Unmasked: How a white-collar Baltimore swindler turned secret FBI informant and ignited a Major League Baseball steroid scandal

Smoking Gun reports:

Even a casual sports fan is by now aware of the key personalities and events of Major League Baseball's ongoing steroid scandal: Roger Clemens, Andy Pettitte, Kirk Radomski, Brian McNamee, Jeff Novitzky, and George Mitchell and his Report.

However, despite years of saturation coverage of court proceedings, congressional hearings, bloody syringes, and the suspicious abscess on Clemens's buttocks, one key aspect of the steroid probe has remained secret: the identity of the prized FBI informant responsible for its ignition.

The snitch recorded his phone calls with ballplayers, wore a wire to meetings with FBI targets, and ordered steroids and human growth hormone at the direction of federal agents. For a year, he expertly gathered information that would spawn grand jury investigations, government raids, the Mitchell Report, Radomski's felony conviction, and the ongoing criminal probe of Clemens. With brio, he dimed out aquaintances who were unaware that their pal was a convicted felon who, in a bid to avoid a five-year maximum prison sentence, had turned FBI informant and was assiduously working the street.