Bob Tufts sends a link to this article by Jonathan Littman on the unsealed court documents surrounding the Barry Bonds perjury case. The gist of the article is that the clear (THG) was not classified as a steroid at the time:

Neither Conte nor Anderson was charged with distributing THG. In fact, nobody in the seven-year BALCO investigation has been charged with possession or trafficking of the drug. Less than $2,000 of drugs was found in the highly publicized raid of the Burlingame, Calif., laboratory in 2003.

Besides the staggering amount of taxpayers' money the investigation has cost, BALCO spawned Congressional hearings, countless television news accounts and the best-selling book "Game of Shadows." Yet the lack of a federal criminal punch made it difficult for the government to bring traditional charges against athletes for taking drugs.

The paucity of illegal profits and drugs raises the question whether prosecutors realized that the only potential for criminalizing the behavior of athletes who took banned substances was to set perjury traps or bait athletes into lying to the grand jury or to a federal agent.

"It sounds like a misuse of the grand jury," said John Bartko, a former assistant U.S. Attorney in San Francisco who has tried perjury cases. "They go and try to trip the guy into lying."

The government believes it has tripped Bonds, but whether he falls will be determined in court. The fact that the key drug he is accused of taking was legal and not recognized as a steroid under federal law could complicate the case, experts say.

"I don't understand why the government would seek an indictment after obtaining Catlin's expert testimony that the Clear was not a steroid," Cannon said. "Why come up with an indictment based on an ambiguous definition?"

I'd like to hear from the lawyers on this article. It seems to me that the clear was not a steroid because someone hadn't tested it properly yet. Was Bonds told it was a steroid? Was Bonds told it would act like a steroid?

The article talks about the cream being a masking agent, but it certainly contained steroids. We'll see how this case goes. I agree to a great extent that it was a waste of money. However, if Bonds wins, he'll at least be able to try to recover some of his lost prestige. To him that will be worth all the money spent by prosecutors.