Bay Area Laboratory Co Operative Balco

Dana Stubblefield, a former NFL defensive player of the year, pleaded guilty Friday to lying to a federal investigator about his use of performance-enhancing drugs. He is the first football player to be charged in the long-running BALCO investigation. Stubblefield, 37, played 11 seasons as a defensive lineman for the San Francisco 49ers, Washington Redskins and Oakland Raiders, earning honors as the league's top defender as a 49er in 1997.

Before writing the letter that British sprinter Dwain Chambers presented to anti-doping authorities about Chambers' deceptive practices, BALCO founder Victor Conte sounded alarms about the Olympic track and field success of Caribbean countries, including sprint power Jamaica. Conte said that he urged the World Anti-Doping Agency to investigate drug testing and supervision of athletes in Caribbean nations that lack an independent, state-run anti-doping body.

The new chairman of the House Judiciary Committee and an influential Republican congressman asked Atty. Gen. Alberto R. Gonzales on Thursday to withdraw grand jury subpoenas to two San Francisco Chronicle reporters facing 18 months in federal prison for refusing to disclose their confidential sources of information about steroid use in professional sports.

A defense attorney in the BALCO steroid scandal has admitted that he revealed secret grand jury testimony from Major League Baseball players to two San Francisco Chronicle reporters, ending a constitutional standoff between federal prosecutors and the press, and eliminating the threat of prison for the journalists.

A federal judge Thursday took the unusual step of rejecting a plea deal for an attorney who admitted leaking the grand jury testimony of elite athletes to two newspaper reporters, saying the recommended sentence was not stiff enough.

The attorney who leaked grand jury testimony of Barry Bonds and other athletes investigated for steroid use has agreed to let a judge sentence him to as many as nine more months in prison than he originally agreed to in a plea bargain. In papers filed in federal court Thursday, prosecutors said Troy Ellerman was willing to accept a 33-month prison sentence after a judge last month rejected the original deal for a 24-month maximum sentence as too lenient.

An attorney who admitted leaking the confidential grand jury testimony of Barry Bonds and other athletes to a reporter was sentenced Thursday to 2 1/2 years in prison, by far the harshest penalty to result from the government's sprawling probe of steroids in sports. Troy Ellerman, 44, pleaded guilty in February to allowing a San Francisco Chronicle reporter to view transcripts of testimony by Bonds, Jason Giambi, Gary Sheffield and other athletes embroiled in the steroids investigation.

Barry Bonds, baseball's controversial home run king, displaced Henry Aaron in the record book in August. Now, he joins less distinguished company: prominent Americans, including Martha Stewart and I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, who have been prosecuted for lying during a federal investigation.

SAN FRANCISCO -- At Joe DiMaggio playground in the North Beach neighborhood near Fisherman's Wharf, the same park where DiMaggio learned to play baseball as a youngster, Jesse Smith spent Thursday afternoon practicing his free-throw shooting technique at a basketball hoop in the middle of an asphalt lot. Smith didn't know the DiMaggio story, but he sure knew all about another local baseball legend, Barry Bonds.

SAN FRANCISCO -- Internal political considerations and concern among federal prosecutors that their case against baseball star Barry Bonds might not be strong enough delayed his perjury and obstruction of justice indictment for more than a year, according to a former FBI official familiar with the case. During that year, Bonds completed his last season with the San Francisco Giants without the threat of a suspension and overtook baseball legend Henry Aaron to set the home run record.