Jailed Bonds Ally 'Will Never Speak'

DUBLIN, Calif. -- March 27, 2007— -- At the end of Arnold Road, past the strip shopping centers and condos sprouting in this bedroom community.

Beyond the entrance where low-risk female inmates in pale blue garb are spreading mulch this sunny afternoon. Deep inside the two-story concrete federal prison topped by metal fencing and loop after loop of razor wire.

This is where Barry Bonds' silent pal hunkers down, imprisoned since November for again declining to cooperate with the government's attempt to bring a perjury case against the almost certain future Hall of Famer.

Greg Anderson, the personal trainer whose testimony prosecutors believe could put Bonds behind bars and, in turn, derail his record home run chase, is sporting a Mohawk haircut these days. Rat on Bonds? Sorry, it isn't happening. Not today, not tomorrow, maybe not ever.

"My client is never going to speak," says Anderson's prominent criminal attorney, Mark Geragos, who built a reputation defending pop-star Michael Jackson, actress Winona Ryder and convicted murder Scott Peterson. "He has got absolutely no intention of talking."

Not only is his silence deafening in the San Francisco federal courthouse, but Anderson has not spoken a word to the media. He declined an interview request for this story. Why the tight lips? Only Anderson knows the real reason for his refusal to cooperate against Bonds, so the ultimate story might never be told. And so that leaves it to old friends, gym buddies and legal eagles to speculate.

These days, Anderson, 41, who married his long-time girlfriend, Nicole Gestas, last summer and has an 8-year-old son from a previous relationship, is pulling duty in the kitchen at Federal Correctional Institute in Dublin, making 12-cents an hour, while Bonds, fresh off signing a $15.8 million deal with the San Francisco Giants for this season, hones his batting stroke at spring training camp in a Scottsdale, Ariz.

The Federal Correctional Institution in Dublin, Calif., where Anderson is held for contempt of court. Anderson is in a federal detention center that typically houses upward of 100 male inmates awaiting trial or assignment to another facility -- a collection of low- to maximum-security inmates. Like the others, Anderson gets an hour in the outside yard a day. And he can pay for up to 300 minutes of telephone privileges a month.

He's up before 6 every morning, according to prison officials. The cell he shares with another inmate includes a bunk bed, sink and toilet. In the rec area, no weights are available for lifting.

Friends say Anderson hasn't touched red meat in 20 years. They depict him as careful to eat small portions, breaking to graze every four hours, mixing in an occasional protein drink. His habits are predictable; breakfast always oatmeal, scrambled eggs and sweet potato. Now, as an inmate, it's a biscuit, home-fried potatoes, cereal, coffee and juice.

Only immediate family and legal counsel can visit, according to prison rules, and then but for an hour on Saturday or Sunday. His regulars are his 37-year-old wife, a fitness trainer at a popular Redwood City gym whom he proposed to Tom Cruise-like atop the Eiffel Tower in Paris, and Paula Canny, a close friend and attorney.

"He is an incredibly resolute person, so he functions," Canny said after a recent visit to the facility, about 35 miles southeast of San Francisco. "In order to function, you turn off. You make your life be this limited thing. And you don't torture yourself with hope."

Canny added sarcastically: "Like, he's learned how to make Jell-O. And he learned how to make Jell-O with fruit in it. And now he can make layered Jell-O with plain Jell-O, fruit Jell-O, a different color. So, yeah, his life is really deep and meaningful right now."

And the funky hairdo?

"Because it is fun," says Canny, who represented Detroit Tigers slugger Gary Sheffield during the BALCO scandal. "And what else can you control when you are in a s--- hole other than your haircut?"

The dilemma for Anderson is that federal prosecutors persist in trying to make a case that Bonds, one of sports' most controversial figures, lied under oath before a 2003 grand jury when he testified he never used steroids. They've convinced U.S. District Judge William Alsup that Anderson's cooperation is pivotal to their ability to indict. Because Anderson isn't talking despite being subpoenaed to appear before two grand juries, he remains locked up for contempt of court.

Anderson already completed a three-month sentence in early 2006 after pleading guilty to steroid distribution in the BALCO scandal. Now prosecutors want Anderson, using doping calendars seized in a raid of his apartment, to confirm notations on the calendars they believe chronicle Bonds' performance-enhancing drug usage.