congress, the white house, the supreme court and public policy events in washington, d.c. and around the country. c-span is brought to you by your cable or satellite provider. >> jim walden is an attorney for the russian doctor who led and later publicly disclosed a state-run sports doping program. he talked about his clients' experience. it was part of an event hosted by the u.s. helsinki commission. this is an hour and 10 minutes. ranging from military affairs -- my name is paul. i'm the international economic policy adviser at the commission, responsible primarily for anticorruption and sanctions-related issues. i am joined today by jim walden, he attorney for russian doping whistle blower for this work into the dark underworld of fraud in sports and what we can do about it. as an administrative aside, would like to mention that camera crews are permitted to record the briefing in its ntirety. our topic today is a russian doping scandal, a story of corruption and fraud on an unprecedented scale. t has now been demonstrate beyond a reasonable doubt that the russian state was behind a systemic effort to dope their athletes and defraud the olympics. no one can say 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 business men face off against oligarchs and ofvernments based on the rule law do battle with authoritarian kleptocrats and much like at the olympics, without the benefit of the 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. is a brave person. he 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 the doctor blew the missile on the program he had once helped facilitate. resultings in suspension of russia from the 2018 winter olympics. his revelations generated a revitalized debate on the need to combat corruption in international competition more generally. the doctor now lives a precarious life in the united states, relying on whistleblower protection 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 the doctor 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 ould like to show off. any are coming to terms with the tremendous threat that lobalized corruption and build a acy, to inancial and legal architecture and -- this sort of society is exemplified by histleblowers. nd 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 the jim, we would like to show the nominated r the oscar documentsry called ick -- icarus. it reveals the state-run doping operation by russia and the implications for his decision for him and the world >> the idea i had was to prove the system in place to test athletes was bull -- when i started on this, i didn't know what it was going to lead o. gregory did all of the testing for sochi. going to test my samples through his lab in moscow. >> i was facilitating one of to the most deliberate doping in sports history. >> wait, wait. let's back up one second here. were you the mastermind that cheated the olympics? >> yes. >> and that set off this whole chain of events. >> today the world anti-doping agency suspended russia's sports drug testing lab. >> 49% of russian athletes are guilty of doping. >> it is an unimaginable level of criminality. i'll get the flight for you. holy --. >> the department of justice >> criminal investigation against you. >> i'm innocent. talk to you guys about this. >> you're recording. >> ok. well, first of all i want to thank paul for having me. t's a pleasure to be here. the original invitation was for the doctor and for reasons described he can't be here but i'll read a statement. it's a great honor to come to a congressional commission to talk about the importance of his work and specifically to talk about the critical juncture that we are in when it comes to clean sports. s you know from paul and icarus, he served for about 10 years as the director of the moscow anti-doping center. a collection of laboratories that was supposed to enforce a code o help catch cheaters. the world anti-doping agency or wada, they are the ones that are upposed to be gatekeepers. you will not be surprised to learn they're budget is made up of money from the ior and many individual nations. you'll further not be surprised to know the united states is one of the largest contributors to wada's budget. it's $2.3 million annual contribution, the second largest only behind the ioc. now, as the world now also knows, while dr. oodchenkov was working to catch cheaters, he had a dark secret. his bosses in the kremlin, 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 the system. but given the time constraints i'll boil it down to six main components. i'm going to separate them into two categories. there is out of competition testing meaning when there is not a koch tation going on. and in-competition testing. when i talk about testing i'm talking about the two events in 2014, the world championships and the olympics in sochi. with respect to out of competition testing, the doctor disclosed 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 would from time to time be required to give urine test, the primary method to detect cheating. those olympics -- those athletes, when they came into the moscow lab, for out of competition testing, would be pretested, meaning before the official test began, and if their urine sample was positive, meaning a dirty test, that test was never downloaded to the system, a system that links to wada. once a dirty sample is download and wada becomes aware of it, then action to suspend the athlete occurs. deciderring the doctor this disappearing methodology was in place for russia for visit the entire time 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 -- he orchestration was assist by the enter for sports preparation and the agency to the kgb so that covers out of fish -- out of competition testing. testing, theition system was dizzying in its checks and balances to make sure that russians did not get caught. before the games, athletes were given a very sophisticated cocktail of three performance-enhancing drugs. the main problem, as many of you may know from taking them is the time in which it stays in your system. devised a way to mix the performance-enhancing drugs without a hall and have the athletes swished it in their mouths for a while and then spit it out. that would keep the performance-enhancing drugs out of your digestive system and make it harder to detect. that was the first innovation. athletes were going to be taking these performance-enhancing drugs leading up to and sometimes in competitions, the athletes were instructed to give clean urine, meaning urine that they provided when they were not taking performance-enhancing drugs so that there could be a way to switch their dirty urine taken during the games with clean urine that bad -- had been collected before. fore was one main obstacle this. during competition testing, when an athlete gives a urine, the athlete gives two samples, and a be bottle -- b bottle. be that the bd to pottle -- bottle was checked. if you remove the cap, it breaks and you cannot use a different cap because it has a serial number because it is the same as the one on the bottle. the greatest innovation was when the fsb found in 2013 that they could open the b bottles which everyone including dr. rodchenkov thought was impossible. if you could open the b bottle then you could open it and put clean urine in. that was the next innovation. as testinggames began, the fsb could open the bottles, replaced the dirty urine with clean urine, restore them to the lab, and then test them. the idea was that they would then test clean. there was in other problem. the fsb could not control for surprise inspections on athletes, both in competition and out of competition. from time to time, wada woods -- would send for random testing of athletes. that in five minutes is a system that had so many other components to it, it is to complicated to go through. dr. rodchenkov, let me be clear about this. dr. rodchenkov had no choice but in this system if you wanted to stay alive. 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, a lot of investigation started in 2015. dr. rodchenkov learned that the kremlin was hatching a new groom himn, a plan to as the lone wolf. they planned to execute this by executing him and staging his suicide. when he learned this from a friend of his at the kremlin, it did not take him long to decide what to do. , as you saw in the trailer, and he was on an airplane to los angeles, determined to tell the truth about the russian state-sponsored doping system, but he did not come alone. he brought with him powerful evidence to corroborate the truth of his claims. .e brought a hard drive he brought flash drives. he brought the telephone he used when he was at the moscow lab. what he did with that evidence was to turn it over to anti-doping authorities, and what they found was a gold mine. come thatat have only you have seen the tip of the iceberg in some of the media reports you have seen. emails between himself and other co-conspirators about, among other things, the disappearing positive methodology. memos he wrote to his bosses at and within the fsb, detailing some of the problems and issues with the doping system in russia. copious handwritten, daily diaries that he has been keeping since he was a boy of every detail of every day at the sochi informationcluding 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 into an independent commission headed renownedeaded by a professor. mclaren didn't work alone. he assembled a team. he had experienced investigators, hardscrabble people that were skeptical of dr. rodchenkov's claims. because he knew that he could not just rely on dr. rodchenkov's word, he hired people to review all of the evidence and also to look at stored samples of russian b bottles that have been taken to the sochi lab and moved to another lab. 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 adjustments made to the urine to make the salt levels match the salt levels that the athlete gain at the time -- gave at the time of the in competition testing. these were telltale signs telling the truth. most importantly, dr. not produce 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 considered -- conspirator. it just so happens the scratches and marks and salt found in samples of russian athletes because they tested 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 list. dr. rodchenkov's truth was upheld by professor mclaren, dr. rodchenkov's cooperation did not stop. the ioc set up two commissions -- disciplinary commissions, and despite the fact that they delayed significantly interviewing him and ultimately getting evidence from him, they set up a completely different forensic testing system of the same bottles that mclaren had tested and largely confirmed mclaren's reports. dr. rodchenkov committed himself to submitting over 200 pages worth of affidavits with meticulous detail to about not only the russian doping program in general, but the very officials within russia which were pulling the strings of the puppet. also the involvement of not only officials of coaches and athletes. let's just stop here for a second. one 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. it would take me a day to go through all of that evidence. 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 frock of other russians had been suspended. times" wrote an article because the mounting suspicion and they said, and i am paraphrasing, a number of suspensions and various sports of athletes troubling questions are starting to mount about a state-sponsored doping system in russia. they published a yearly report of countries who had the most analytical -- analytical adverse findings. guess what the report showed? 225ian had a staggering adverse analytical findings in 2013, 20% more than a second-ranked country on the list. again, andda did it what do they find? rush had 148 adverse analytical findings, 20% above -- russia had 148 adverse analytical findings, 20% above other countries. had 156 adverse analytical findings. a second.t that for in three years worth of time, russia had almost 550 adverse analytical findings and that in and of itself is not compelling evidence of a state-sponsored doping system. i don't know what is. determined the ioc -- i know what the ioc determined. the ioc determined dr. rodchenkov was credible and based on his evidence, they banned 43 of the athletes from the list for lifetime bans against any further olympic competitions. so it is obviously important to talk about dr. rodchenkov's corroboration and verification he is telling the truth. do you know what a truthful ?erson does wester they tell the truth whether it is guilt or innocence. 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 have gotten this month. i have no recent to believe these two people were involved. they weren't on the list, they didn't have scratches and mark, salt,ks, they didn't have and i was not told they were protected athletes. based on dr. rodchenkov's evidence, the two athletes are now competing again. 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 who orchestrated the state-sponsored scheme, ordered it after the dismal russian performance in the vancouver winter olympics, and the ioc determined he was legally responsible, culpable for the state-sponsored doping system. so that is the good news. now here comes the bad news. where are we now? what has it done for people like dr. rodchenkov? they have a track record for violations where the government unduly influences either a olympic committee or a lab. the example is kuwait. in 2014, kuwait passed a law and the law in the ioc's vu on -- view unduly harmed the independence of the kuwaiti committee they found this was a terrible transgression sus that the banned kuwait from olympics in 2015 and the ban still exists. what is the ioc think about russia did? words by thehe actions. ioc president thomas bok called russia's accidents -- -- actions an attack on the olympic games and sports. what is more, he promised action. he promised he would quote and not hesitate to take the availableanctions against any individual or organization implicated in the criminality. think and setld of --unprecedented scent you would think they would deter cheaters. when they announced they would be a ban, there was much international acclaim. i confess i was part of the fire. i believed the words and so did everyone else until they read the fine print. the band wasn't a bad at all. it was hardly a slap on the wrist. in retrospect, it looks like eight carefully crafted pr stunt, a sham -- a carefully crafted pr stunt. in the current of the games in pyeongchang, russia is building one of the largest olympic teams despite the fact that it is ned." they're not just competing like other suspended countries are. neutral means no national insignia. you are competing under the olympic flag. russia's athletes are wearing uniforms bearing russia's name and the span, which is a temporary suspension, is going to be lifted in this olympic game. mark my words, by tuesday, thomas bock will lift the ban and the russians will 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 i-4 imposed by the ioc have now been overturned by the highest court of arbitration for sport, allowing most of the athletes to compete again. most egregiously, russia has , to permitted, remarkably stonewall the ioc and wada. basise almost on a daily protesting their innocence 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 are innocent and there is no doping system, then why not turn over the evidence? that a littlepack woman talk about the evidence. there are a lot of things that can be manipulated within the doping laboratory. there is one thing that cannot be, the testing equipment itself, a long -- as long as you're not running a pretest and it records the results of the test on a computer drive for the testing equipment. you cannot change that. there is no way to alter that, fake it, no way to change it at all. it is a permanent record. why. told russia to turn over -- wada told russia to turn over that evidence, and they refuse. if that is not an admission of guilt, i don't know what is. let's ask another question. has russia accepted responsibility for this despite the fact that at least now with respect to 11 athletes the bands were upheld -- bans were upheld? this came from a leader of the lower house of the legislature and it typifies russia's reaction. i am going to quote. we won't apologize. we won't apologize to thomas bok who prepared this report so sweetly. we have nothing to apologize for, and neither do our athletes. what is 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. foria indicted him twice politically motivated crimes. let's be clear. in order for this system to exist, obviously many people had to be involved. it could not possibly have 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, and people helping to cover it up. russia, not surprisingly, single dr. rodchenkov out for these criminal charges, right? that shows the motivation is to silence him. harassedfficials have his family, confiscated his property, and even declared, and i'm going to quote here, that he should be "shot as stalin would have done." rodchenkov, dr. even russian president vladimir putin has gotten into the game. on the one hand he accused the fbi of drugging dr. rodchenkov to elicit a false confession while at the same time calling androdchenkov an imbecile mentally unstable. i was an organized crime prosecutor for years. i am very used to seeing people be discredited or attempt to be discredited by people who were there conspirators. let's be clear about this. the u.s. did not take dr. rodchenkov, russia did. they made him the director of the moscow lab when opponents started an investigation of dr. rodchenkov in 2011, allegedly for disturbing performance-enhancing drugs which was his job. it was the kremlin who squashed those charges so grigory rodchenkov could continue the work they had authorized. russia picked this witness. nobody from the west did. off, to make it sweet, just, -- to let you know that dr. rodchenkov was sued from three of the athletes from the mclaren report. the lawsuit is no doubt that by the kremlin. i will say on a personal note that i have read media reports that an owner of an nba franchise is helping to finance this frivolous lawsuit. i hope those reports are inaccurate because if an nba franchise owner is using nba toenue to finance a lawsuit attack and silence a whistleblower who is trying to ,ring integrity back to sports i think that every american and every basketball fan would be by that. that --galled , as sends a terrible message terrible message to the players, fans, and kids that watch that team. this whole bit.ly of retaliation , spanning the last year and a half, which i have only just litany of retaliation, spanning the last year and a half, and i will tell you something's. things.r is -- some right now, the russian committee is suspended. they retained the ability to continue that suspension if russia did not behave, if it did not honor the ioc's decision. all the ioc has to do is pick up and say thed call ban is going to continue in these games and future olympic games unless you leave our main witness alone. testified,he has given affidavits, submitted evidence, and been corroborated. that is the least they can do is make a phone call. what has the ioc done? nothing. they sat by and watched this abhorrent behavior and done not a single thing to stop the russians. let me ask you a question, do you think that emboldened stay act in thisn they way and no one stops them? you tell me. according to press reports, assuming they are true, russia responded by retaliating against the ioc and wada. according to press reports, they have water and ioc's computers and leaked confidential documents. have promised to impose sanctions on ioc members and wada executives in retaliation for the band. behavior sound like that deserves its place among other nations upholding olympic ideals? this, no oneof all would have guessed what would anotherext because whistleblower in the midst of this whole thing, not dr. he doesn't even know who it is. someone in russia leaked a leadingtial database back before the sochi games that the moscow lab had been using to record all of the adverse analytical findings i-4 they made them disappear -- before they made them disappear. this is the exact evidence russia would not produce, and a whistleblower disclosed it. wada acted. much time and authenticated it as a true and exact copy of the laboratory information management system within the moscow system. i have been assured by wada that it is analyzing 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. if the international federations to not bring cases against every one of those athletes, they said whatit would do it -- wide -- wada would do it and i believe them. what did the ioc do and what did they say? crickets, not a thing. did not even disclose --lim database. i have been told there are 10 or 12 athletes whose appeals were being hurt who had adverse analytical findings that had already been identified in the l im's database. the ioc did nothing. being the overwhelming proof of a state-sponsored doping system, and epic obstruction and retaliation. the ioc president still plans to really, ban, suspension of the russian team. so it is little wonder at this point that information about infighting within the ioc executive committee has started to leak. excuse me. when has been really critically important and unfortunate casualty to that infighting. there is a british ioc member and he together with another legendary former ioc member have been the two lone voices willing to stand up to the complicity. for reasons we will often grow whether it is true are not, the ioc member has been injected from the of the big games in eve oforea on the them making the decision of lifting the russian team. one of the dissenting voices within the ioc has now been silenced. what does this all mean? thate can seriously argue the cowardly and indecisive actions of the ioc are appropriate, will deter cheaters , or are fair to clean athletes, olympic sponsors, or fans. no one can seriously debate the fact that ioc's conflicted policing system is broken, and is not working. as a result of that, who is defrauded? who is defrauded? athletes who invested substantial, physical, emotional, and financial investments in their training. whom by thest of way have anti-doping provisions including the russian athletes -- advertisers, international federations, and every single country including the united states who contributes to the fairly large budget. i want to put a pin in something. i think except into of responsibility is extraordinarily important and is the measure of character of a person or country and the sad truth of it is, america is not blameless either. we have had our share of cheaters. we have had one symptomatically doping system in a cycling team relatively said -- relatively recently. of the fact that we stand up and convict those individuals and make sure that they are exposed no matter how important they are, no matter how powerful they are, and no matter how much money can be made off of their performances. but we should not take victory laps and we should not realize that this is a bit of a glass house. at the same time, the united states has been a leader in the fight for clean sports. the u.s. anti- doping administration and its president have been lions on this issue. and if congress does anything as a result of this saga i hope that they will increase the budget so that it can call out cheaters with in the olympic and international communities. the united states can do more to fight for clean athletes. their countries such as austria, italy, france, and spain that have implemented criminal penalties for doping. it is a very simple concept. if our actions are punished than the conduct will stop. that is the basis of our criminal justice system. we do not have laws to punish doping as a criminal violation. we have many different conspiracies that cover many different kinds of fraud but not fraud that embodies doping. and this is true despite the huge impact that international doping has on u.s. athletes and u.s. sponsors who are the main source of revenue for the olympics and many other world events. we need to change our language. we need to stop calling this "doping" and start calling it fraud." s, "doping fraud meeting someone pretends that they are clean when they are dirty. it is not implicit. they have signed certifications, contracts, saying that they are clean and they are dirty and other people get harmed. that is exactly what fraud is and doping fraud should be the watchword in all of our discussions going forward. but we could do more. i would be happy to work with this commission and propose the first doping fraud statute but it cannot be an ordinary statute. it has got to be a statute like the foreign corrupt practices act. that allows u.s. prosecutors to even foreign government officials were involved in bribery that has an impact there. doping is no different. pass a fraudld statute with a long arm provision that allows us to reach out of the united states and catch the cheaters that of americansives clean athletes and waste the resources of our businesses. one of my friends when i was talking through this idea have a very clever idea. his idea was to amend the controlled substances act. it was something that was passed in 1970. it is a major drug law united states. it actually has on a schedule most of the worst performing drugs. we could simply amend the totrolled substances act include a provision that says when there is a conspiracy that and existrporations outside of the united states because of the harm here we are going to prosecute here. that is my recommendation for the day. let me tell you something, if we have a long arm statute for , asng -- i guarantee you long as we used it, this problem would go away. we have to protect whistleblowers. doctor risksat the everything to come here and what does he have to show for? not much of a life at all. the ioc has proved utterly stop the russians from trying to indict him, extradited him, harass him, discredit him, threatened him, and if the ioc can't police itself, we need to pass legislation that encourages other whistleblowers to come forward. not just from russia but from wherever there are state-sponsored doping systems. part of this fraud statute should have whistleblower protections that provides for legal assistance, immigration status, job placement, and other kinds of support and provides tools for prosecutors to go after the people that are retaliating against the witnesses. let me tell you something. if you are in the united states and you try to retaliate against a witness, that is a federal crime. it should be no less of a crime because someone who is physically here is being retaliated against by someone outside of the united states. the harm is here. thank you for patiently sitting through my remarks. fromld like to read a note dr. rodchenkov that he wrote and asked me to read to you. here is the statement. thank you for accepting my statement. i hope at some point soon my security situation will improve so that i may address this commission personally. as you know, i've been cooperating with the ioc to provide full and truthful details of russia passed state-sponsored doping system in which i played an important role. i sincerely apologize for my actions. were directed by the minister of sports and his deputy administrator. officials high-level including from the center for , the russiaration rolesoping agency played in this scheme along with many lower-level people. i truly had no choice but to play my part in this scheme but i hope you understand, i did much work to advance the goal of clean sport during my time as director of the anti-doping center. despite my extensive cooperation, i am and a very difficult position. russia has openly retaliated against me. about that, there can be no serious question. they've singled me out for prosecution, issued arrest war and seeking my return to russia, and even calling from execution. died underolleagues mysterious circumstances after the scandal unfolded in 2005 and i fully believe they were murdered to silence them. russia, i am sure i would have experienced the same fate. the ioc has the power to stop russia's retaliation against me. they could simply use the power they retained to continue the suspension of the russian olympic committee from participation in the ongoing olympics and future games until russia stops its efforts. the ioc has refused to use that power. seems ready toc lift the suspension for the closing ceremony in these olympic games. putting aside the direct impact on me, this sends a terrible message to future whistleblowers. forwardld anyone come if the very guardians of clean ,port leave their main witness whose truth they have repeatedly verified, twisting in the wind. if the ioc has proven completely ineffective at punishing countries that dope, it will only embolden teacher -- cheaters. i ask for the united states to play an important role of creating a meaningful deterrence for epic cheating. self policing by the ioc does a lacks thed wat resources to solve these problems. i believe the united states has played a leadership role but can and should play an even more forceful role in a fight for clean sport and protection of whistleblowers. thank you very much for your time and attention and i will stay for any questions. [applause] >> thank you very much, jim, for your powerful remarks and i am looking for to working on legislation with you. i'm going to ask him a couple of questions, and then we will open the floor to the audience. please start to consider your questions. when i call on you to ask a question, state your name and organization. we will bring you microphone's. started, during your remarks, one question kept ringing and -- in my mind, ?hat is going on with the ioc do many structural reform, what is going on? the iocer or not intends this or not, these .ecisions look corrupt -- it musthat i am be difficult to balance when you need people to hold these competitions, you need big countries to hold them, you need -- revenue that is necessary oh, sorry. could you hear me before? no problem. thisd before that whether is the intent or not, the actions of the ioc look either corrupt, complicit, or a net -- or inept. i am sure it is difficult to balance the pressures of punishing dopers but on the other hand, needing large countries to host the games, to fund the games, to do all the things that are necessary to make the olympics go. one standard of justice. there cannot be one standard of justice for coal weight and another standard of justice for russia or america for that matter. punish are going to those countries, they have to punish those countries equally. is only rational explanation complicity or inepitude. >> thank you. involves question fifa. this by the fact that the russian team has been banned from the pyeongchang olympics, we are looking at a world cup in sochi next year. issue -- dodination these organizations not speak to one another or is this another case of complicity and potential corruption? fifa has beenat having with corruptions is well-known. there are other investigations going on. with respect to what dr. rodchenkov knows about russian said publicly that he can confirm that the russian football team and soccer team as he knows it was protected by the state-sponsored doping system. there is a pending investigation going on. i am not sure if it is a credible investigation, but he is certainly going to cooperate with respect to that investigation. on your larger question, i do not really know. ruption is not a long game strategy. all over the spectrum of issues that are being faced in the world, people are being empowered to step forward and tell their secrets. in the #metoo movement, thank god. we see it in other areas and we will see it in doping. the number of investigations is dizzying. viable, theyto be should stop the corruption or even the appearance of corruption. because with all of these issues swirling around, to have the world cup in sochi of all places -- since a terrible message. >> great. with dr.onversations rodchenkov, have you spoken to him about the incentive for a nation to dope. in the short term, you can imagine, but it does seem the tio is wayd ra out of wack. >> i can tell you what he said publicly and he inks this is unique in russia because of the power of sport and russia. he believes, and i know that he believes it, that the sochi success that brought vladimir from an epic low approval rating to an incredibly high approval rating emboldened russia to invade the ukraine. is he right, is he wrong? i do not know. what i do know is that doping is not a long-term game. it is a short-term. i hope one of the powerful of this story, whether it is occurring in the united states or any other western country, the day of reckoning is coming. >> thanks so much, jim. we will take questions from the audience. please wait until you receive the mic. >> hi, i am david larkin. i'm an international sports and corruption attorney and probably the only one in washington dc. into they got dragged anticorruption world about eight years ago by accident. >> you and me both. >> could you please speak up -- stand up, please. >> my first, will be directed to paul. needs to united states understand something that they do not the moment. that is is that spore is not about sport at the international level. ist is great about this case that this is a great demonstration. spore is about geopolitics. when you are dealing with sport at the international level, it gets hijacked over and over by foreign governments because the game dates back to 1936. hiller's olympic. mpics.ler's oly pagandas a great pro tool. countries across the world had sports ministers in the united almost single-handedly does not. why? the nine understand that spore is geopolitics. in fact, i chaired a panel here at the capital and found persons financed by foreign government. all americansrry because we do not understand this issue at all. jim, i appreciate what you are doing. i believe your client. two questions. one, to what degree were russian athletes aware of the systemic program? if you watch what dr. rodchenkov said, he said only a portion of russian athletes were doping at the games at various times. that is my first question. second question, if he talks wata should be afraid -- why would wata need to be afraid? one last point. that we need to understand this system of international sport is systemically corrupt. we would never allow the court exist and callto it self a court of the way it currently does in the united states. we in the united states need to not only address the issue in this instance, we have a system of international sports that victimizes american athletes and that has to be addressed. this is a great and important case, but there is a much bigger issue it and that is the victimization of american athletes. i hope you are going to address that. >> if i may. thank you so much for your comments. one thing that strikes me is that we really are in outlier in that way i hope we can remain an outlier. i think that our take on sportsmanship as being between two sportsmen is precisely what sport should be about. i think that the united states has been able to support the rule of law and really interesting ways around the world. fecaf those ways was the -- fpca. that has stopped bribery. potentially -- and did not stop entirely, but it certainly put a dent in it. we were able to put some legislation on the table or some sort of incentive for these guys to play similarly which we ignore that sports is about sports, and not about geopolitics, then that would be very positive. that said, i really, really hope he does not go in the reverse and the united states ends up thinking it is about geopolitics -- we have to play their game. no. pure.about keeping sports >> thank you. you really have asked the two questions. the first question was, were the russian athletes aware, and i cannot answer that question over question with respect to every russian athlete. what i can tell you is, people it around in their mouth for no reason. when you are asked to give clean e, and then give them over to the sports center of sports preparation, why are they doing that? the larger question is the world took this case and understood in a way that an american prosecutor would not. they carved up the evidence and looked really at the forest with -- microscope instead of realizing that when you look at all of the evidence, henkov'sg dr. rodc evidence in the decade's worth of evidence that exists in other places -- it is not just him. there is no question that this occurred. and there is no one that follows the olympics are world competitions that believes the line coming out of the kremlin. so yes, the participating russian athletes knew. yes the second question. i don't remember the line from the movie. mic?uld you give him a the movie, he makes reference to the fact that wata is afraid of him. is a part ofwata the problem. in this construct of international sport, it is part of the problem. it is the entire construct that victimizes american athletes. why was he saying that the organization was afraid of him -- that is the question? in all candor,y i am guessing a little bit. its week one thing that you are saying. this is a system and the system is evolving. all of theut of nonsense that we have had to deal with with the ioc, that organization is doing something now. reedy, oliver, when they look me in the eye and say they are going after these cases and i look forward to it. because when the data is revealed, no one is going to be able to dispute the truth. it would literally be impossible. given the staggering number of athletes that had adverse findings there. but what i think he was referring to is, your member when there was a time when the moscow lab was almost banned just before sochi. guess.ned, suspended, i if that had happened, russia would have had a huge problem running the sochi games and the doping system, right because all of their samples would have to be sent to other labs. dr. rodchenkov believes he was given a pass there. all of these agencies are much more forgiving than they should be. and much less skeptical and there are many factors -- human error, incompetence, lack of independence -- many different pressures put on these institutions. i think that was probably what he was referring to. >> thank you. other questions please. no other questions, huh? i guess you are very comprehensive. in that case, thank you so very much, everyone. that was a fabulous briefing. let me make mention of a hearing to we will be having on february 28 for all of you russia atchers on the legacy of russian leader. with that, we will close a briefing. >> thank you so much. >> thank you, everyone. >> on saturday, we join the winter meeting on the national governors association on jobs, the opioid crisis, and food availability. live at 10:00 a.m. on c-span. will join the government on care for veterans and the future of work and you can watch that live >> monday on c-span's landmark cases, we will look at a supreme court case that solidified the federal government's ability to not explicitly mentioned in the constitution. explore this case and the high court with university of virginia associate law professor sarah peterson and mark killen of the call of the maryland. watch landmark cases live monday at 9:00 eastern on c-span, c-span.org, or listen with the free c-span radio app. for background on each case, order copy of the companion book , available for $8.95 plus shipping and handling. and for an additional resource, there is a link on our resource to the interactive constitution. >> coming up, live on c-span, washington journal is next. at 10:00, we will join the conservative political action conference for remarks by president trump. hour, thein an goldwater institute on right to ill allowing terminally patients to obtain experimental drugs not approved by the fda. tim huelskamp, now president and ceo t

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