tonight on "nightline," did lance cheat? as american sport superstar lance armstrong completes his final tour de france, we have dramatic new allegations about his alleged drug use. under pressure. as federal investigators probe the charges, armstrong's former friends and colleagues speak out in their first television interviews. it's a "nightline" exclusive. and, perfect storm. florida gets battered by its first ever july tropical storm. we'll have the latest from the gulf. >> announcer: from the global resources of abc news, with martin bashir and cynthia mcfadden in new york city, and terry moran in washington, this is "nightline," july 23rd, 2010.

>> good evening, i'm terry moran. lance armstrong is one of the most famous athletes in the world, a cycling champion, a cancer survivor and a man as comfortable ming ming with celebrities as he is on the seat of his bike. but as he prepares for his final weekend at the tour de france, a federal investigation into alleged doping by him and his former team threatens to tarnish his golden image. the investigation was sparked by allegations by former friend and teammate floyd landis. tonight, landis and others once teammate floyd landis. tonight, landis and others once close to lance go on camera for the first time for our special report, "did lance cheat?" neal karlinsky has the "nightline" exclusive. >> reporter: on a warm summer's night this week in bend, oregon, the man at the center of one of the biggest scandals in sports history. >> hope for the best. >> reporter: couldn't have looked more out of place. >> three, two, one, go.

>> reporter: floyd landis was racing his bike in a simple t-shirt. no fancy cycling jersey. >> floyd landis. >> reporter: it has been an epic fall from grace for landis. but the former tour de france winner's biggest surprise wasn't being banned from the sport he loves as a drug cheat. it was the decision to come clean about doping and make sweeping accusations against others, including one of the biggest names in all of sport, lance armstrong. >> if i'm taking on lance armstrong, than that should be evidence enough that there's a problem with the system. i'm saying a bunch of people did it. people have to tell their kids at some point that santa claus isn't real. i hate to be the guy to do it, but -- it's just not real. >> reporter: you're saying lance armstrong, fraud? >> well, depends on what your definition of fraud is.

look, if he didn't win the tour, someone else that was doped would have won the tour. in every single one of those tours. >> reporter: in the sporting world, the landis allegations printed by never before broadcast, have been a bomb she shell of unprecedented proper to shuns. that's because lance armstrong is a superstar of unprecedented proper to shuns. >> dominant champion. >> fairy tale just goes on and on. >> reporter: but it was never just about the bike. >> he beat cancer. he is the champion of the tour de france. >> reporter: lance is so famous he practically branded the color yellow as his own. that yellow jersey and those yellow bracelets evoke his sterling image as a golden boy. an american hero who beat cancer and the competition, who brought in millions, and who manages to keep movie stars and world leaders alike on speed dial. but tonight, you'll hear his former teammate paint a much less glamorous picture of

cycling's greatest. over the course of a 90-minute interview, landis described for "nightline" what he called a widespread doping program on the lance armstrong team sponsored by the the u.s. postal service. when was the first time you were handed something? >> lance armstrong handed me some testosterone patches. it's just a little patch you put on your skin. it's not like -- a blood transfusion is a bit more dramatic. it's a large needle, and it's blood. but a patch deliverers testosterone, transdermal patch, not a big thing. >> reporter: did you see lance armstrong receiving transfusions? >> yes. >> reporter: more than once? >> yes. >> reporter: he says armstrong transfused his own blood, a banned practice that gives endurance athletes an advantage by increasing the red blood cell count and therefore their

endurance. a banned substance called ebo provides a similar effect. did you see him using other drugs? >> at times, yes. >> reporter: like what? well, there's not a whole lot, like i said, that helps. well, there's epo you can use, and small amounts during the tour de france, if you need to monitor certain parameters that are tested for. that change because of the blood trans fusions. >> reporter: you saw him using epo? >> i have, ya. i also received some from him. you know, rather than go into entire detail of every single time i've seen it, yes, i saw lance armstrong using drugs. >> reporter: i have to say, floyd, you stay it in a matter of fact way, but this is a man, lance armstrong, that's denied that he's on anything but his bike, anything but just hard work. >> i denied it, as well. >> reporter: you're saying lance armstrong is a liar? >> yes, i suppose if that's the question, yes.

>> landis is a confess eed perj record and a liar. >> reporter: armstrong's attorney told us lance has never cheated. >> lance is the most tested athlete, amateur or professional, in the history of sport it's around 300 separate tests that he's undergone. and he has never had a positive test. as we say in texas, the prooch's in the pudding. >> reporter: the blood between landis and lance armstrong wasn't always so bad. landis was his faithful lieutenant and eventually his heir apparent. when armstrong retired with seven tour wins in 2005, landis took up the charge, winning the tour de france in 2006 and becoming a hero in the process. >> floyd landis, now, can take time out. he is the winner of the 93rd evident. >> reporter: the adoration

didn't last long. he was soon accused of using performance enhancing drugs and found guilty. a charge he would fight, in press conferences, on television -- >> yes or no, did you use drugs to win the tour de france? >> no, robin, i did not. >> reporter: and in arbitration hearings. armstrong himself was a landis supporter at the time. >> my suggestion to floyd would be to, if you believe you're innocent, you stand up and fright for it. >> reporter: landis even wrote a book to say he never used doping products, and he wrote, armstrong was clean, too. so, why would anyone believe landis now? it is a question u.s. federal investigators are taking seriously. the same federal agents who took on steroid use in baseball are now probing landis' claims in a very big way, issuing subpoenas to riders and team sponsors and reportedly going after armstrong and his former u.s. postal service team.

you do realize you have serious credibility issues. >> i think that would be an understatement. >> reporter: you're an admitted liar and cheat. >> what is a person supposed to do when they make the wrong decision? are you committed to that path for good? are you -- once you tell a lie, are you committed to tell that lie forever? >> reporter: lance says you have no credibility. >> you just said i have no credibility. >> reporter: lance armstrong has forcefully denied landis' claims. >> you have somebody who has written a book with a completely different version. you have somebody who took people's money for their defense. some would say $1 million with a completely different version. he said he has no proof. it's his word versus hours. >> reporter: with an official investigation under way, it's beyond a war of words. >> lance has not been subpoenaed in this investigation that's going on. nor has he been contacted in any way. nor have i.

>> reporter: armstrong's attorney says he's frustrated the government hasn't told them what exactly they're investigating. >> as lance has said, he's going to cooperate with any legitimate, fair, investigation, but not participate in a witch hunt. and so far, this has all the markings of a witch hunt. >> reporter: the landis confession broke earlier this year, in a series of e-mails he sent to cycling officials, owning up to his own cheating, and claiming a history of cheating by armstrong and many of america's top cyclists. riders who used to be his friends. when we come back, what he says happened on the team bus. host: could switching to geico really save you fifteen percent or more on car insurance? host: was abe incoln honest? mary todd: does this dress make my backside look big?

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so, floyd landis, a former tour de france champion in disgrace after he admitted using performance enhancing drugs, has now accused lance armstrong and other of his former teammates of using those banned substances themselves during the tour, both at hotels and on the team bus. here's neal karlinsky. >> reporter: during the 2004 tour de france, floyd landis rode alongside lance armstrong. he says as the team traveled together from one stage of the race to another, the bus made a detour. you talk about the team pulling off in the team bus on the side of the road? >> yeah, that incident was in 2004. >> reporter: what exactly went

on? >> well, somebody showed up with blood and we all received a -- somewhere around, between 300 and 500 milliliters of blood. >> reporter: you're in the bus. your teammates are there -- >> again, it seems shocking to you, but at this point, it had become the norm, that the world didn't know about. and what was going on was obviously, if it had been found out, would have been a real disaster. >> reporter: armstrong's attorney says the story isn't credible, because lance almost never joined the team on the bus as they traveled between stages. landis insists it happened. >> just a matter of of a disguise as to what was going on. i think the team had become pair nod, at least the doctors and whoever was managing the logistics of the entire thing, had become paranoid that the police or somebody was watching hotel rooms and so we decided to do it in the bus. >> reporter: johan is the team

director, armstrong's trusted ally in each of his tour wins. he has denied all of landis' claims. >> i have always known floyd as somebody who is basically angry with the world, and now he's -- i think he's just -- to me, it sounds like he just wants to drag down people who are still there. >> reporter: landis says he oversaw secret group blood transfashions held in anonymous hotel rooms. >> the blood would be taped on the wall or hung up at a certain level above your head so gravity causes it to run into your veins and then you lead. it's not complex. it's your own blood and there's no risk of adverse reactions, assuming it was stored properly, so -- >> reporter: how long would it take, you have a nurse helping, how many people in the room? >> always a doctor, two doctors. >> reporter: and how long would you have to lie there? >> doesn't take too long. 20 minutes at the most. >> reporter: and, he says, it didn't weigh on his conscience. it was, according to landis, simply the way things worked.

>> i considered it for a long time and, once i understood the magnitude of the drug use among them, i justified it in my own mind as, well there's one set of rules that the world knows about and then there's another set that we live by. >> reporter: emma o'reilly worked for the fame from 1998 to 2000. as the team masseuse, it was her job to ma sage aching muscles after races. a job that kept her close to lance armstrong. she's adamant that she never witnessed him do anything wrong. she spoke earlier this week with a "nightline" producer. >> any stage, did you see lance armstrong doing anything suspicious like taking drugs or injecting himself? >> no, no. >> reporter: you saw nothing? >> no. >> reporter: but she says, she suspected there was drug use on the team, and she says she was once handed a bag of sir needles

and asked to get rid of it. consider this, while lance armstrong was winning the tour, seven straight times beginning in 1999, nearly all the other riders on the podium with him, the riders he beat, admitted to doping or were suspended for it. and landis isn't the only teammate involved. tyler hamilton and frankie andrei ewe have both admitted using drugs. yet armstrong vigorously says he is clean. >> we have nothing to hide. we have nothing to run from. >> reporter: in television ads -- >> what am i on? i'm on my bike, busting my ass six hours a day. >> reporter: his image, his comeback, his cancer foundation, is the stuff of movies. off the bike, armstrong is a pitchman for everything from cars to beer. but most importantly, to thousands of cancer patients, lance armstrong lives. his trademark livestrong is

literally a word to live by for cancer survivor s the world ove. he gives so much hope to so many people, they travel thousands of miles just to see him. just to see the man who beat cancer, got back on his bike and beat the toughest race on earth. >> i've seen him progress and go through cancer, win the tour de france seven times. many people will say he's the most phenomenal comeback in cycling history. >> reporter: during the time he was fighting cancer, before he'd won a tour de france, his teammate and friend frankie andrei ewe went to hvisit him i the hospital. frankie's wife was there, too, and said that's where she heard something that shocked her.

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another of lance armstrong's former teammates, frankie andreu, has admitted to doping, and some of the most provocative claims of the use of drugs by armstrong was provided in a deposition by andreu and his wife betsy. once again, neal karlinsky. >> reporter: it was 1996, and then close friends frankie and betsy andreu were at lance armstrong's bedside in the hospital as he was recovering from cancer. there one of the doctors started asking questions, and the one that popped out was, have you ever used any performance enhancing drugs? and lance, holding his iv, looking down, rattled off epo, tests to trone, steroids, growth hormone, cortisone, and that was my introduction to performance enhancing drugs in the sport of cycling. >> reporter: she and frankie testified about the incident in a sworn deposition in a lawsuit involving armstrong, but never

spoke of it until the deposition was leaked. >> i don't know if they misunderstood or are making the whole thing up, but it did not happen. >> reporter: betsy says armstrong had been a friend. they went out to dinners together and frankie rode at lance's side in the tour. >> reporter: frankie had used epo, the '99 tour was a huge success for him. and when, in 2000, he rode clean as a whistle, his career was cut short. >> reporter: and after the testimony came out, she says the relationship with armstrong was over, too. >> lance was just too powerful. and if you go up against him, you're not going to work in cycling. people different want to hire frankie, because we weren't going to lie. we were going to tell the truth, if we were -- if we had to. it's not like i went out and called abc and said, i've got something to tell you. we were subpoenaed by michigan court order.

>> reporter: andreu and others believe that armstrong has become so important to the sport that international cycling officials are complicit in a coverup. armstrong has made two sub substantial donations to the uci, cycling's governing body, the institution that score sees testing. armstrong wrote a personal check for $25,000 in 2002 and his company donated $100,000 later, money that paid for a blood testing machine like this one. the international cycling union refused to answer abc news questions about the payments, but betsy andreu didn't mince words. >> cycling can be cleaned up. you have to start with the uci, the governing body. what americans don't realize is when lance is giving the donations, it's kind of like barry bonds giving money to bud selig. can you imagine if that were to

happen in the u.s.? >> reporter: running a sophisticated sports doping program isn't cheap. landis says the team paid for it in part by selling equipment. >> one way was to sell bicycles and products they got from sponsors. i know there was bicycles sold. >> reporter: the claims are being investigated. meanwhile, the head of the world anti-doping agency items "nightline," we believe what landis is saying now has to be fully and properly investigated. we have total faith in those who are entrusted with the investigation, so much so that we are trying to facilitate a global one. this was a big decision for you. why did you want to come out and talk today? >> well, it's about the truth. it's about -- it's about me feeling better. for having misled the public. and i would like to take that opportunity today to just say that i'm sorry for having lied. i'm glad i don't have to lie. it was hard to do interviews where i was lying. i'll feel better when i'm done

talking to you. >> reporter: are you scared? you've lost a lot. >> i don't get scared very easily anymore. i'm ready to face whatever i have to face. >> reporter: it's in the hands of investigators now. even his attorney acknowledged its thrown a dark cloud over lance armstrong's final tour de france. >> it's been cruel. it's been way over the top. and essentially it has ruined his last tour. >> reporter: as he rides into paris this weekend, he faces the prospect of a retirement that could prove much more challenging than any bike race. i'm neal karlinsky for "nightline" in bend, oregon. >> it's about the truth, whatever that may be. thanks to neal karlinsky for that report. and we'll be right back, but first, here's jimmy kimmel with what's coming up next. >> jimmy: tonight, jon hamm,

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