal their sources. While many contend that confidential sources have been utilized by the press since the beginning of its existence, others believe that by not revealing their confidential sources, Fainaru-Wada and Williams are, in effect, obstructing justice
Obstruction of justice
The crime of obstruction of justice, in United States jurisdictions, refers to the crime of interfering with the work of police, investigators, regulatory agencies, prosecutors, or other officials...
and should be punished accordingly.
Those who believe that confidential sources are necessary in reporting often point to the work of Bob Woodward
Bob Woodward
Robert Upshur Woodward is an American investigative journalist and non-fiction author. He has worked for The Washington Post since 1971 as a reporter, and is currently an associate editor of the Post....
and Carl Bernstein
Carl Bernstein
Carl Bernstein is an American investigative journalist who, at The Washington Post, teamed up with Bob Woodward; the two did the majority of the most important news reporting on the Watergate scandal. These scandals led to numerous government investigations, the indictment of a vast number of...
of The Washington Post
The Washington Post
The Washington Post is Washington, D.C.'s largest newspaper and its oldest still-existing paper, founded in 1877. Located in the capital of the United States, The Post has a particular emphasis on national politics. D.C., Maryland, and Virginia editions are printed for daily circulation...
and their mysterious source, "Deep Throat
Deep Throat
Deep Throat is the pseudonym given to the secret informant who provided information to Bob Woodward of The Washington Post in 1972 about the involvement of United States President Richard Nixon's administration in what came to be known as the Watergate scandal...
," to whom they refer several times in their articles detailing the Watergate scandal
Watergate scandal
The Watergate scandal was a political scandal during the 1970s in the United States resulting from the break-in of the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate office complex in Washington, D.C., and the Nixon administration's attempted cover-up of its involvement...
.
In an affidavit
Affidavit
An affidavit is a written sworn statement of fact voluntarily made by an affiant or deponent under an oath or affirmation administered by a person authorized to do so by law. Such statement is witnessed as to the authenticity of the affiant's signature by a taker of oaths, such as a notary public...
, California Attorney General Bill Lockyer
Bill Lockyer
William Westwood "Bill" Lockyer is an American politician. He is the current 32nd State Treasurer of California, elected in 2006 and re-elected in 2010. He has also served as California Attorney General and President Pro Tempore of the California State Senate...
stated that, "To jail a journalist because he protected his source is an assault not only on the press, but on Californians as well."
Eve Burton, who has been the Hearst Corporation
Hearst Corporation
The Hearst Corporation is an American media conglomerate based in the Hearst Tower, Manhattan in New York City, New York, United States. Founded by William Randolph Hearst as an owner of newspapers, the company's holdings now include a wide variety of media...
lawyer for the two reporters, said, "I think that they [Fainaru-Wada and Williams] have the constitutional right to protect their sources. I think law-enforcement's interest in determining who leaked the information to the press has to be balanced against the significant public-reporting that these guys did. Without the laws that have protected journalists for the past thirty years," she contended, "We wouldn't have had Watergate, we wouldn't have had BALCO
Balco
Balco can refer to:* the Bay Area Laboratory Co-operative - a controversial sports medicine/nutrition centre in Burlingame, California.* Balco balcony systems who develops, designs and manufactures balcony systems and glazing solutions....
, and we won't have the next government corruption case that comes along. That's the importance to the public in this. The reporters [must] be able to provide public information, and without the use of confidential sources -- carefully conceived, properly used -- we will not learn about important matters that involve our government."
Lance Williams also expressed a similar concern, saying, "As far as the government coming after us, the world has changed since this story was published. In [the days of Woodward and Bernstein], the government was not going around the country subpoenaing reporters. This is a very new development. It's really an innovation of the current Attorney General
Attorney General
In most common law jurisdictions, the attorney general, or attorney-general, is the main legal advisor to the government, and in some jurisdictions he or she may also have executive responsibility for law enforcement or responsibility for public prosecutions.The term is used to refer to any person...
, as far as I can tell. But the number of reporters subpoenaed in the past decade is not very great. And the number subpoenaed recently is a large proportion of the number subpoenaed in the past 20 to 25 years. We didn't know we were risking jail, we thought [the government] would try to find out the sources, but we really did not anticipate that it would get to this point. Because as a matter of practice, that wasn't what they were doing in those days."
On Jan. 18, 2007, John Conyers
John Conyers
John Conyers, Jr. is the U.S. Representative for , serving since 1965 . He is a member of the Democratic Party...
and Tom Davis
Thomas M. Davis
Thomas Milburn "Tom" Davis III was a Republican member of the United States House of Representatives, representing Virginia's 11th congressional district in Northern Virginia. Davis was considering a run for the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by five-term incumbent and fellow Republican John...
sent Alberto Gonzales
Alberto Gonzales
Alberto R. Gonzales was the 80th Attorney General of the United States. Gonzales was appointed to the post in February 2005 by President George W. Bush. Gonzales was the first Hispanic Attorney General in U.S. history and the highest-ranking Hispanic government official ever...
a letter asking him to withdraw the subpoenas.