Greg Stejskal, with over 30 years stay in the FBI, headed a landmark investigation in the steroid distribution called Operation Equine. Along with Stejskal is a fellow retired agent Bill Randall. The said investigation started from 1989-1993 and led to over 70 steroid-related convictions and exposed big names in sports including baseball players Mark McGwire and Jose Canseco. In 1994, he even warned the Major League Baseball (MLB) on the escalating steroid problem but was only taken for granted. And five years ago, the Daily News featured an exclusive story of McGwire’s steroid use. Two FBI agents even attested that Curtis Wenzlaff was McGwire’s dealer.

In his account to the investigation, Stejskal wrote that over 20 years ago, he met with Michigan’s football coach Bo Schembechler to discuss the coach’s concern on the growing use of steroids by football players. According to him, Schembechler was not only concerned about college players but high school players as well that he was seeing in Michigan’s summer instructional camp. During the meeting, Mike Gittleson, Michigan strength coach, was also present. The coach even asked Stejskal on what was being done to enforce the law. At that time, steroids have been made a felony under the federal law. Stejskal promised Schembechler to investigate on the matter.

After the probe, the retired FBI agent discovered that nothing was being done and therefore proposed a limited undercover operation to the drug unit at FBI headquarters. FBI administrators however did not see that steroids could pose a serious problem and was originally planned to be only a local initiative. As the operation progressed, Operation Equine became an international case, which resulted to 70 convictions and the seizure of over 10 million dosage units of steroids. FBI agents worked with Canadian Police and the Canadian Parliament even amended the statutes governing steroids and included veterinary steroids.

Curtis Wenzlaff was the highly publicized supplier of steroids as he delivered them to several Major League players. He supplied steroids to Northern District of California where he lives. The District’s US Attorney’s office however declined to prosecute him in 1992 stating that they did not view steroid dealing as a serious offense. After the end of the undercover operation in 1994, Stejskal shared the gathered information obtained from Wenzlaff on MLB with Kevin Hallinan, Director for Security of MLB. Hallinan also expressed his knowledge in the league’s steroid problem but since the players could not be tested, did not think that there was much that they could do about the problem.

In his account, Stejskal wrote, “all of us who were involved in Equine take pride in what we accomplished. We overcame many obstacles to develop an unprecedented UC operation that is still the most successful case of its kind. I often wonder how things would have been different had MLB acted on our warning. (In 2005 MLB even denied we warned them, and they have never unequivocally admitted that we did warn them.)”

Stejskal also would like to set the record straight that the Operation Equine was the first major federal initiative to target the illegal distribution of steroids and not BALCO as what was reported by the New York Times. “I sent an E-mail to the New York Times a few weeks ago expressing my concerns, but haven’t yet received a reply,” he wrote.

Trackback URI | Comments RSS