beat back reports in the French media that he used a banned blood booster in his first tour victory in 1999. On Thursday, he lashed out at the French lab that produced the findings in question.
"There's a setup here and I'm stuck in the middle of it," Armstrong told The Associated Press. "I absolutely do not trust that laboratory," he said.
The French sports daily L'Equipe reported Tuesday that new exams on six urine samples Armstrong provided during the 1999 tour resulted in positive results for the red blood cell-booster EPO.
Armstrong's comment came after Dick Pound, head of the World Anti-Doping Agency, said officials had received the lab results and would review them. Armstrong also said that while Pound might trust the lab that tested the samples, "I certainly don't."
On Thursday night, Armstrong elaborated on that distrust during an appearance on CNN's "Larry King Live."
"A guy in a Parisian laboratory opens up your sample, you know, Jean Francois so-and-so, and he tests it - nobody's there to observe, no protocol was followed - and then you get a call from a newspaper that says 'We found you to be positive six times for EPO.' Well, since when did newspapers start governing sports?"
Although frustrated by the report and the difficulty of proving his case, Armstrong said he sleeps well at night knowing that he's competed drug-free.
"All I can do is come on this stage and tell my story and be honest. I've always done that," he said. "Since this stuff's rolled out, I sleep great at night .... I don't have a problem looking at myself in the mirror."
Armstrong questions the validity of testing samples frozen six years ago, how those samples were handled since, and how he could be expected to defend himself when the only confirming evidence - the 'A' sample used for the 1999 tests - no longer exists.
He also charged officials at the suburban Paris lab with violating WADA code for failing to safegu...