Using OSINT to examine a US athlete's dog medication doping defence - Town Square #5
I wanted to share with with my subscribers how I use open-source intelligence to investigate doping in sports, and ask you all if you would like to help me do it too.
Every Monday and Thursday, I send a newsletter to your inbox with the URLs to all the major doping stories in the press over the past seven days. You can read a free example of these round-ups here (link). I publish Long Read investigations on doping in sport, you can find the archive here (link). In the Town Square, I write frequently about doping news (link).
In September 2018, I came across an article on the Bellingcat website that would redefine what I thought was possible through open-source investigations.
For those unfamiliar with the term, open-source intelligence (OSINT) refers to the analysis of public information, data and resources to produce actionable intelligence that can be used to aid investigations, usually into wrongdoing. Bellingcat is now a leader in the field. The site was founded by the British citizen journalist Elliot Higgins who became an expert in military weapons during the Syrian civil war by analysing hundreds of Youtube videos of the conflict each day. He did this from the comfort of his own home all while looking after two young children during a period of unemployment.
Upon reading Bellingcat’s OSINT research into two Russian spies who had committed attempted assassination on British soil, and inspired by Higgins, I decided to broaden my own OSINT skills.
In March 2018, two Russian nationals, Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia, had been poisoned with a Novichok nerve agent in a medieval cathedral city in England and it was evident to the British authorities that the botched assassination attempt had been carried out by Russian intelligence. The motives were clear.
According to Russian prosecutors, Sergei Skripal had been a double agent for the United Kingdom's Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) who exposed the identity of over 300 Russian intelligence agents. In 2004, he was arrested by Russia’s secret service and sentenced to 13 years in prison for committing high treason. However, he was freed from prison as part of a Russia-UK ‘spy swap’ and he later settled in Salisbury. The site of his attempted assassination.
Shortly after the plot, the British authorities quickly obtained passport photographs of the two suspected assassins. They had both travelled to the UK under false identities specifically to kill Skripal and his daughter.
The next challenge was to identify them, and this was when Bellingcat stepped in.
Independently from the British police, Bellingcat began their search with only the two targets’ photographs and their cover identities. They attempted reverse image-search via several online engines, but no matches were found. Similarly, no telephone numbers were registered in the names of the assassins in any of the reverse-searchable telephone databases usually scraped by Bellingcat.
But it was when Bellingcat approached their search deductively that they showed their OSINT prowess. I was blown away.
On the assumption that the two suspects were Russian secret service (GRU) officers with a focus on West European covert operations, and knowing their approximate age, they contacted former Russian military officers to inquire which specialised schools would have provided appropriate training. They then searched through incomplete yearbook and reunion photos from the schools until they had a hit. It was unclear at first, but this initial search identified a target. They went onto confirm that he was a GRU officer named Anatoly Chepiga, using more techniques outlined in the article. My eyes had been opened to the power of OSINT, and I was motivated to use it in my own sports investigations. And I have since done that.
So today, with paid subscribers, I wanted to share a recent OSINT investigation I undertook into an American Paralympian, who has won four Paralympic gold medals across three Paralympics, the results of which were published with colleagues on German television ARD this past September.
I am also calling on any subscribers to reach out and introduce themselves who would like to help with open-source research such as identifying a few people of interest from photographs (more on that below). For those who would prefer to remain anonymous, I also have an OSINT task that we can all work on together.
And so, onto my recent OSINT investigation into doping in American track and field.
The doping case involving Roderick Townsend and his pet dog Winnie
While browsing through Twitter in early January, I was alerted to a United States Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) case that immediately piqued my interest.
A US Paralympian, Roderick Townsend, had escaped a sanction despite testing positive for a growth hormone releasing peptide called capromorelin. Townsend was at the time a three-time Paralympic gold medallist in the High Jump and Long Jump.
After being notified of his positive drug test by the US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA), Townsend explained that he had administered a medication containing capromorelin to his terminally ill dog Winnie using an oral syringe. When the dog sadly passed away, Townsend, instead of discarding the syringe, continued using it himself to measure and administer his own vitamin D solution. Townsend claimed he was unaware that residue from his dog’s pet medication remained in the syringe.
And after Townsend provided USADA with records of a capromorelin prescription from a veterinarian (link), the agency accepted that his dog’s medication was indeed the source of his positive drug test. USADA also concluded that Townsend had done so ‘through no fault of his own’ despite seemingly carelessly reusing a dog’s syringe.
The case was concluded, and Townsend escaped a period of suspension. Seven months later, he won gold in the high jump at the Paris Olympics.
I, as I am sure others were too, was surprised at such a turn of events so I decided to delve deeper. And here is how I did it.
