Isn't that already a confession? But it sounds like what he's talking about doing is saying whatever it is he needs to say to get back into the sport:
The World Anti-Doping Agency code says athletes who fully confess to doping might be eligible for a reduced punishment. Armstrong hopes to compete in triathlons and other events, but many of those are sanctioned by athletic organizations that have agreed to the WADA code.
Should he get another shot... I mean... chance?
“Does he think people are completely stupid?” asked Betsy Andreu, whom the cyclist vilified as a bitter and vindictive woman because she testified in a court case that she had heard Armstrong tell his cancer physicians that he had used performance-enhancing drugs. Her husband, former Armstrong teammate Frankie Andreu, was denied jobs in the sport because he refused to lie for Armstrong, according to the damning report released by the United States Anti-Doping Agency in October that detailed the cyclist’s drug use.
“This guy is like a Mafia don,” she added. “Will he apologize to all the people who wouldn’t lie for him? Will he compensate people for costing them jobs and businesses? How do you put a price on lost opportunities?”
It's not hard to read between the lines there. Armstrong needs to hand out a lot of compensation to everyone he hurt, enough to make them back off.
“Will he pay Christophe millions of dollars for forcing him out of the sport?” Andreu asked, referring to Christophe Bassons. Bassons has said that Armstrong threatened him because he suggested banned drugs fueled Armstrong’s comeback from cancer.
“Will he compensate (Tour de France champion) Greg LeMond for ruining his bicycle business? Will he apologize to Emma (O’Reilly, Armstrong’s former masseuse) for calling her a prostitute? Forgiving doesn’t mean being a doormat. Being a Christian doesn’t mean allowing people to profit from their crimes.”
Armstrong needs to do the math. How much money does he have? How much money could he possibly make if he gets back into sports at his advanced age?
He said: "I have something to tell you. I have to get something off my conscience and you need to hear this... I killed somebody. I beat her to death."
Perhaps he survived because he cast off the burden of the secret.
ADDED: From the comments at the link (which goes to a NYT "ethicist" column):
Why are people are so moved by a man weeping, and assume that, because a guy is crying, he must be truly remorseful? Or even that he’s being deliberately manipulative? He's most likely weeping out of fear for his job.
By the way, the second letter over there is also interesting. What if your dear friend — who suffered so over the breakup of her own marriage — is expressing her delight about how she's about to break up some other lady's marriage? The answer given is:
Tell A. that you disagree with what she’s doing and that her behavior will alter the way you view her character.... But don’t blow up your friendship because someone pursued a romance you find abhorrent.
Seems like the ethicist is fond of calling these perplexing case right down the middle.
There's nothing corroborating his statements. He just said he did it, 33 years ago, and he's a man with [perhaps?] mental illness. This is Pedro Hernandez, arrested in the Etan Patz case. People want to believe that at long last, we have the answer and a man to punish, but do we really know?
“You want to make sure he’s not a chronic confessor,” the [unnamed] detective said. Many books are about those who confessed to crimes they did not commit...
“You always go back for more detail, more detail, more detail,” [said Vernon J. Geberth, a retired New York City police lieutenant commander in the Bronx]. “The confession is usually devoid of a lot of facts. They just want to get it out. Once it’s out, the barrier has been crossed.” The need to confess behind him, the suspect may relax. “Get him something to eat, something to drink. ‘By the way, did you speak to anybody? Did you go to work the next day, or take the day off?’ Important things.”...
The detective I spoke with said he would return to [the people who worked at the bodega in 1979] and find others. “What he said to them, when he said it, what details he gave. What was his demeanor? Has he ever admitted to doing anything else?... Corroboration is such a legal thing, it’s a thin requirement... The question is, do you get the jury to believe this is the real thing?”
The detective stresses getting a conviction, but we need to also worry about what is actually true.
[Trevell Coleman] was sentenced this morning to 15 years prison for a two-decade old fatal gunpoint mugging -- a cold-case murder that was only solved when he walked into a Harlem precinct two years ago, turning himself in so he could square himself, he has explained, with God....
"He's gotten the scorn of other inmates, who called him stupid -- 'Look what happened when you open your mouth,'" [his lawyer, Anthony Ricco] said. "His wife questioned him -- 'Trevell, what about us?'"
Coleman and his wife were raising twin sons of kindergarten age. On the day of his April verdict, the wife -- who had urged Coleman not to confess -- had wondered to the lawyer about how the boys will manage now, without their father.
"My hope is that their sons will grow up to be as proud of their father as boys can ever be, for fixing what he did," Ricco said. "They will have a father who has honor."
As the United States restarts its effort to prosecute — and ultimately execute — five detainees accused of conspiring in the Sept. 11 attacks, it has fallen to Brig. Gen. Mark S. Martins both to prove them guilty and to show the world that the tribunal system is now legitimate....
The five had been arraigned at Guantánamo Bay before, in 2008, but the Obama administration shut that case down upon taking office, then tried to move it to federal court in New York, before surrendering to a political uproar.
As he reboots the case, General Martins is also trying to rebrand the system by emphasizing changes that Congress made in 2009 — notably, a higher bar to “hearsay” evidence and a prohibition against using statements made during cruel or degrading treatment. Obama administration officials echo those arguments, saying that the current tribunals are fair, unlike those during the Bush administration...
Martins attended Harvard Law School and worked alongside Obama the law student at the Harvard Law School. Obama, as a senator and presidential candidate opposed Bush's military commissions "which the Supreme Court struck down because Congress had not authorized them, and he voted against the Military Commissions Act of 2006, which revived them."
I didn't vote in the Wisconsin primary. And I took refuge in the back of my house many times when candidates — actual candidates, not their acolytes — rang my doorbell in the hope of getting to talk to me personally. They left handwritten "sorry I missed you" notes.
Like many Americans, I have an aversion to politics. I may write about politics every day, but it's from a distance... an intentional, heartfelt distance.
Even a lawyer for the ACLU, which has been helping to safeguard the rights of the terror gang, conceded that the likelihood they go it alone in court is high.
"It's quite possible that these defendants will undertake to represent themselves," Ben Wizner said. "They've been trying to fire their lawyers the whole time so they can be executed."
Experts say it's possible Mohammed will plead guilty, seeking a quicker path to death.
Experts also say that real American-style legal work on his case can be tremendously effective:
"The first thing they're going to do is challenge all of the evidence and say all of it is the fruit of waterboarding," [lawyer Alan] Dershowitz said.
Letterman has to admit it, because he needed to testify about an attempt to blackmail him over his secret sexual affairs with women who have worked with him. D'oh! And now it is revealed. How does that undermine his sweet, inept, self-mocking lecher he's been on the show all these years.
Here's video of the confession he did on the show last night. "I had to tell them how I was disturbed by this I was worried for myself, I was worried for my family, I felt menaced by this, and I had to tell them all of the creepy things that I have done that were going to be exposed. [Laughter.] Now why is that funny?"
He did a good job of damage control, I think. He made it sound as if it was just sex — which implies that you're a prude if you don't give him a pass. But sex with the women who work on his staff? This is the atmosphere of sexual harassment. What are the details that made the blackmailer think he could extort $2 million? Did some women get jobs and promotions because they were sexually available while men and other women lost out?
***
Meanwhile, here he is with Madonna, in a cute bit where they go out for a slice of pizza in the Italian restaurant next door to the theater. Madonna, it turns out, has never had New York pizza-by-the-slice and she's quite fussy about cheese... and not fussy at all about touching hands all down the aisle of the theater and in the crowd outside and then eating with her hands. What a dame!
Earlier in the show, Madonna talked about her famous 1994 appearance and attributes her strange behavior to marijuana smoking. I'm not sure if that counts as promoting marijuana or warning against it, but it bothered me to hear the icon admit to doing it (even 15 years ago).
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