While I agree with the gist of Diesel's post, I have to disagree with one point he made. I believe that Americans would have been accepting of a verdict issued by a European agency regarding LA's guilt. The problem was,at the time, there wasn't any real evidence, collected and examined according to the existing protocol at the time, that he was guilty of anything.
We now know that coercion played a large role in the absence of that evidence, but that was not the case at the time.
And, lacking such evidence, the US media was left with no option but to continue to treat LA as the person he claimed to be. Foreign media may have greater latitude in this regard, and certain lowly regarded publications in the US play loose with the concept of "innocent until proven guilty," but the mainstream serious press was left with no option but to continue to participate in what turned out to be a ruse.
Also, in defense of the US federal investigation, it's important to note that the federal investigators were not allowed to offer amnesty from federal prosecution to encourage testimony (unlike the USADA, who could offer leniency of a different sort). Who knows what would have come of the investigation if they had the power to do so.
"Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the the universe." - Albert Einstein
