Armstrong’s former friends speak out about alleged doping

>>> welcome back. after making history in his sport and becoming a global icon, the public downfall of lance armstrong is now all but complete. his seven tour de france victories have now been erased. there is no winner now listed. las week he was dropped by major sponsors and stepped down as the head of the charity he founded. if this is some kind of greek tragedy , tonight we meet two prophets, both women who long ago tried to expose armstrong 's sophisticated doping program. they suffered years of intimidation and abuse just for telling the truth. tonight, they join harry smith to set the record straight .

>> lance used a number of different words to describe you over the years. do you remember some of them?

>> unhinged, crazy, ugly, fat, obsessed, jealous, hateful, vindictive. he never called me a liar. he never called me a liar.

>> what words would you use to describe lance armstrong ?

>> bernie madoff. sad. vengeful.

>> why bernie madoff?

>> because bernie madoff was one of the biggest frauds in the history of the world in the history of finance maybe. lance is the biggest fraud in the history of sports .

>> we met betsy andreu near her hometown in michigan. she was once part of lance armstrong 's inner circle and one of his best friends .

>> they make a nice couple, huh?

>> this is the three of them during happier time. armstrong is on the right. their falling out with armstrong years ago brought tension and exhaustion to the andreu household. she agreed to talk but not at her home.

>> when you found out lance had cancer, what was your reaction?

>> disbelief. it was unbelievable that an athlete so young, somebody in such good shape had cancer. there was a great sorrow there as well.

>> so you and franky, you and your husband go to see him in the hospital. what happened at the hospital?

>> franky and i just got engaged six weeks before. we spent as much time as we could, from morning to evening, with lance in the hospital.

>> during one visit, she heard something she knew she could never forget.

>> doctors began to ask him a few questions and then, boom, have you ever used any performance-enhancing drugs? lance , holding his i.v. nonchalantly rattled off, steroid, testosterone, growth who a hormone. my eyes popped out of my head. franky saw that i was upset. we excused ourselves and left.

>> a world away in a village near manchester, england lives another woman who knew too much for lance armstrong . for four years before he won his first tour de france , irish emma o'reilly was with his racing team meaning she cooked, washed clothes and gave massages to the exhausted cyclist.

>> one of the things lance has said so often is that i have never had a positive drug test but he did test positive for cortisone at one point. your in the circle as the conversation is going on as to what to do about it. what did lance say he wanted to do?

>> what he agreed to do was the kind of obvious thing and the only thing, back date the prescription so that it technically started before the tour started so that he had already been taking cortisone. the french paper we're about to write a story the following day about it, which is why we had to get that back dated prescription that night.

>> and people bought it?

>> people bought it. there was a certain irony, because he failed the first drug test he took at the prologue, at start of the very first of the seven tour de frances. it all could have -- if people had been looking for the truth and prepared to listen to the truth then, it all could have stopped then.

>> by the time armstrong was racking up his third tour victory, david walsh , a reporter for the sunday times in london, was convinced armstrong was cheating. he tracked down emma o'reilly and betsy andreu .

>> he calls up and says, i want to talk to you.

>> i thought, if i can help david walsh and if there cob a way to clean up the sport, then so about it. i will talk to him. he wanted to tell the truth. so why wouldn't i speak with him.

>> you were going to implicate lance armstrong in drug use and this is a guy who was best friends with your husband?

>> you see this fraud being perpetuated. it was just getting worse and worse and worse. so should i sit back? i wasn't quiet from the very beginning. i am not going to lie for him. hell, i wouldn't even lie for my own husband. i'm not going to lie for lance armstrong .

>> you leave. several years go by and you get a call from david walsh .

>> yeah.

>> how did he convince you to talk?

>> i convinced me. i think he managed, maybe because he was irish, he managed to click in to the whole, when you are brought up catholic, by not telling the truth, that's a form of lying, because by saying nothing, you are protecting the lie. by protecting the lie, you are lying.

>> you were getting ready to burn a bridge.

>> yeah.

>> that you would never be able to go back across.

>> yeah, yeah, yeah. i felt kind of close to the man and you do feel disloyal even though you tell the truth. you kind of are being disloyal to your ex colleagues.

>> o'reilly was wrestling with telling her story to david walsh . death of a renown italian bike racer , marco pantanni made clear what he should do.

>> he overdosed in a hole tell room in milan, which per sons phied all the issues i had. i thought, these men are taking drugs to help their bike racing. they are taking drugs to break that feel. he just personified everything that does go wrong. i thought, you know, emma , you need to let david have the story. you need to do the right thing.

>> betsy and emma 's stories were included in walsh's book, l.a. confidential , which was published in france in 2004 .

>> we are sick and tired of these allegations. we are going to do everything we can to fight them. they are absolutely untrue. we have filed action in england. we have filed action in france. we have gotten everybody involved. enough is enough.

>> armstrong 's lawyers even filed a personal lawsuit against emma o'reilly.

>> then what happens?

>> then my life changed from a nice, calm peaceful one to one that you almost feel like you are on the run.

>> like you are on the run?

>> like i'm on the run, because you feel like you are under soon siege and you have been terrorized. i was sued and they named myself and david as co-defendants. i was sued for 1 million pounds.

>> you get sued?

>> for how much money?

>> 1 million pounds. all of the sudden, i'm like, even if i sold everything i possibly had, if i could raise everything i could, i wouldn't even touch either of those. my assets didn't -- you know what i mean ? it was like, what, what. all i had done was tell the truth. also then what it did mean, it effectively shut me up, because then i had to withdraw completely, because i couldn't say anything. if i did say anything, i was going to get further sued and more and more harassment. you almost felt like a terror victim.

>> armstrong 's legal actions effectively muz ld hzled his detract tors. it was never published in english. as he was winning his seventh victory, betsy and franky were subpoenaed to testify in a civil lawsuit which resolved around whether armstrong was doping.

>> we were sphene aubpoenaeds. it was a court order from the state of michigan .

>> you could have lied?

>> we could have lied but it would have rotted our soul. i couldn't live like that. i don't have that moral terpitude. i don't. so lying was never an option, never an option.

>> doctors came into the room.

>> lance was deposed in the same lawsuit. he denied betsy 's account of the incident in the hospital room.

>> absolutely not. that didn't happen.

>> and questioned her motives.

>> i have no idea why she did that, other than she hates he me.

>> he also refuted everything emma o'reilly said and speculated about her reasons.

>> afraid that we were going to out her as a whore or whatever.

>> he asked armstrong what doping would do for his winings and financial deals?

>> it is not about money for me. everything, the faith that people have put in me over the years, all of that would be erased. i don't need it to say in a contract, you are fired if you test positive. that's not as important as losing the sfoert upport of hundreds of millions of people.

>> there were others, bike racers, who knew emma and betsy , were telling the truth.

>> when we come back, a former teammate of lance armstrong addresses what betsy and emma experienced head-on. jack, you're a