Watchdog

MAGGIE RODRIGUEZ, co-host:

At the end of the hearing the chairman of the committee said he had not yet

reached any conclusions that a criminal investigation should follow. Joining

us now is Chris Russo of radio's long running sports talk show "Mike & the Mad

Dog." He followed the hearing closely.

Good morning to you, Chris.

Mr. CHRIS "MAD DOG" RUSSO (Radio Talk Show Host): Good morning.

RODRIGUEZ: I know that you got a lot of calls, still getting a lot of calls

from your listeners about this. What was their take? Did they believe Roger

Clemens?

Mr. RUSSO: Nobody believes Roger Clemens. Nobody in sports believes

Clemens. Andy Pettitte kills Clemens here because Pettitte is Clemens'

teammate and Clemens--Pettitte with his deposition said I had a conversation

with Clemens about steroids in 1999.

RODRIGUEZ: Right.

Mr. RUSSO: I did steroids. Chuck Knoblauch, another Yankee teammate did

steroids. So how could Brian McNamee could be correct on two ex-Yankees doing

steroids and lying about Clemens? So nobody in New York believes Roger

Clemens.

RODRIGUEZ: Even Roger Clemens said yesterday Andy Pettitte is his friend.

Mr. RUSSO: Best buddy. He's got great credibility, so Clemens is in huge

trouble for the fact that his wife did steroids in 2003, supposedly doesn't

know about it. His trainer, McNamee, gives his wife steroids, doesn't know

about it, and keeps the trainer on board, doesn't fire him. The whole thing

is ridiculous.

RODRIGUEZ: Yeah.

Mr. RUSSO: He's guilty.

RODRIGUEZ: Initially Clemens denies that the wife did that. Yesterday saying

she did and she feels bad about it and has for years.

Mr. RUSSO: Inconsistency all over the place with Clemens. And it obviously,

it's going to hurt his legacy because he's won three Cy Youngs following

steroids.

RODRIGUEZ: Mm-hmm. So what about the panel? Do you think that they lobbed

too many softballs at him?

Mr. RUSSO: I thought the panel, for the most part, did a pretty job on the

Democratic side, and I'm not really a party politic guy.

RODRIGUEZ: Mm-hmm.

Mr. RUSSO: But the Republicans did a terrible job. They put all these

little pit pills in here that killed McNamee. Talking about his

inconsistencies, he has no credibility, Tennessee, Burton from Indiana, Aunt

Bea Foxx from North Carolina. These Republicans, Shays, my district in

Connecticut.

RODRIGUEZ: Mm-hmm.

Mr. RUSSO: Did a terrible job because they let Clemens off the hook. Waxman

was great. Elijah Cummings was great from Maryland.

RODRIGUEZ: Why do you think, real quick, that they did a terrible job?

There's some talk that maybe they were star struck?

Mr. RUSSO: I don't think they were star struck. I don't know why all of

sudden, maybe Clemens is friends with the Bush family.

RODRIGUEZ: Hm.

Mr. RUSSO: He's a Republican.

RODRIGUEZ: Hm.

Mr. RUSSO: Whatever it might be, this came across on party lines. The

Republican guys here did an atrocious job because they directed all their

questions at McNamee and talked about his terrible job with credibility and

let Clemens get off the hook. Terrible job.

RODRIGUEZ: All right. Chris, thank you very much.

Mr. RUSSO: You got it.

RODRIGUEZ: We want to get in a Republican panel member right now.

Mr. RUSSO: Issa.

RODRIGUEZ: Give him a chance to respond to this. Joining us from Washington,

a congressman who sits on the committee, was there yesterday, Representative

Darrel Issa from California.

Good morning to you, Congressman.

Representative DARREL ISSA (Republican, California): Good morning, Maggie.

And I think you've got to put Mad Dog back on his leash. You know, if you

can't see the opening remark of almost 20 minutes that Henry Waxman did after

saying this was going to be about the credibility of the Mitchell Report. It

was going to wrap up the work we began in 2005, what he did instead was he

went after an attack on one person, who probably used steroids at a time in

which almost everybody used steroids. That wasn't what the hearing should

about--should've been about. It wasn't credible for us to do it, that's not

our job in Congress. So yes, members of Congress went after a person who

basically lied about date rape, who lied about his Ph.D., etc. because, in

fact, bringing balance became one of the things that we could do while in fact

we shouldn't even have been having these hearings the way it was and on the

subject it was.

RODRIGUEZ: But Congressman...

Rep. ISSA: Steroids is an important issue in baseball, but it's not the

issue we dealt with yesterday.

RODRIGUEZ: But how do you explain that the fact that there was a clear

divide? That the Democrats seemed to side with McNamee and the Republicans

seemed to side with Roger Clemens? A lot of people talking about this

dissolving into basically a political squabble.

Rep. ISSA: Well, first of all, nobody's--nobody--and I was there for almost

the entire hearing without--just a little break. Basically, I didn't hear one

Republican say, `I believe Roger Clemens.' I didn't hear one Republican say

`he's credible' as to whether or not he used steroids or human growth hormone.

And by the way, the Dog got a figure wrong. His wife was human growth

hormone, not steroids. The fact is, though, that what we saw is we saw

Congress being abused by a chairman who decided he was going to go after a

vendetta against one individual. Look, Roger Clemens, like so many people in

professional sport, probably got caught up in every way to get an edge at a

time in which people were getting edge. In 2005, we called the use of

steroids cheating.

RODRIGUEZ: Mm-hmm.

Rep. ISSA: The problem we have now for Cooperstown is, in fact, probably

everybody was cheating in one way or the other. Yesterday was a tragedy

because Roger--Pettitte, who said he didn't--wasn't sure. He went through

multiple different depositions...

RODRIGUEZ: Mm-hmm.

Rep. ISSA: ...that were not like Mr. Waxman painted it, was excused. Well,

a pathological liar, from what we could tell, and a man guilty of multiple

different criminal activities, in fact, was brought up as the accuser. Look,

Roger Clemens probably is like everyone else, caught up in professional

baseball in his time, but that wasn't what we were supposed to do. We're not.

RODRIGUEZ: Right.

Rep. ISSA: We're not supposed to have these kinds of spectacles.

RODRIGUEZ: OK, Congressman, thank you very much for your time. I want to--I

want to bring you in, Chris, real quick, for a, you know, your response to

that.

Mr. RUSSO: I didn't hear that entirely, but here's the issue about Issa that

drives you crazy. How is he going to deny Roger Clemens did steroids? If

Andy Pettitte, same trainer, said `I did steroids twice.'

RODRIGUEZ: Hm.

Mr. RUSSO: And yes I had a conversation in '99 and 2000 with Roger about

steroids and Chuck Knoblauch said the same thing, how does Darrel Issa say,

`Well, I'm not sure about Roger Clemens?'

RODRIGUEZ: All right.

Mr. RUSSO: Explain to me that.

RODRIGUEZ: Well...

Mr. RUSSO: Plus, Issa, following the issue yesterday with his maid, his

nanny, who showed up at Jose Conseco's thing...

RODRIGUEZ: Yeah. We're out of time. We can't get into all of that. It

looks like we have a new chapter of this, Issa vs. Russo. So this is getting

even more complicated. Thank you very much.

Mr. RUSSO: Oh, thanks for having me. Appreciate it.

RODRIGUEZ: To both of you.