The Daily - Monday, Feb. 12, 2018

Episode Date: February 12, 2018

At the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics, 169 plainly dressed athletes marched out in drab gray coats and bluejeans, competing not for a country but as “Olympic athletes from Russia.” What did Russia do at the last Winter Games to earn them that punishment? Guest: Rebecca R. Ruiz, an investigative reporter at The New York Times. For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily.

From The New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily. Today, this weekend, at the opening ceremonies of the 2018 Winter Olympics, 169 plainly dressed athletes marched out in drab gray coats and blue jeans, competing not for a country, but under the name Olympic Athlete from Russia. What Russia did in the last Winter Olympics to earn them that punishment. It's Monday, February 12. Mr. President, members of the International Olympic Committee, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen.

It's the summer of 2007, and Vladimir Putin is personally lobbying to bring the Winter Olympics to Russia for the first time. Rebecca Ruiz is an investigative reporter at The Times. He gives an impassioned pitch, saying, Sochi is a unique place. On the seashore, you can enjoy a fine spring day. This is the place for them. But up in the mountains, it's winter. spring day. This is the place for them. But up in the mountains, it's winter. I went skiing there six or seven weeks ago, and I know real snows guaranteed. This is where you want the games to be. Our national pledge to you is the choice of Sochi is the best choice.

He even seeks to connect the origins of the Olympic Games to Sochi. The ancient Greeks lived around Sochi lots of centuries ago. The last time that the Games had been in the country was in 1980 in Moscow, games that the United States had boycotted. Middle of Cold War? Yes. Let me point out that after the breakup of the Soviet Union, Russia has lost all sports venues in the mountains.

Would you believe it? So this would be Russia's first time hosting the games as Russia, rather than the Soviet Union, and the first time that the Winter Games had ever come to the region. And we shall be happy, happy to see you in Russia and in Sochi as our guests. So it sounds like this would be a very big deal for a post-Cold War Russia. Yes. And one more special privilege. No traffic jams, I promise. So after this sales pitch and all of this lobbying, what happens? The International Olympic Committee has the honor of announcing that the 22nd Olympic Winter Games in 2014 are awarded to the city of Sochi. Olympic officials grant Vladimir Putin his wish.

Olympic officials grant Vladimir Putin his wish. And now to the 2014 Winter Games. Give you a live look at the Olympic torch burning bright in the heart of Sochi. Russia wins the most medals of any country at the Olympics. 33 medals, 13 of them gold. Russia finally has the gold. On the men's side, it was Team Russia coming out on top of the biathlon relay. Biathlon. Cross-country skiing.

One, two, three. Gold, silver, and bronze. They completed the podium in the men's cross-country skiing. Bobsled. Is it going to be a Russian celebration? Yes, it is! Zhukov, the hero at home! Sochi is hailed as a huge success. Russia's medalists, they're getting a big new perk after the Olympic Games in Sochi. The host country is giving a Mercedes to every one of its athletes who medaled in the Games. 33 luxury cars.

And for those medalists who aren't old enough to drive, their cars come with a driver. Russia's celebrating its Olympic high for the better part of 2014. But that same year, an explosive report hits. This is Yulia Stepanova, her husband Vitaly, and their small son Robert. A German broadcaster comes out with a report. They don't feel safe anymore in their native Russia. They don't feel safe anymore in their native Russia. By a former Russian runner and her husband, who worked for Russia's drug testing agency.

I wanted to fight doping and I wanted to make sports cleaner, more honest, better. The documentary says nothing about Sochi, but what this couple says is that... All athletes in Russia are doping. Russia has been systematically doping for years, and that these plots extend to the top. That the government is involved in doping its athletes, and in extorting money from athletes to keep quiet about their drug violations. You cannot achieve the results that you're getting, at least in Russia, without doping. And this is how it's done in Russia. So those claims in that documentary

prompt international regulators to react. So it's November 2015. Russian officials, athletes, and coaches are embroiled in a doping scandal. And I am in Switzerland covering this press conference that is announcing the results of an investigation that looked into what that German documentary had reported. The commission investigated allegations made in a German documentary last December, which accused Russia of state-sponsored doping. And indeed, that investigation concludes that there is systematic doping in Russia. In the Swiss sunshine, a dark day for the sport of athletics. The World Anti-Doping Agency calls for Russia to be suspended from all

athletics competitions. It's pretty opaque, but there's this name that keeps coming up of this person who investigators tried to talk to, who didn't cooperate with the investigation, and he seems pretty central to whatever was going on. And his name is Dr. Radchenkov. Who is Dr. Radchenkov? Grigory Radchenkov is the director of Russia's National Anti-Doping Laboratory. He is the top chemist who works with Russia's athletes to test their urine and their blood to make sure that they are not taking any banned performance-enhancing drugs. So I emailed him at an address that I found online, and to my surprise, he not only replied, but he engaged. And he says, I know so much. It's going to be unbelievable when I come out with my full story.

It's incredible what I know and the levels of involvement of my government. Wow. And he sends an email at what would have been 3 or 4 a.m. Moscow time. And I commented on the time and he said, well, I live in Los Angeles now. on the time. And he said, well, I live in Los Angeles now. He came to L.A. because he was fearful for his life in Moscow because two people who worked in Russia's anti-doping efforts in sports died abruptly. One of those people was his close friend and colleague, Nikita Kamayev. And he had been in the middle of writing a book about his life and was planning on a tell-all of what he had done in his work. So Rodchenkov feared that he was going to get killed.

Yes. And he feels that if he goes out there fully with his whole story, then he is better protected because he will be seen as a public figure whose version of offense has been established in The New York Times. So he thinks that by telling a story and becoming a public figure, he would make it too risky for anyone in Russia, especially anyone tied to the government, to come after him and to do him harm. Exactly. So in spring of 2016, I fly to Los Angeles, and he says,

Spring of 2016, I fly to Los Angeles and he says, everything you saw in that German documentary, everything that was announced as a result of that follow-up investigation, it's all true. Huge cheating across nearly every sport going back years and dictated by the government. The only way in Russia to escape from drinking and poor life is sport. And by the way, guess what we just did in Sochi? What? So over the course of three days in L.A., he tells this amazing story. He details with pride this inconceivable-sounding scheme that he helped to design.

Now, now, doping control is so weak, so we make a lot of loopholes, but you cannot do any state-sponsored doping program without access to top-level accredited laboratory. And just to be clear, the Russian government, the government of Vladimir Putin, is involved in this or aware of it. How involved are they? Radchenkov says that this is all stemming from Putin.

He is saying that he's taking his orders directly from his boss, who is a deputy sports minister. And he's meeting also, not infrequently, with a minister in Putin's government who reports to President Putin himself. So they're asking the leading authority in the country in stopping doping to start doping. That's exactly right.

They turn to the person who has knowledge of everything that's prohibited, of all of the ways that those prohibited substances are caught in laboratories. And they're saying to him, what can we do to enhance our athletes' performance and give them that extra edge that they might need while not getting caught? So in the months before the games, Rebecca, what does Dr. Rechenkov actually do?

So he immediately sets about his work and he experiments with drugs. He talks to the top purveyors. He sources steroids and he begins to say, this is the formula I am devising for Russia's top Olympians. He creates a cocktail that he calls the Duchess Cocktail.

The Duchess Cocktail. And he produces it en masse and hands it off to Russian sports officials. And he begins to notice some people hanging around his lab in Moscow who are particularly interested in these squat glass bottles that are the gold standard for drug testing samples and keeping them secure in international competitions. They have these interlocking metal teeth that are like jaws that close and they are widely hailed as tamper-proof. You cannot get into this glass bottle once it is sealed without breaking its cap in a telltale way.

And he begins to see that these people, who he says work with Russia's Federal Security Service, are collecting hundreds of these little metal rings that sit around the neck of these glass bottles. They're particularly interested in how could one get into these bottles? And he says, you can't. It's like Fort Knox. They're impossible to penetrate. And yet they keep collecting these rings.

They're scrutinizing these bottles. And lo and behold, these Federal Security Service staffers have devised a way to get into these bottles undetected. When I first time saw that bottle is open, I didn't believe my eyes. Because I truly, truly believe that this is temper-proof, that this is like a safe. So the plan comes together in which it's determined that Rodchenkov is going to distribute his cocktail, top athletes will take it, and they will substitute out their dirty urine for clean urine that they will stockpile months ahead of the Olympics. While they're clean, while they're not using any banned drugs. You have to have your urine of different colors, after borscht, after watermelon, after sauna. So that we will then freeze it, stockpile it, transport it from Moscow to Sochi.

At the Olympics, when nobody is watching, their urine samples that will have been spontaneously collected through the games will be substituted out surreptitiously using the Federal Security Service, which has devised a way to break into these glass bottles. So how does all of this work once the Olympics start in Sochi in 2014? work once the Olympics start in Sochi in 2014. Seredchenkov lands in Sochi. He inspects his lab, the lab he's going to oversee. And he also inspects this building that is adjacent to his lab that is run by the Federal Security Service

that has all of this clean urine stockpiled. And he has a spreadsheet that has been sent to him by his boss, the deputy minister, just before the games begin, with the final list of which top Russian Olympians will be drinking his cocktail and will need to have their urine substituted. When I receive a list of athletes from Irina,

it means that those athletes have urine to be replaced. Those athletes are on program. And then the games begin. What's it look like at the bottom for the man who has done the most runs on this track? What happens is he has an office in this laboratory, and nightly he waits for a staff of around 100 people to leave the laboratory. These are international chemists, experts flown in from all over the world. And he changes out of his lab coat. He puts on a Russia national team sweatshirt, and he heads downstairs and goes into a storage closet

that he and his team have rigged up to be his shadow laboratory. And he takes the locked bottle that he can't break into and he passes it through a small sort of hand-sized hole in the wall to a member of the Federal Security Service. On the other side. On the other side, who takes that bottle

and outside of Rodchenkov's sight line manages to get its top off. And he passes it back. He then dumps out the steroid-laced urine, Manages to get its top off. And he passes it back. He then dumps out the steroid-laced urine, rinses the bottle, and he also receives, through this small hole in the wall, that very same athlete's clean urine stockpiled months earlier, and he puts it in to the right bottle. earlier, and he puts it in to the right bottle. And he makes sure that this urine sample matches. And so he uses things as basic and crude as table salt and instant coffee grounds to make sure that the urine matches the sample that was given by that athlete that very day.

You have another color. So I filtrated or diluted urine, then added soap, and then to make color, I have three or four drops of instant coffee until you have the same bloody stupid kapachinsky to have the same urine of yours. Sounds like he's doing chemical experimentation on each and every one of these every night. That's exactly right. This is exceptionally, sounds like hard work. It is. And he's exhausted.

He's complaining. He's getting very little sleep. He's working not just during the day and running this huge testing operation. And rather than have his day conclude when the normal drug testing ends for the day, it ramps up overnight.

Take the dirty urine, pass it through the hole in the wall, get the bottle back, dump out the dirty urine, swap in the clean urine, stop for a cigarette, have a drink of whiskey, tend to another sample,

tend to another sample, tend to another sample yet. And he did this every single night for nearly two weeks. I mean, it's wild. By day, he's legitimately testing Russian and non-Russian athletes for signs of doping. By night, he's systematically subverting that system and eliminating any signs of doping. By night, he's systematically subverting that system and eliminating any signs of doping, but only for Russian athletes.

Correct. So Dr. Ochenkov tells you this incredible story. What was your reaction? We were incredulous. It was a hard thing to believe. A major international scandal breaking today over an alleged state-sponsored doping scheme

to propel Russia's athletes to goal during the Sochi Games. What was the reaction to your story? What was the result of it? The president of the International Olympic Committee calls the story, if true, an unprecedented level of criminality.

And he says it's a huge attack on everything the Olympics stand for, but we need to see a thorough investigation and find out if indeed this was carried off. And so the investigation happens. A new report out of Russia says that Russia operated a state-sponsored drug program that benefited athletes who competed. That investigation confirms everything Rodchenkov says. The International Olympic Committee has opened investigations into top Russian sports officials and may bar them along with all Russian athletes. It consults with him frequently, but it also draws on other witnesses and scientific and forensic analysis. It inspects these very bottles, these glass bottles that had Russian Olympians' urine in them, and it finds microscopic scratches on the necks of these glass bottles

where these interlocking metal jaws had clearly been manipulated to allow the cap off in a way that had gone undetected. The Russian Olympic Committee is suspended with immediate effect. Individual clean Russian athletes will be able to participate under strict conditions at the Olympic Winter Games, Pyeongchang 2018. You were hearing there from the International Olympic Committee saying rather blankly, there was an unprecedented attack on the Olympics. They're accusing the Russian athletes in the Sochi Games of essentially being dirty. And they are now punishing them in the next Olympic Games by banning Russian athletes. They say clean athletes will be allowed to compete, but not under the Russian flag. They'll have to be neutral.

All of this, no doubt, getting huge reaction in Moscow. no doubt getting huge reaction in Moscow. The story that you're telling here is a story about Russia on the sports stage, but I'm struck by how much it reminds us of Russia on the political stage as well. In both cases, the same country is taking extraordinary risks to get what it wants. There are absolutely strong parallels between Russia's meddling in the 2016 American presidential election and Russia's meddling in the Olympics.

In fact, American government officials have called them connected. How? They've released an intelligence report stating that they, American intelligence officials, believe Russia's meddling in the American presidential election to have been motivated in part by the Olympic doping scandal, which, they wrote, Putin viewed as an American-led attack. He has called these years' worth of investigations, revelations, whistleblower accounts, an effort to undermine Russia, an attack on Russia by the West. So he's calling all these investigations an attack on Russia. Yes, an attack on Russia and, he has said, an American attempt to meddle with Russia's election. His own election, which is due to take place in March. So in that case, these two episodes of essentially cheating, one political, one athletic, they don't just look a lot like each other.

They don't just parallel each other. They're actually intertwined. They're related. According to intelligence officials, yes. One has in some ways inspired the other. And in some ways, it's rooted back in the Sochi Olympic Laboratory. Rebecca, thank you very much. Thank you so much.

And what about Dr. Rodchenkov? What happened to him once your reporting was published? He was hoping that by talking to us, he would be afforded a level of protection. But he has said he's continued to feel unsafe. He is living under the protection of federal authorities in the United States, and we don't know where he is. So he's essentially in hiding here. Absolutely, he's in hiding. Somewhere in the United States, and we don't know where he is. So he's essentially in hiding. Absolutely, he's in hiding.

Somewhere in the country. Yes. As part of the punishment imposed on Russia by Olympic officials for the national doping operation, the Russian team was banned from competing in the 2018 Olympics. But 169 Russian athletes, after being screened for past drug use, are being allowed to compete independently as Olympic athletes from Russia. They are wearing neutral uniforms, bearing no flag, and the official record books will show that Russia won zero medals.

Special thanks to Brian Fogle and Dan Kogan, the makers of Icarus, a documentary about Dr. Rodchenkov. We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to know today. A second White House official has resigned after being accused of physical and emotional abuse by his ex-wife. David Sorensen, a speechwriter for President Trump, is alleged to have run a car over his wife's foot, put out a cigarette on her hand, thrown her into a wall, and grabbed her by the hair while they were alone on a boat. Charges he denies. Sorensen's resignation on Friday came two days after the resignation of Rob Porter, the president's staff secretary,

who left the White House after two of his ex-wives accused him of abusing them. It was a low-grade, constant terror of not knowing what I might do to set something off, what mood he would have. On Saturday, in an early morning Twitter post, the president appeared to defend the two men. People's lives are being shattered and destroyed by a mere allegation, he wrote.

Some are true and some are false. Some are old and some are new. There is no recovery for someone falsely accused. Life and career are gone. Is there no such thing any longer as due process? That's it for The Daily. I'm Michael Barbaro. See you tomorrow.