SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -Barry Bonds has closed two big chapters in his baseball career. He's the newly minted home run king, and his break with the Giants is complete.
Yet the federal steroids probe in which he plays a starring role lingers on into its fifth year.
Bonds' former personal trainer is still languishing in prison for refusing to testify before a grand jury considering perjury and other charges against the slugger. And the panel hasn't even met in two months, even though prosecutors extended its term in July by at least three months and as many as six months.
His lawyer and others speculate that the decision on whether to indict Bonds could be stalled by the management mess at Department of Justice headquarters in Washington.
Most of the department's top managers, including former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, have left in recent months in the wake of a political tempest created by the firings of eight federal prosecutors, including San Francisco U.S. attorney and chief Bonds prosecutor Kevin Ryan.
San Francisco lawyer Joseph Russoniello, who long ago cleared an FBI background check, is expected to replace Ryan, but President Bush has delayed making an announcement. In the meantime, career prosecutor Scott Schools continues to serve as interim U.S. attorney.
"All that has undoubtedly created some communications problems that may have slowed down a final decision," said Bonds' attorney, Michael Rains. "We find ourselves in a holding pattern."
Schools declined to comment Wednesday on the status of the Bonds investigation, which followed Bonds' 2003 testimony in the BALCO investigation.
According to grand jury transcripts obtained by the San Francisco Chronicle, Bonds said he thought two substances given to him by trainer Greg Anderson were flaxseed oil and an arthritic balm. Authorities suspect those items were actually "the clear" and "the cream," two performance-enhancing drugs linked to the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative.
Two grand juries have spent the past three years trying to determine whether Bonds was lying under oath. And Anderson has spent a total of about a year in federal prison as authorities try to compel him to testify against Bonds, a childhood friend.
Anderson will remain locked up until he talks, the grand jury's term expires or the judge who sent him to prison decides to set him free.
"Greg is going to spend his third Christmas in prison," said Anderson's attorney, Paula Canny.
Anderson previously served three months in prison during the winter of 2005 after pleading guilty to illegally selling steroids. Canny said her client will never talk, and she's not optimistic that the judge will turn him loose anytime soon.
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