Sheryl Crow was with Lance Armstrong when he went to receive an illicit blood transfusion and later told federal investigators about what she'd seen, according to a new book about the doping conspiracy that propelled Armstrong's cycling teams. 
 
 The musician accompanied Armstrong during a trip to Belgium in Armstrong's private jet for a 2004 procedure according to "Wheelmen," a book due out next Tuesday from Wall Street Journal reporters Reed Albergotti and Vanessa O'Connell. 
 
 "Rather than try to hide the transfusion from her, Armstrong was completely open about it," the authors write. "He trusted that Crow would have no desire to tell the press or anyone else about the team's doping program. He explained that it was simply part of the sport - that all cyclists were doing the same thing." 
 
 Sheryl Crow cooperates with the feds after being given immunity from prosecution, a new book claims. (MARK J TERRILL/AP) 
 
 Crow and Armstrong were dating at the time, Armstrong having left his wife, Kristin, just as his romance with Crow became public. The singer and cyclist were briefly engaged, but they split up in 2006. 
 
 A representative for Crow, apprised Wednesday afternoon of the book's contents, did not offer a comment. 
 
 Sheryl Crow and Lance Armstrong call off their engagement in 2006. (PETER DEJONG/AP) 
 
 Crow was forced to revisit her relationship with Armstrong five years after it ended when federal investigators launched the criminal probe that hastened Armstrong's downfall. The Daily News reported last year that Crow spoke with investigators in late 2011. 
 
 "Wheelmen" states that Crow informed on Armstrong after Food and Drug Administration criminal investigator Jeff Novitzky gave her a proffer agreement, a document that protects witnesses from criminal prosecution if they cooperate honestly. 
 
 Sheryl Crow travels with then-boyfriend Lance Armstrong to the 2005 Tour de France. (ERIC GAILLARD/REUTERS) 
 
 Blood transfusions allow athletes to increase the number of oxygen-carrying red blood cells in their bodies, boosting endurance potential without using drugs. Armstrong used transfusions in conjunction with banned drugs during the peak of his career, and doped throughout his entire career. 
 
 Armstrong escaped criminal charges when a grand jury dropped the case without explanation in 2012. But he hasn't outrun the government yet; the Justice Department is currently suing Armstrong and several members of his inner circle. The lawsuit cites the False Claims Act in an effort to retrieve the tens of millions the U.S. Postal Service paid to Armstrong and his teams. 
 
 Lance Armstrong is stripped of his seven Tour de France titles over doping. (CHRISTOPHE ENA/AP) 
 
 The role of Armstrong's closest friends and supporters in perpetuating his deceptions is one of the central themes of the new book, which is due out Tuesday and bears the full title "Wheelmen: Lance Armstrong, the Tour de France and the Greatest Sports Conspiracy Ever." ||||| The formerly defiant Lance Armstrong once said, “As long as I live, I will deny ever doping,” but sitting face to face with Oprah Winfrey in an interview that was broadcast Thursday, he reversed course. 
 
 With Winfrey, he lost his icy stare and buried his cutting words. Looking nervous and swallowing hard several times, he admitted to using through most his cycling career a cocktail of drugs, including testosterone, cortisone, human growth hormone and the blood booster EPO. 
 
 Yet, like always, Armstrong could not help fighting. 
 
 He called his doping regimen simple and conservative, rejecting volumes of evidence by the United States Anti-Doping Agency that the drug program on his Tour de France-winning teams was “the most sophisticated, organized and professionalized” doping scheme in the history of cycling. 
 
 He said that he was not the kingpin of the doping program on his teams, as the antidoping agency claimed, and that he was just doping the way the rest of his teammates were at the time. 
 
 He said he had doped, beginning in the mid-1990s, through 2005, the year he won his record seventh Tour. He said that he took EPO, but “not a lot,” and that he had rationalized his use of testosterone because one of his testicles had been removed during his battle against cancer. “I thought, Surely I’m running low,” he said of the banned testosterone he took to gain an edge in his performance. 
 
 At times during the interview, which will resume Friday night, Armstrong seemed genuinely humble, admitting that he was “a flawed character” and that he would spend the rest of his life trying to apologize to people and regain their trust. 
 
 “There will be people who hear this and never forgive me,” he said. “I understand that.” 
 
 But when asked about the people he had tried to crush while he tried to keep his doping secret — people like the former masseuse Emma O’Reilly or his former teammate Frankie Andreu and Andreu’s wife, Betsy — he showed little contrition. Those are some of the people who claimed he had doped and who he subsequently publicly claimed were liars. He had called O’Reilly a prostitute and an alcoholic. 
 
 In the interview, Armstrong acknowledged calling Betsy Andreu crazy. But with a suggestion of a smirk, he said he never claimed she was fat. 
 
 He said he had been a bully his whole life, before contradicting himself a minute later, saying he became a bully only after he survived cancer and resumed his cycling career. 
 
 And when he said he never failed a drug test — saying, “I passed them because there was nothing in the system” — he contradicted himself again. When Winfrey asked if his urine samples from the 1999 Tour retroactively tested positive for EPO, he said yes. When she pressed him, he admitted that he received a backdated prescription from a team doctor after he tested positive for cortisone at the 1999 Tour. 
 
 Armstrong did not delve into the details of his doping, and Winfrey never asked. He did not explain how it was done, who helped him do it or how, exactly, he perpetuated his myth for so long. He said he was not comfortable talking about other people when asked about the infamous Italian sports doctor Michele Ferrari, his former trainer, who is now serving a lifetime ban for doping his athletes. 
 
 When Winfrey asked if he would cooperate with the United States Anti-Doping Agency in building doping cases against others in the sport, he masterfully skirted the question. 
 
 Travis Tygart, the chief executive of the antidoping agency, called Armstrong’s admission “a step in the right direction.” 
 
 But it did not really matter what Armstrong told Winfrey in the interview, at least according to Tygart and other antidoping agency officials who hold the key to Armstrong’s future as a professional athlete. 
 
 Armstrong’s reason for coming clean was not to unburden himself of the deception he fought to keep secret for so long. It was to take the first step toward mitigating the lifetime ban from Olympic sports that he received from the United States Anti-Doping Agency in the fall, according to people close to him who did not want their names published because they wanted to stay in Armstrong’s good graces. 
 
 Antidoping officials need to hear more from Armstrong than just an apology and a rough outline of his doping. They need details. And lots of them. 
 
 “Anything he says on TV would have no impact whatsoever under the rules on his lifetime suspension,” Tygart said. ||||| Last Updated, Wednesday, 11:07 a.m. The year before his seventh and final Tour de France victory, Lance Armstrong offered to donate “in excess of $150,000″ to the antidoping agency in charge of keeping American athletes from using performance-enhancing drugs, according to the organization’s chief executive. 
 
 The latest accusation against Armstrong, the disgraced former cyclist, was made by the current head of the United States Anti-Doping Agency, Travis Tygart, in an interview with CBS News posted online on Tuesday. In October, Usada stripped Armstrong of all of his titles and barred him from competition for life following the release of a 202-page report into what the agency called “the most sophisticated, professionalized and successful doping program that sport has ever seen.” 
 
 As my colleague Juliet Macur reported, Armstrong, who has so far denied all allegations of cheating, “has told associates and antidoping officials that he is considering publicly admitting that he used banned performance-enhancing drugs and blood transfusions during his cycling career.” Late Tuesday, Oprah Winfrey announced that she “will speak exclusively with Lance Armstrong in his first no-holds-barred interview,” to be broadcast next week on her network. 
 
 BREAKING NEWS: Looking forward to this conversation with @lancearmstrong: http://t.co/GwSmBhdW #NextChapter — Oprah Winfrey (@Oprah) 9 Jan 13 
 
 As the cycling journalist Lionel Birnie notes, the Oprah Winfrey Network is a joint venture with Discovery Communications, the broadcaster that sponsored Armstrong’s team in 2005. 
 
 Lance is going on Oprah, partly-produced by Discovery Channel, sponsors of Lance’s 7th and final fraudulent Tour win. Somehow fitting. — Lionel Birnie (@lioneljbirnie) 9 Jan 13 
 
 Samantha Lane, a reporter for The Age in Australia, pointed out on Twitter that Winfrey and Armstrong looked comfortable together in a photograph published in the May 2004 issue of O, The Oprah Magazine with an interview of the cyclist before that year’s Tour de France. 
 
 Oprah & Lance, in happier times (pic from her website). http://t.co/TMpMfYfk — Sam Lane (@SamJaneLane) 9 Jan 13 
 
 The photograph showed Armstrong in his Discovery Channel uniform and Winfrey, leaning on his shoulder, wearing a yellow, Livestrong bracelet. 
 
 The network’s logo was emblazoned across the victor’s yellow jersey Armstrong wore on the top step of the podium in Paris that year, as he lectured “the people that don’t believe in cycling, the cynics and the skeptics.” 
 
 Directly addressing those who accused him of doping that day, Armstrong said, “I’m sorry for you, I’m sorry you can’t dream big and I’m sorry you don’t believe in miracles, but this is one hell of a race, this is a great sporting event and you should stand around and believe. You should believe in these athletes and you should believe in these people. I’m a fan of the Tour de France for as long as I live and there’s no secrets — this is a hard sporting event and hard work wins it.” 
 
 The notion of Armstrong confessing on Oprah was pre-mocked nearly two years ago by the bike racers and cartoonists Andy Shen and Dan Schmalz in their cult comic strip about the soap-operatic world of professional cycling, “As the Toto Turns,” for nyvelocity.com. 
 
 Andy Shen and Dan Schmalz, nyvelocity.com 
 
 Another journalist who writes about cycling, Shane Stokes, suggested that Armstrong might expect Winfrey to go easy on him, since she let another disgraced athlete, Marion Jones, claim during a 2008 interview that she had used performance-enhancing drugs unintentionally. 
 
 Just after news of the interview broke, Kathy LeMond, whose husband, Greg, is now the only American to win the Tour de France, offered to put Winfrey in touch with people who could give her a crash course on the culture of professional cycling. 
 
 .@Oprah I hope you get educated before the interview. I know people that can help you. — Kathy LeMond (@KathyLeMond) 9 Jan 13 
 
 Joe Lindsey of Bicycling Magazine asked his Twitter followers to help Winfrey by suggesting some tough questions. 
 
 I am trying to anticipate some of “no holds barred” questions in Oprah’s Lance interview. How about some suggestions? #questionsforlance — joelindsey (@joelindsey) 9 Jan 13 
 
 That’s pretty good. RT @BBQ44 what did you tell your kids or will/have you? #questionsforlance — joelindsey (@joelindsey) 9 Jan 13 
 
 The complete CBS interview with the antidoping official is scheduled to be broadcast on Wednesday, during the premier of a new program, “60 Minutes Sports.” In one portion released on Tuesday, Tygart said it was “totally inappropriate” that Armstrong had donated about $100,000 to the International Cycling Union, a regulatory body involved in drug testing, during his career. He then revealed that someone representing Armstrong had offered to give the American antidoping agency more than $150,000 at some point in 2004. “It was a clear conflict of interest for Usada,” Tygart said. “We had no hesitation in rejecting that offer.” Pressed further about the amount of the proposed donation, Tygart said that it was about $250,000. 
 
 In another portion of the interview, broadcast on the CBS Evening News on Tuesday, Tygart said that Armstrong had tried to intimidate former teammates who had testified to a federal grand jury about his doping. The official also revealed that he personally had received death threats as a result of his investigation into the cancer survivor who was once a hero to millions.
– A new book claims that Sheryl Crow was with then-boyfriend Lance Armstrong during one of his secret blood transfusions—and that she ultimately snitched on him to federal investigators. The New York Daily News got an early look this week at Wheelmen by Wall Street Journal reporters Reed Albergotti and Vanessa O'Connell, and it recounts the Belgium incident. "Rather than try to hide the transfusion from her, Armstrong was completely open about it," the authors write. "He trusted that Crow would have no desire to tell the press or anyone else about the team's doping program. He explained that it was simply part of the sport—that all cyclists were doing the same thing." Five years after the couple broke up, however, the criminal probe against Armstrong was launched, and Crow spoke to investigators in 2011. The book says she was protected from prosecution by cooperating with the investigation.