Howard Bryant writes a lengthy piece at ESPN.com on the Mitchell investigation. The Sports Network interviewed the people Mitchell interviewed to find out how the investigation was carried out. A quick summary:

• A number of people think Mitchell has a huge conflict of interest due to his relationship with the Red Sox.
• Various groups (GMs, trainers, strength coaches) feel they will be unjustly blamed in the report because their jobs have no protection (no union, no ownership).
• There was a sense that the investigators didn't know the right questions to ask. They also wanted speculation when facts were not available.

Here is one example of a complaint:

"The problem was, what did they want us to say?" said a team trainer who was interviewed by Mitchell's investigators in 2006. "They wanted us to speculate. And I wouldn't do that. They wanted me to say who I thought was using steroids. And when I said, 'I don't know,' they would say, 'Well, you work most closely with these guys. You work on their bodies every day. You weren't the least bit suspicious when you saw their bodies change?'

"This was the kind of stuff I was most afraid of, because they didn't ask me about specific people with specific information that they had. They asked me to guess. I said my guess was no guess at all, because what would happen to me if I said a guy was using steroids who wasn't? What if I guessed wrong? Then my name is out there, I get fired, and I'm easily replaceable."

There's good reason not to speculate. Bob Tufts, a player from 1981 to 1983 with San Francisco and Kansas City wrote me over the weekend to complain raise issue with the Mitchell investigation. He suffered from having his name associated with drugs:

The only issue with me was the cocaine stuff in SF and KC in my days there. As I told Murray Chass, I was told by a former club official and also a current federal judge that I was not able to get a job in 84 due to my name being associated with Blue, Aikens, Wilson and Martin. Due to this, it is best to tell the papers suing for names in the Radmomski files to shut up before you possibly damage another career.

Please read the whole article. It's lengthy but very well done.