This first article is a summary of some (by no means all) who have experienced the wrath of Armstrong. This is all old news now, but bears a review. Keep in mind also that there was tremendous wealth to fuel the LA public relations/legal machine that provided the muscle to retain power and control --
this is all about manipulating public perception to protect the image and the brand. So many of the posts to this and many, many other threads speak to the brutal effectiveness of this campaign (and I use campaign in the military, not political, sense).
The wrath of Lance Armstrong: USADA outlines witness intimidation
The U.S. Anti-Doping Agency sketched a chilling portrait of a vindictive and ruthless Lance Armstrong in its files Wednesday, painting the seven-time Tour de France winner as a peloton bully, capable of intimidating rivals both on the bike and at the bar.
The USADA report details confrontations or issues with Filippo Simeoni, Tyler Hamilton, Levi Leipheimer, Betsy and Frankie Andreau and Jonathan Vaughters, among others. The Armstrong character drawn isn't a kind illustration of the disgraced champion, instead conveying the Texan as someone determined to keep those who would shed light on doping in cycling subdued.
At the 2004 Tour de France, Armstrong famously chased down Simeoni when he was in a breakaway group. Simeoni had testified against Dr. Michele Ferrari, who was Armstrong's trainer.
"You made a mistake when you testified against Ferrari… I can destroy you," Simeoni says Armstrong told him. Armstrong forced Simeoni back to the peloton, with a sinister "zip the lips gesture" that was replayed constantly on television, though at the time commentators claimed to have no idea what it really meant.
One journalist recalled Simeoni's face - it was wet with both his tears and the spit of the peloton.
"Mr. Armstrong's statement to Mr. Simeoni in which he referred directly to Mr. Simeoni's testimony in a legal proceeding and said 'I can destroy you,' and Mr. Armstrong's actions in connection with his threatening statement, constitute acts of attempted witness intimidation," the USADA report reads.
Full text
here.
I think the key to thinking about this is there is a very long and consistent pattern of the behavior that speaks to the man's character and this does not even begin to touch intimidation through lawsuits.
Article from Daily News UK (scroll down to about half way through the article).
If you're finding it difficult to sympathize with those - including many reporters - who cowed before the threats of Armstrong's army of white-shoe lawyers and high-end agents and publicists,
consider that Armstrong was probably the most litigious athlete in the history of sports.
He set a precedent for other athletes who would go on to use
guerilla tactics to attempt to intimidate the media or silence accusers.
As the Daily News wrote in 2008, Armstrong unleashed a shotgun blast of litigation at virtually everyone involved with "L.A. Confidential: Les Secrets de Lance Armstrong." Just as the book was hitting shelves in Europe, Armstrong sued the authors, the publisher, the sources (including Emma O'Reilly), a magazine that ran an excerpt, and the Sunday Times of London, the British newspaper that ran a preview of the book. Armstrong announced the suit at a splashy Maryland press conference on June 15, 2004, then quietly dropped it in 2005, withdrawing his claims before a trial could begin, a tactic similar to the ones athletes Roger Clemens and Shane Mosley would later use against their own accusers.
"In France, we say it had l'effet d'annonce," Paris attorney Thibault de Montbrial, who defended the book's publisher and authors, told The News. "He makes the announcement, but when the emotion goes away, no one realizes that he didn't go to court."
Armstrong's message was heard: his army of lawyers effectively scared away American publishers from translating the French-language book.
"In a sense, it was an effective play," Walsh said then. "The American publishers were frightened. Why would you take on a book that you knew was being sued in France?"
Armstrong had also filed a bevy of suits in France and even initiated a special emergency hearing with a French court in Paris, where he tried to get a disclaimer inserted into the book calling its allegations defamatory. The judge sided with the publishers, hitting Armstrong with a small fine for abusing the French legal system.
"Our lawyer told the judge it would be the death of investigative journalism," Walsh said. "It would have been very convenient for all the rogues of the world to ignore uncomfortable questions and then just silence their accusers afterwards."
Armstrong withdrew all of his French defamation cases shortly before they were to go to trial in the fall of 2005.
Full text
here.
Ironically (but not incidentally),
Radio Shack was running a large ad in the side bar of this article and I kept accidentally triggering the pop up window. Kinda funny that Radio Shack has found a way to keep getting their money's worth from LA -- no publicity is bad publicity.