Brian McNamee turns the tables

A day before the Mitchell report was released in December, two retired Houston police officers working as investigators for the lawyer for Roger Clemens interviewed Clemens' former trainer Brian McNamee in New York.

They wanted to know what McNamee had told investigators working on the report, which examined the use of performance-enhancing drugs in baseball and linked roughly 90 current and former major-leaguers, including Clemens, to such drugs.

Now, lawyers for McNamee are preparing to send two retired New York City police officers to Houston, not to interview Clemens but to find out information about him, including any possible connections to steroids and human growth hormone.

Richard Emery, one of McNamee's lawyers, said Thursday that the two investigators — Gerry Kane, a former commanding officer of the Manhattan robbery squad, and Stephen Davis, a former detective — were already working on McNamee's behalf and would go to Houston if the motion to dismiss a defamation lawsuit filed by Clemens last January is denied.

"They are going to be my Belk and Yarbrough," Emery said, referring to the two former Houston officers — Billy Belk and Jim Yarbrough — who, on behalf of Clemens' lawyer, Rusty Hardin, interviewed McNamee in December and secretly tape-recorded the questions and answers.

"They will be looking at everything," Emery added in reference to his own investigators.

Clemens filed a defamation lawsuit against McNamee on Jan. 6 as part of an effort to discredit McNamee, who has asserted that he injected Clemens with steroids and human growth hormone on numerous occasions between 1998 and 2001.

In March, McNamee's lawyers filed a motion to have Hardin disqualified from the case because he had also represented Andy Pettitte, whose statements have put him in conflict with Clemens. McNamee's lawyers also filed a motion to have the defamation suit thrown out.

A judge ruled Tuesday that Hardin could remain on the case and said Hardin had until May 26 to file a response to the motion to dismiss.

Although McNamee's investigators are ostensibly seeking information that they can apply to the defamation suit, anything they can uncover can also be subpoenaed by federal authorities now seeking to determine if Clemens committed perjury when he testified before Congress that he had never used steroids or human growth hormone.

Mathew Rosengart, an adjunct law professor at Pepperdine University and a former federal prosecutor, said authorities were not always thrilled to have private investigators looking into a matter they were investigating. He added, however, that the government often recognized the advantage of having more people seeking information.