Here is the fourth part of a transcript of an interview government officials conducted with TNA president Dixie Carter on Thursday, December 6, 2007 largely regarding steroid use in her company as well as professional wrestling. Carter also goes into great detail on the behind the scenes aspects of TNA.
64
Q Okay. The congressional request referenced in the
e-mail, do you know who that request was from?
A Yes, sir, actually, we received two.
Q Correct.
A One from Committee on Oversight and Government
Reform, and I believe I have the other one — I may not.
Do you remember?
Mr. Hundley. Uh-huh.
Ms. Carter. Can I ask him?
Mr. Hundley. Commerce.
Ms. Carter. Commerce.
Very similar structured letter -Mr.
Cohen. Yes.
Ms. Carter. Almost to the word.
Mr. Cohen. All right. We’re going to try to get
ourselves caught up to date. The next exhibit we will call
Exhibit 10 — 9.
Before we walk on to this, let me just ask if anyone
else has questions on anything up from the period from March
of ’07 — when the policy was put into place up through the
congressional request, any questions about what went on in
this time period.
BY MS. DESPRES:
Q I have one question about this policy that you
actually read: It is a violation of our policy for anyone
65
to use prescription drugs illegally. It is not a violation
for an independent contractor prescribed by a licensed and
treating physician.
Then it goes on to say, but the independent contractor
should notify his or her supervisor if the prescribed
medication will affect the independent contractor’s ability
to perform his or her job.
In developing that part of the policy, did you envision
that steroid use, legitimate or let’s say prescribed
steroid use would affect the independent contractor’s
ability to perform his or her job?
A Not if the doctor — that wouldn’t be my decision or
anybody in my company’s, but not if their doctor did not
think it would have any kind of symptoms or — what’s the
word I’m looking for? If by taking any kind of medication
it would cause slurring or —
Q Okay.
A — anything that would potentially injure — that
would potentially injure that talent or put that talent in
harm’s way or another person.
Q So there is no expectation that if the talent is
using steroids that have been prescribed that they have an
obligation under this policy to inform their supervisor of
that?
A We do know of multiple talent that we do have.
66
Q So talent — are they required to tell you if they
are taking —
A They are not required to. It doesn’t affect that,
but we are aware in multiple situations.
Q And how are you aware?
A Because, again, they tell us. We know when they
have certain injuries and how they are treating them — old
injuries, neck injuries and things such as that so —
Q I’m actually thinking of the steroid use. Do you
know about talent who are currently using steroids
prescribed by doctors?
A I know of one talent specific -Q
Okay.
A — and I know of another one that is a form of
regeneration, I believe it is.
Q Uh-huh.
A So that is a form of steroid, but it is not —
Q But they are not required under the policy, — under
the existing policy, they are not required to notify you?
A Under this existing policy, if it does not affect
their work, they are not required to tell us.
BY MR BUFFONE:
Q Do you know what steroids they are using, by any
chance?
A I don’t know it off the top of my head.
67
Q You talk about wrestlers who have been suspended,
wrestlers who have been let go, and wrestlers who have been
sent to rehab because of drug and other problems. How are
they informed? How does that process work?
A Well, most of these guys don’t have an agent,
lawyer, attorney or anybody who you would send an official
letter to. In the case where they have — we have one — I
think it is a document that you have that the names are
blanked out. It is a Hollywood person who has an agent,
attorney so we were able to send them something.
In the past, if it is just the person and they don’t
have representation, we called them up and told them.
Q So it is all done through phone calls? There are no
letters?
A No, that will not happen anymore. Everything will
be highly documented.
Q So for all the other times you sent people to
rehab when you say you “sent” people, do you pay for the
rehab or
A It just depends. Sometimes they have had insurance
that has covered a rehab. We offered to continue to pay
them even though they are not on the show. That’s usually
their biggest concern, is I can’t go without money while I
do that. So that’s why these people don’t go. They are in
fear of loss of their job, which is a reality in other
68
places, and a fear of loss of payment, which is a reality.
So we have tried to remove those two elements to let them
know it’s okay. If something does happen and you relapse,
you need to go get help.
Q So beyond the two letters of this committee there is
no documentation at all that you have suspended wrestlers,
let wrestlers go, sent wrestlers to rehab?
A It would be documented in the Internet because
everything gets out, I would assume, somewhere along the
line. But, no, we try to keep that extremely confidential.
There is one instance in particular where I was the
only person talking — I did not tell a single other person
because of their family situation and things such as that to
help them.
EXAMINATION
BY MR CHANCE:
Q In the beginning, it wasn’t necessarily ill will in
terms of drug testing
A III will?
Q It was more or less limited by resources, in talking
about paper and things like that, but now that you have
these attractions and positive cash flow has that opened up
your options in terms of creating this more confidence in
the drug policy?
A It helps tremendously, obviously. But I think we
69
felt like back then we truly were a television production
company, filming three times a week, putting on a wrestling
show. And we felt like by developing a policy very, very
quickly that no other wrestling organization but the WWE
had, no other television production company had, they don’t
test their people, movie studios are not testing people who
have the chiseled bodies who you know there is a good chance
they may not be real as well. We felt like that was being
proactive in our position.
At that point, we may have been 1 or 2, maybe 2.5
percent of WWE’s revenues and maybe spending four or five or
six, seven times that just to literally pay our guys and
stay alive. So at the time we really felt proud of this
document and felt like it was something that no other
wrestling company, even those that were truly touring and
truly working their guys a lot more than ours were doing,
and we were trying to take a stand at that point.
But when we knew we were going to be signing or hoped
to sign in October a new 2-hour deal, we felt like the
resources would be there. That’s why we decided in the
summer we can bring in a medical doctor to do preventative
stuff and ask him fly him in and ask him to give us his
entire day, which we know would be in the thousands of
dollars for proactive things. We can do full screenings
instead of random screenings to back up what we wanted to
do, and that was the plan.
BY MR. COHEN:
Q Why don’t you get us caught up to date now. Tell us
what your plans are and what your specific time frames are
for developing the testing program and how the program will
be run and what the penalties will be.
A We are still in development of that program. It has
got to be right. It really does. We have got to make
sure — and that’s why you go through drafts of things, and
this silly little talent policies and procedures probably
went — without the drug part of it probably went through 30
revisions to make sure that we hadn’t left anything out. I
will charge people with making sure that this is a very
tight, proactive document with everything spelled out.
Q When do you intend to put this into effect?
A It has to be in place by the time we do the testing,
which is the January time frame.
Q So you will do your testing in January?
A Uh-huh.
Q The letter to the committee, the August 30th, 2007,
letter to the committee, that also mentions TNA planning to
provide seminar sessions to educate TNA talent and their
families about the use of steroids and other drugs?
A Correct.
Q Have those seminars taken plaGe?
A Not yet.
Q When will they take place?
A We need to schedule them. We have talked about it.
We have talked about — we have been in discussion with a
doctor who we would like to bring in who has agreed to come
in, give us a full day at his practice and conduct such
conversations. So we are hoping within the next couple of
months.
[Carter Exhibit No. 9
was marked for identification.]
BY MR. COHEN:
Q When did you sign the contract?
A October 4th, for the 2-hour show.
Q If you could, I think it would be helpful to maybe
get back to us with some of the specifics on who you’ve -you’ve
mentioned the National Center for Drug Free Sport.
A Uh-huh.
Q If you could provide us with a list of the
individuals with whom you consulted in preparing a policy
A Okay.
Q I think that would be helpful to us.
A We have or will consult with, right?
Q Yes. Your plans are to begin testing in January.
That’s coming up pretty quick. We’re at December 5th now?
Mr. Cacheris. Sixth.
72
Ms. Carter. We have been discussing this and looking
at policies since May.
BY MR. COHEN:
Q Is there a new draft of a policy in place yet?
A Not anything in writing, no. We just talked about
it, except for the things we listed out and the documents,
the things we wanted to include. It will take this existing
drug policy and it will list out every specific thing on
there, which is, you know much like WWE’s.
Q Have you begun discussing with laboratories how they
would be conducting the testing?
A I would assume so, since we already had one
scheduled for September 10th. So since that had already
been scheduled, I would assume they had talked about it. I
did not actually set that up, so I would not know at any
level exactly the details of how that was done.
Q Okay.
A But it was going to be done in Orlando when
everybody was present at one time.
Q I would ask that over the next several weeks that,
as you begin to move towards this January testing date, that
you keep the committee abreast of your plans on a fairly
detailed basis.
A Absolutely.
Q You didn’t need to call us every hour, but to the
73
extent that you hit benchmarks -A
Sure.
Q That when you have a draft policy in place, if you
could send us that policy.
A Absolutely.
Q When you have contracted with someone to run the
program or a lab to conduct the testing, if you could let us
know about that.
A Right.
Q And if you’ve got — when you inform your talent
when testing will begin, that’s another benchmark that I
think we’d like to be informed of. And then when the first
tests are actually conducted, we would appreciate knowing
about that.
A Absolutely. What we will do is, obviously, we will
put everything in writing. And in the past we haven’t had
the necessary need to present reporting to outside people.
It was more a matter of making sure it was done. But it’s
important to me personally, it’s important to my company
that — you talk about we are a different kind of company.
Well, how can you be if — for you to even throw the word
out that we’re a safe haven is offensive, and we need to
make sure that perceptions of people on the outside and
those not with some kind of an agenda who might be talking
about us who have or want to work with us or something along
74
those lines — so it is important that we now have the
resources.
More than anything else, we are now going to start
touring, and w~ have that obligation to do so. We were
trying to give ourselves that obligation, even though we
were with them three times a month.
There are some serious issues in wrestling way beyond
steroids, you know, based upon the number of days these guys
work, pain pills, what’s causing these guys to die. You
know, all of those, you know, would be great if we can begin
working together to change that image, that’s a positive for
us.
Q I’ve asked this question generally, so I apologize
if I’m being a bit redundant —
A Then I’m not answering it properly, obviously.
Q No, I may not have asked the question correctly. I
asked for a specific timeframe about the policy itself.
Again, I think through the fact that if you’re going to
start testing in January, time must be running pretty short.
I assume you feel you are under some sort of pressure to get
this written policy done. Do you have a specific deadline
that you have for the written policy?
A By the time we conduct the test, we need to be able
to hand it to them and let them know.
BY MR BUFFONE:
75
Q So are you okay with handing the talent the policy
the day of testing?
A Uh-huh. They will be told, obviously, in advance
that we are going to do that. We will tell them what we’ll
test for, but they don’t need — I mean, they can all think
they are being terminated, as far as I’m concerned, if they
fail it. The specifics of it are not as important to me as
it will be to them to know.
Q Some of the specifics of the test, have you
discussed what drugs you are going to test for?
A From my understanding, we are testing the panel 5 or
the 5 panel and steroids.
Q Have you been part of the — I’m guessing you’ve
been a part of the discussions of developing the policy?
A Correct.
Q But do you know of steroids — there are a lot of
different types of steroids. Has there been a discussion of
which steroids you will test for?
A It is my understanding that the steroids we’re
testing for there’s a variety of them, all of them. I
understand Marion Jones went for Olympic medals and still
had that happen. But from my understanding the steroid test
we’re taking is very thorough.
Q Okay.
A I think it is four times the cost of the panel 5
76
test, so I think it does cover multiple potentials”.
Q Have you discussed collection process of the sample,
how you are actually going to get the sample?
A From my understanding, the way we have done the ones
in the past is they would come to Terry Taylor and only be
discussed within a certain amount of people within the
company, that it is privileged information, but they will
provide it.
Q Do you recall any conversations about who will
collect the sample?
A This outside company in Florida. I believe it was
Centra Care is the name of the company.
Q Okay.
A They have a team who does this for large groups, not
individual patients who come in.
Q Okay.
A They would be collecting the sample, doing the
testing and then providing us the results.
Q You mentioned before that Terry Taylor would look at
the prescriptions. Have you had any discussions about
exactly the process of determining whether a prescription is
by a treating physician for a valid medical purpose?
A What will happen is by this date — what we were
going to do in September is anything that might potentially
show up in this testing they need to provide us their proof
77
from a doctor under his letterhead and things such as that
and we will check out the doctors to make sure, not us
personally, but have somebody who is a physician check out
the doctors.
Q You do expect a medical physician to check out the
prescriptions?
A Absolutely, absolutely. That’s not something that
Terry Taylor or any of us would ever try to handle.
BY MR. COHEN:
Q Do you have any plans to conduct blood testing to
test for human growth hormone?
A We have done blood testing. I don’t know we’ve
we’ve conducted thorough blood testing, but I don’t know if
it tested for that or not. I don’t believe so.
Mr. Hundley. I don’t think so.
EXAMINATION
BY MR BUFFONE:
Q Do you plan to do a lot of Internet pharmacy
prescriptions?
A I don’t know if that’s been discussed. I know that
out of all the listings of the Internet names that have come
out none of those are on our roster that have been active
with us have ever received any Internet drugs whatsoever,
not even drugs that would be from these pharmacies that
would be legitimate. Again, if that would have been, we
78
would have immediately had testing on that person and then
reacted based upon that test.
BY MR. COHEN:
Q Is there plans to conduct continuous testing or is
this a single testing?
A No, this will be ongoing. The word “proactive” is
where we will be. We want this to be — again, we’re not
the industry leader at all, but this is something we can be
an industry leader in. We have talked about having some of
our younger, healthy guys, our good-looking healthy guys do
PSAs about drug abuse and steroids that we could go to Spike
with and see if every network gets a certain amount of PSA
time, that if we provided something like that that that’s
something where we could take a strong leadership position
in. But we would want to make sure that we’ve got all the
documentation in writing to make sure that we don’t open
ourselves up for any questions.
Q Okay.
Do you have a budget figure in mind? It sounds like
you guys watch your budget pretty carefully.
A We can breathe right now, so it’s a lot different.
I’m pretty sure that it will be costly, but it is a cost
that we’re willing to and have the means now to be able to
spend on it. You know, it has to be completely
comprehensive, and I’m sure that we’ll find the right way to
79
do it.
Q Have you thought through — is there a budget figure
in mind?
A I think on an ongoing basis this is 200, $250 per
person. So you’re talking times 50 or 60 a couple times per
year, and then we will continue if there is a cause to
random drug test. I think now, based upon this hearing and
things such as that, even if we are aware somebody is doing
something, we will probably go to the extent of making sure.
Q Okay. You had mentioned the signature pharmacy
case, the 11 — there has been 11 wrestlers, there has been
any number of professional baseball, football players whose
names have come out in relation to that.
A Uh-huh.
Q Have you been contacted at all by the Albany
District Attorney’s office?
A No.
Q Regarding the signature pharmacy case?
A We’ve had no names on the list. Kurt Angle’s name
was on the list for something I believe in 2004, but that
has been — he didn’t join us until October, November, 2006.
Q Did you make any efforts to reach out to the
signature pharmacy I’m sorry, to the Albany District
Attorney regarding the signature pharmacy case?
A No. I don’t know what reason we would have had to
80
do so.
Mr. Cohen. I’m going to turn I think to an August
24th, 2007, e-mail from Matt Conway. It is a fax from Matt
Conway to Steve Campbell. We will call that Exhibit 10.
[Carter Exhibit No. 10
Was marked for identification.]
BY MR. COHEN:
Q Who is Matt Conway?
A Matt Conway works for Andy. And again when these
multiple lists of all of these wrestlers have come out they
have been listed anywhere from 60 to 120, I believe. And I
don’t know if there is a definitive list. They are not
all — there is a lot of multitude of reasons for death
besides drug on this list. But Andy had asked Matt to go
back and look at every single show line-up that we had, and
if anybody even made an appearance on our show who — if any
of those would have been on the most extensive of lists that
are public —
Q What was your response to this list? Was this
passed up to you?
A Oh, absolutely, absolutely.
Q What’s your response?
A Well, I went through and reviewed each talent and
what the individual situation was per person; and I would be
happy to lead you through that.
[…] of TNA President Dixie Carter’s Interview with Govt Officials about Steroids (Part Five) Complete Transcript of TNA President Dixie Carter’s Interview with Govt Officials about Steroids (… Complete Transcript of TNA President Dixie Carter’s Interview with Govt Officials about Steroids […]