An NFL vice president Thursday blamed the lead lawyer for Vikings Pat and Kevin Williams for leaking their positive tests results to the media in 2008 and confirmed other players tested positive for the same substance but weren't disciplined.
Adolpho Birch, NFL vice president of law and labor policy, brought major attitude to his responses to questions from the Williams' lawyer, Steve Rau, including asserting lawyer Peter Ginsberg leaked test results to reporters.
Birch said it "did not strike" him as a coincidence that in the initial news story about their tests, Kevin and Pat Williams' names surfaced with an Atlanta Falcons player also represented by Ginsberg. He called Ginsberg the "most logical" source of the reporter's information.
Rau said, "You're speculating?"
Birch said tartly, "It's a little more than speculation."
The notion that the Williams' own lawyer leaked their names strikes to the heart of their claims. The two are appealing their four-game suspensions for testing positive for Bumetanide, a banned substance that can be used as a masking agent for steroids. The players, who comprise the "Williams Wall" and are not related, say they took the over-the-counter dietary supplement StarCaps to help them shed water weight in July 2008. Bumetanide is an unlisted ingredient in StarCaps.
Ginsberg will go on the record Friday on whether he leaked news about the tests. "Absolutely not," he said after court Thursday. "And the NFL knows I wasn't the leak."
Also testifying Thursday were Bryan Finkle, a toxicologist for the NFL steroid program, Angelo Wright and Tom Condon, agents respectively for Pat and Kevin Williams.