WASHINGTON (AFP) — American baseball star Roger Clemens scheduled several face-to-face meetings with US congressmen in preparation for next week's House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform hearing.
Clemens plans to hold one-on-one informal visits over two days with congressmen while McNamee, the star pitcher's former trainer, met with House lawyers for a sworn deposition on Thursday.
Thursday's meetings came two days after Clemens met with committee investigators for five hours and testified under oath that he never used performance-enhancing drugs.
Clemens spoke briefly to reporters Thursday. He was accompanied on his rounds by his lawyers, who helped him present committee members with his vehement denials of McNamee's allegations in the Mitchell Report.
"It's a great day, got lot of walking in," Clemens said. "I learned a lot about the bowels of the building I was in and out of. We had some great meetings, and I'm looking forward to Wednesday of next week."
McNamee claims in the report that the seven-time Cy Young Award winner used steroids and human growth hormone.
"His feeling is now you are finally seeing who we are dealing with," Clemens' lawyer Rusty Hardin said Thursday. "He (McNamee) revealed what he is out to do and that is destroy Roger."
Clemens and McNamee both will testify next Wednesday during the committee's public hearing, a deliberation which also will include New York Yankees pitcher Andy Pettitte - Clemens' friend and former teammate.
According to former Senate Majority leader George Mitchell's report on illegal drugs in baseball, McNamee claimed that he injected Clemens with steroids and HGH at least 16 different times in 1998, 2000 and 2001.
McNamee reportedly turned over evidence to federal investigators that will link Clemens with performance enhancers.
McNamee reportedly gave the federal government's BALCO investigators vials with traces of steroids and HGH, as well as blood-stained syringes and gauze pads that may contain Clemens' DNA.
McNamee worked with Clemens while he pitched for the Toronto Blue Jays and New York Yankees and said he injected Clemens with steroids at least four times in the 1998, 2000 and 2001 seasons and four to six times with HGH in 2000.
Clemens is a seven-time Cy Young Award winner for top league pitcher and together with tainted home run king Barry bonds lead the list of doping tainted talent unearthed by the Mitchell Report.
Clemens has acknowledged he received injections from McNamee, but he said they were for vitamin B-12 and the painkiller lidocaine.
During a media conference with reporters, Richard Emery, one of McNamee's lawyers, claimed his client had begun saving needles in 2001 because he had "an inkling and gut feeling that he couldn't trust Roger and needed to protect himself."
"If he was going to go under a bus, he was going to take Roger Clemens with him," said Earl Ward, who also represents McNamee.
Ward said his client had withheld the evidence out of lingering loyalty to Clemens, but decided in the wake of Clemens' revelations about McNamee's son's illness that it was "no holds barred."
Emery and Ward distributed pictures of the needles, some of which had been stored in a beer can to preserve them. They said the evidence had been kept in a FedEx box in McNamee's basement for the last seven years.
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