What Was Their First Clue?

From the people who brought you men punching women in the face for sport;

A former chief investigator for the World Anti-Doping Agency said on Monday that the organization was “broken beyond repair” and had misled the public following disclosure of its decision not to discipline 23 elite Chinese swimmers who tested positive three years ago for a banned drug.

The investigator, Jack Robertson, said in a five-page statement that the agency’s handling of the positive tests and its response to the criticism it has faced demonstrated that it needed to be completely restructured to become “truly independent.”

Mr. Robertson said the agency, known as WADA, had made false and defamatory statements about how its top critic — the United States Anti-Doping Agency — handled a separate and complex doping case. WADA’s accusation that the American agency had mishandled the case and had been hypocritical in criticizing WADA came amid an escalating feud between the two agencies over whether WADA is capable of policing doping in international athletics.

“WADA has gone from enforcer to appeaser,” Mr. Robertson said.

It’s a NYT piece that will likely drop behind the paywall, so read the rest in the extended entry.

He said: “To return WADA to what it was originally crafted to accomplish, a truly independent restructured agency needs to be instituted in its place, free of corrupted puppeteers.”

In releasing the statement, Mr. Robertson, who left WADA in 2016 and has been critical of its handling of other cases, became one of the most vocal former antidoping officials to take their concerns public in the wake of the revelations in recent months about the positive tests among Chinese swimmers.

The U.S. Anti-Doping Agency has been at the forefront of criticizing WADA since The New York Times reported in April that WADA declined to discipline the swimmers after they tested positive for a banned heart medication. WADA in effect accepted a Chinese explanation that the swimmers had unwittingly ingested small amounts of the drug through a hotel kitchen where traces of the medication were later found.

Mr. Robertson, an American who was a veteran Drug Enforcement Administration agent before becoming an antidoping investigator, said that he had decided to go public after he saw a statement released by WADA during the Olympics that directly attacked the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency, known as USADA.

In his role at WADA, Mr. Robertson had worked closely with the American agency, including on the high-profile doping case against the cyclist Lance Armstrong.

Reuters reported on Aug. 7 that the two agencies were at odds over tactics the Americans had used in years-old antidoping investigation. Shortly after the story was published, WADA released a blistering statement accusing the American agency of breaking the rules that are supposed to govern antidoping by allowing athletes who had been caught using banned drugs to continue to compete, without WADA’s knowledge, as the athletes cooperated undercover with the Drug Enforcement Administration in investigations.

“Contrary to the claims made by USADA, WADA did not sign off on this practice of permitting drug cheats to compete for years on the promise that they would try to obtain incriminating evidence against others,” WADA said at the time.

WADA added: “It is ironic and hypocritical that USADA cries foul when it suspects other antidoping organizations are not following the rules to the letter while it did not announce doping cases for years and allowed cheats to carry on competing, on the off chance they might help them catch other possible violators.”

But Mr. Robertson said in his statement on Monday that WADA knew about the decision to allow the athletes to continue competing so they could help in the D.E.A. investigation. WADA, he said, was directly involved in the situation, liaised with American law enforcement about it and briefed WADA’s No. 2 official at the time, David Howman, about the details of the investigation.

“WADA was not only aware of and approved, but was also intimately involved in these cases,” Mr. Robertson said.

Mr. Robertson said that the current top official at WADA — its director general, Olivier Niggli — should have known that WADA’s claims against USADA were false because when he worked there, Mr. Niggli “personally oversaw my department’s budget, and was kept informed of my work with USADA” and other organizations.

Mr. Howman confirmed that Mr. Robertson’s recollection of events was accurate, adding, “All he says about his work with me was as it happened.”

WADA denied Mr. Robertson’s account on Monday.

In a statement, WADA insisted that it had not given the U.S. agency permission to allow the athletes to continue competing, saying it was against the rules.

“WADA has no record that its investigator at the time — a former U.S. D.E.A. agent that left WADA in 2016 — was notified of the scheme, still less that he approved it,” the organization said. “In any event, he would not have had the authority to approve this practice, which was conducted by USADA completely outside of the rules.”