Lance lied to Oprah, anti-doping agency tells ‘60 Minutes’

In an interview with Oprah Winfrey, Lance Armstrong lied or misled, the head of the United States Anti-Doping Agency tells CBS’ ”60 Minutes.”

Armstrong wasn’t leveling when he said he used small amounts of the blood booster EPO, Travis Tygart tells Scott Pelley.

“He used a lot of EPO. You look at the ‘99 Tour de France samples, and they were flaming positive, the highest that we’ve ever seen,” Tygart says. “And he’s now acknowledged those were positive.”

The “60 Minutes” report will air at 7 p.m. Sunday on WKMG-Channel 6.

Tygart disputes Armstrong’s denail of intimidating team riders into doping. Several former teammates told Tygart that Armstrong intimated that doping was mandatory.

“He was the boss,” Tygart tells Pelley. “The evidence is clear he was one of the ringleaders of this conspiracy that pulled off this grand heist that defrauded using tens of millions of taxpayer dollars, defrauded millions of sports fans and his fellow competitors.”

Tygart also says he was astonished by Armstrong’s views on the definition of cheating, shared in the Winfrey interview. 

“It’s amazing … you could go to almost any kindergarten in this country or frankly around the world and find kids playing tag or four square and ask them what cheating is,” Tygart says.  “Every one of them will tell you it’s breaking the rules of the game. No  real athlete has to look up the definition of cheating. And it’s offensive to clean athletes who are out there working hard to play by the rules that apply to their sport.”

The same “60 Minutes” also includes a joint interview between President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Why the joint interview?

“The main thing is I just wanted to have a chance to publicly say thank you, because I think Hillary will go down as one of the finest secretaries of state we’ve had,” Obama tells Steve Kroft. “It has been a great collaboration over the last four years. I’m going to miss her, wish she was sticking around, but she has logged in so many miles I can’t begrudge her wanting to take it easy for a little bit. But I want the country to appreciate what an extraordinary role she’s played during the course of my administration. A lot of the successes we’ve had internationally have been because of her hard work.”