Clemens depositions start in Congress: Agent testifies; Knoblauch scheduled today

An associate of Hendricks -- Roger Clemens's agents -- testified in Congress yesterday.  The New York Daily News gives testimony for us:

Jim Murray became the first person known to have submitted to a private interview with the House Oversight Committee Thursday as it prepares for its Feb. 13 hearing on the Mitchell Report. But the sports agent's allegiance to employers Randy and Alan Hendricks - who negotiated record contracts for Roger Clemens - raises doubts that his statements will settle the feud between Clemens and his chief steroid accuser, Brian McNamee.

Murray, 30, met with the committee's attorneys for about three hours yesterday. Murray's interview with the panel's lawyers could be crucial to the committee's inquiry; McNamee's attorney Earl Ward said the former Yankee trainer expressed concerns about Clemens' use of performance-enhancing drugs to Murray as early as 2003.

"I answered all the questions they asked of me," Murray said in a statement.

McNamee says he met with Murray in 2003 to warn Clemens about the impending MLB steroid testing dry-run.  Clemens's makes several disputed claims: he didn't take PEDs, and he didn't know he was featured in the Mitchell Report.  However, Clemens hired a lawyer before the Mitchell Report came out; Murray could provide corroborate evidence that Clemens's people were concerned about the consequences of PED use long before the fall of 2007 and the release of Mitchell's tome.  McNamee discussed this issue in the ill-fated phone conversation prominently featured in a Clemens press conference:

When McNamee couldn't contact Clemens directly, he later claimed, he spoke with Murray.

On Jan. 7, Clemens shared with the world a recorded call he had made three days earlier to his friend-turned-accuser. In that call, which McNamee did not know was being taped, McNamee refers to Murray, insisting that he warned Murray about Clemens.

"He sat down writing on the stupid yellow pad," McNamee said on the call, referring to the 2003 conversation. "He took notes."

Up today for Congress, Chuck Knoblauch.

Will the truth come out in these hearings?

"It's hard to lie under oath to Congress," said Richard Emery, one of McNamee's lawyers, asked what he believed Murray might have said in his three-hour interview. "If he tried to pull that off, he's going to get hurt."