Hi, I’m Anderson Cooper. Welcome to the podcast. Lance Armstrong finally stops to lie about cheating. But they haven’t much he’s really willing to tell. Also the ridiculous. Let’s get started.

We begin tonight as we do every night. Keeping Them Honest, looking for facts, not offering up opinions or playing favorites. Not supporting on political side or another. Our goal is just reporting, finding the truth and calling out hypocrisy. And there’s no bigger example of that tonight, or possibly ever in the history of sports, than what happened to American icon Lance Armstrong over the last 24 hours.

He cheated, he lied about it for years and years and years, and now he’s reportedly coming clean, somewhat. How much did Lance Armstrong say in the interview he just taped with Oprah Winfrey. He reportedly admits to using performance-enhancing drugs to win bicycle races. And Oprah says he was, quote “pretty forthcoming”, and that he did not come clean in the manner she expected. Exactly what that means is not clear. Oprah is too good to give it all away.

I choose not to characterize.

I would rather people make their own decisions about whether he was contrite or not. I felt that he was thoughtful. I thought that he was serious. I thought that he certainly had prepared himself for this moment. I would say that he met the moment. And at the end of it, two and a half, literally two and a half hours, we both were pretty exhausted. And I would say I was satisfied.

Well, whatever ultimately made it to tape, and we won’t know until later this week, long-time followers of Armstrong say they are not ready to take anything he says face value. Reporters, teammates, even one-time friends, they all describe the seven-time Tour De France winner, cancer survivor and charity founder, as a born manipulator who’ll do whatever it takes for only one person, Lance Armstrong.

Keeping Them Honest, they point to a record of lying that rivals his record of winning.

We’re sick and tired of these allegations and we’re going to do everything we can to fight them. They’re absolutely untrue.

I’ve said it for seven years. I’ve said it for longer than seven years. I have never doped. I can say it again. But I’ve said it for seven years. It doesn’t help.

How could it have taken place when I’ve never taken performance-enhancing drugs?

Go back to 1995, one of your former teammates, Steven Swart, he was riding with you, he’s a kiwi on the Motorola team. He has told ESPN on the record and on camera that back in 95 when the team was struggling that you announced to the team that you were going to begin doping and you were encouraging other teammates to do the same. What do you say to that account?

Now again, complete nonsense.

It can’t be any clearer that I’ve never taken drugs, then incidents like that could never have happened.

Why would I then enter into a sport and dope myself up and risk my life again? That’s crazy. I would never do that, that’s no, no way.

My case, I mean, I came out of a life-threatening disease. I was on my death bed. Do you think I’m going to come back into a sport and say, ok, ok, doctor, give me everything you got, I just want to go fast. No way, would never do that.

That was Lance Armstrong denying it all, time and time again. Since then, U.S. anti-doping agency has put out more than 1,000 pages of allegations and evidence against Armstrong and his teammates, calling Armstrong’s drug ring the most sophisticated in the history of sports. He’s been stripped of his seven Tour De France titles, barred from competition, stepped down from the Livestrong charity that he founded. Until now he’s denied everything. Not only that, as you’ll see, he’s got a long history of lashing out at people who tried to expose him, the people who dared to suggest that Armstrong was on something other than his bike. That was, in many cases, a brave stance to take. Because in almost every case it was followed by a Lance Armstrong sponsored scorch earth campaign.