Victor Conte continues to deny that he provided Barry Bonds with performance-enhancing drugs.
Conte, who said when he went to prison in December that he had never discussed steroids with Bonds, much less given him any, reiterated that position to Friday's edition of USA Today.
He admitted from prison that he had provided the cream and clear, two now-illegal steroids distributed by the Bay Area Laboratory Co-operative, to Bonds' personal trainer Greg Anderson. Conte, however, declined to clarify for USA Today whether Bonds could have gotten them from somebody else connected to BALCO.
"My understanding was that it was for [Anderson]," Conte told the paper. "Understand that baseball didn't have any testing. They didn't need this highly undetectable stuff I was doing with Olympic athletes. They were in another world from me. My relationship with Barry Bonds was 100 percent about his nutrition, his younger brother's nutrition and about nutrition for his father."
Conte, who denied to ESPN.com in December that he had named athletes when BALCO was raided in 2003, again denied that a memo by federal investigator Jeff Novitzky indicating he had done so was false.
"Much of the information in the memorandum of interview prepared by the federal agents ... was completely fabricated," Conte's told USA Today. "I filed a declaration under penalty of perjury with the federal court regarding what was actually discussed that day, and it clearly states that I did not make a confession to the agents."
Lance Williams, a San Francisco Chronicle reporter who has written "Game of Shadows" with Mark Fainaru-Wada using the federal interviews to detail Bonds' alleged steroid regime, discounted Conte's denial.
"He did not come to court and challenge the drug agent and say, 'You lied,' " Williams told USA Today. "The guilty plea was pretty convincing to us that everything was true. Our belief is that he's doing this because he feels bad that he gave all of those people up."