Biden White House joins the Olympic doping fight now tied to Salt Lake City’s Games

The fight between the United States and the world’s anti-doping regulator over the handling of positive tests by elite Chinese swimmers has escalated in recent weeks and drawn in a powerful new player: the Biden White House.

The regulator, the World Anti-Doping Agency, known as WADA, informed the White House last month that its officials were seeking to bar the administration’s representative from any deliberations about positive tests by Chinese athletes at the agency’s leadership meeting this week in Turkey.

The attempt to exclude the official, Dr. Rahul Gupta, who is the director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, is seen as part of a larger effort by WADA to push back on U.S. criticism of the agency’s handling of the doping allegations and to try to shut down an FBI investigation into the matter.

WADA’s critics say the agency’s push to have Gupta barred from the discussions is meant to undercut the United States’ ability to voice concerns over how the Chinese tests were handled before the past two Summer Olympics, and to hamstring calls for more transparency and accountability in the global anti-doping system.

The White House has responded forcefully, according to documents reviewed by The New York Times and interviews with government and anti-doping officials. The heated back and forth is expected to come to a head Thursday at the meeting in Turkey.

“Any attempt to impose preliminary measures will be met with strong opposition and appropriate action(s) from the United States government,” a top White House lawyer wrote to WADA in a previously undisclosed nine-page letter sent late last month and reviewed by the Times.

The disclosure about Gupta comes as WADA has continued to pressure the United States in other ways.

The anti-doping agency has refused to hand over documents in response to requests from Congressional committees conducting investigations. In July, the International Olympic Committee, WADA’s biggest backer, essentially conditioned the awarding of the 2034 Winter Olympics to Salt Lake City on pledges by local officials to help curtail inquiries by the Justice Department, the FBI and Congress.

According to WADA’s communications to its executive board, WADA sued the United States Anti-Doping Agency, its most vocal critic, in August in Switzerland, citing what it called “sustained defamatory comments.”

All the while, WADA has kept up a drumbeat of criticism over how the U.S. handles doping cases, repeatedly pointing out that most American professional sports operate beyond the reach of the global anti-doping system. Internally, WADA has been conducting a leak investigation to determine who disclosed documents to the Times, which in April published an investigation that revealed how the agency handled positive tests involving about two dozen Chinese swimmers.

Gupta, the White House’s top drug official, is a member of WADA’s board, where he represents not only the U.S. but more than 40 countries in the Americas. Only the International Olympic Committee contributes more than the U.S. to WADA’s $40 million annual budget.

His potential exclusion from this week’s executive committee session in Turkey was discussed at a meeting last week among public authorities who represent five regions around the world on WADA’s board, according to two officials with direct knowledge of the conversations but who were not authorized to discuss them publicly. At that meeting, representatives from the other regions agreed to speak out against Gupta’s exclusion Thursday.

The efforts to remove Gupta, who was celebrated by WADA at a ceremony as recently as March, have been taking place for a number of weeks and have led to a furious response from the White House.

The White House claimed in its letter to WADA that the agency’s top leaders had orchestrated the attempt to sideline Gupta through an anonymous conflict-of-interest complaint that accused him of attending meetings without disclosing his knowledge of a criminal investigation into the Chinese case.

In response to questions from the Times, a spokesperson for WADA, James Fitzgerald, said that it was inaccurate to say that the agency planned to bar Gupta or to say that its top officials, its president Witold Banka and its longtime director-general, Olivier Niggli, had concluded that the doctor had a conflict of interest.

At Thursday’s meeting, members of WADA’s executive committee will be provided with a copy of a final report into its handling of the Chinese doping cases, written by an independent prosecutor hired by the agency. The prosecutor’s interim conclusions, published before this summer’s Paris Olympics, absolved the agency of any wrongdoing.

Uneasiness between WADA, Olympic officials and the U.S. predates the current crisis and stems from the passing of legislation in 2020 that allows U.S. law enforcement to pursue doping cases around the world. It is those powers that most worry global anti-doping officials, who have expressed growing concern about the risk of tit-for-tat laws being passed in other countries.

In June, the head of swimming’s governing body was approached by federal investigators while attending U.S. Olympic trials and subpoenaed to provide information related to the China case. The incident has made some international sports officials skittish about traveling to the U.S., for fear of being drawn in to criminal cases.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.