Chapter[ VI. Incidents Providing Evidence to Baseball Officials of Players’ Possession
or Use of Performance Enhancing Substances ]
Section[ A. Operation Equine ]
A. Operation Equine
In the summer of 1995, Special Agent Gregory Stejskal of the Federal Bureau of
Investigation attended a seminar in Quantico, Virginia that was also attended by officials from
89
Major League Baseball. There, Stejskal told us, he met Kevin Hallinan, the senior vice president
for security in the Commissioner’s Office, who he told about Operation Equine, a nationwide
investigation that he had been conducting since 1989 into the illegal distribution of steroids.
Stejskal said that he told Hallinan he had information that players in Major League Baseball,
including Jose Canseco, were illegally using anabolic steroids and that he believed the illegal use
of steroids in baseball was “pervasive.”258 Hallinan told us that he does not remember being
approached by Stejskal in 1995 and asserts that he would have pressed Stejskal for information
on the subject if it had been raised with him then.259
In June 2002, Stejskal called Hallinan to follow up on the issue. Hallinan asked
his deputy Martin Maguire to pursue the lead. In response, Maguire spoke with Stejskal and also
with Curtis Wenzlaff, a convicted steroids trafficker who had been Stejskal’s informant. In his
phone interview with Maguire, Wenzlaff claimed to have personally supplied steroids to a
number of major league players in the past, including but not limited to Canseco. Maguire did
not create a record of his conversations with Stejskal or with his informant, Wenzlaff, because,
he told us, the information did not specifically implicate any players who were then active at the
major league level.
In our own interview of him, Wenzlaff acknowledged that he had dealt with 20 to
25 players in Major League Baseball before he was convicted for illegal distribution of steroids
in 1992. He was not willing to divulge to us the names of major league players to whom he
supplied steroids other than Canseco (who had by then admitted his own use). In our interview
258 See also Christian Red, Michael O’Keefe and T.J. Quinn, FBI agent hits MLB on
‘roids, N.Y. Daily News, Feb. 15, 2005, at 57.
259 See also id.
90
of him, Canseco denied that he had obtained steroids from Wenzlaff but acknowledged that he
had met him.
Maguire recalled that at some later point he asked Hallinan whether he should
investigate allegations that were appearing in the press concerning Jose Canseco’s illegal use of
steroids. Hallinan said that “[he] knew Canseco and didn’t see any opportunities to be pursued.”
Contents
Prev
Next
Last
