Trevor Graham's attorney told a federal jury Monday that several athletes caught doping are using the former coach as a “convenient scapegoat for their past mistakes and their past drug use.” Graham has pleaded not guilty to three charges that he lied to government investigators about his relationship with the steroids dealer Angel “Memo” Heredia of Laredo, Texas, as his trial started with opening statements. The two-week trial will give lawyers for US Major League Baseball career home run leader Barry Bonds' another preview of how the government's top doping detective, former IRS agent Jeff Novitzky, fares on the witness stand. Novitzky led the raid of the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative, or BALCO, that has ensnared dozens of athletes, including Marion Jones and Tim Montgomery. Assistant U.S. attorney Jeffrey Finigan on Monday told the jury that two IRS agents interviewed Graham in June 2004 as part of their investigation into whether Jones had lied under oath when she told a grand jury she had never used performance-enhancing drugs. Jones is now serving a six-month prison sentence after pleading guilty to lying to investigators about doping and her role in a check-fraud scheme. Jones testified she obtained banned substances from Graham. Finigan said Heredia will testify he supplied Graham with the oxygen-boosting drug EPO to give Jones. Finigan also told the jury that Montgomery, the former 100-meter record holder, first told investigators of Graham's connection to Heredia. Keane displayed another central theme of Graham's expected defense, telling the jury that the athletics coach “was the first whistle blower on BALCO” because he anonymously sent a syringe containing a previously undetectable steroid THG to the USADA in June 2003. Investigators later determined that THG was being distributed by BALCO.
