There were also issues of confidentiality and how to ultimately protect the identity of the person contacting the call center and to protect that information from a subpoena to testify or criminal investigation process.
Many of the witnesses who talked to USADA had originally been subpoenaed to testify in a federal criminal fraud investigation of Mr. Armstrong's former cycling team that was dropped earlier this year.
Although it's not a criminal hearing, Bounty owner Robert Hansen declined to testify, citing his Fifth Amendment constitutional protections against self-incrimination.
Most of the primary witnesses have refused to testify, in fear of increasing their exposure to criminal charges now that a federal task force of FBI agents and prosecutors is proceeding at a much slower pace to investigate Huang and his web of donors.
In dismissing the charges, Criminal District Judge Raymond Bigelow said three of the defendants were forced to testify before the grand jury that went on to indict them and the other four.
Others, no doubt, are being held for battlefield acts that could not be proved absent pulling U.S. troops out of combat so they could testify (as if they had been agents painstakingly conducting a criminal investigation rather than soldiers engaged in life-and-death hostilities).