As is well known by now—not only by cyclists and triathletes, but by most of the Western World—Lance Armstrong stands accused of taking EPO during the 1999 Tour de France, the year he first stood atop the podium in Paris.

Is Lance guilty of taking EPO? I don't know. I also don't know whether George Bush is an alien or Pat Robertson the Antichrist. Some things you just can't know, notwithstanding grounds for suspicion.

What matters here is process. Twice in the last three years I was variously guilty of changing USA Triathlon's bylaws and helping in preventing a change in the bylaws, efforts I undertook because process trumps expediency.

So when an athlete gets accused of a crime in sport, fairly early on I am constrained to inquire about the nature of the accusation. Who is the accuser? What is the evidence? How was it gathered? Are there those who stand to gain by the accusation? And what is the response of the entities whose job it is to police our sport? If all those questions are answered to my satisfaction, then banish the athlete to purgatory or worse, and let's keep our sport clean. But, by God, let's make sure we prosecute our drug cheats properly, which we can only do by paying attention to process.

Against that backdrop, I'm stunned by the lack of inquiry by those who fashion themselves the vanguard in our fight against performance enhancing drugs in sport. Lance may be guilty and he may be clean, but there is one thing for sure: He is alone. Few or none in the machinery of sport are weighing in on the behalf of process, as one of its athletes twists in the wind.

Who's job is it to stand up for process? It is certainly USA Cycling's to speak up for Armstrong, because one of its own stands accused through evidence badly acquired. More so should USA Cycling be outraged because its French sister federation appears complicit. I say this because both the WADA-accredited French lab, Laboratoire National de Dépistage du Dopage, and the French cycling federation, each appear to have the information required to make this allegation. The former performed the test and leaked the results, the latter matched the result's ID number with the rider's name.

Yet there is not a word on USA Cycling's website as of this writing, niether by its CEO Gerard Bisceglia, nor by anyone else. Niether has USADA taken a stand on the side of process. Nor has the UCI, who governs the sport of cycling and apparently not very well in this case, if proper processes matter at all. Nor has the World Anti-Doping Agency.

Why break WADA's back over this, you might ask? After all, widespread acceptance of WADA's "Code" did not exist among sports federations until last year. WADA has correctly replied to Slowtwitch that it, "has no jurisdiction about this case," because the samples allegedly came from the 1999 Tour.

Here is WADA's problem. It is built upon the foundation of its Code. Virtually every sport, and every country under the IOC's banner, has adopted the Code. The Code is sporting's bible as to how doping controls are administered. WADA cannot afford to allow the Code to be piecemealed. To sit mute while its EPO test is being utilized without the controls WADA has set in place for its use is to water down the faith in such controls. This is not the time for WADA to punt.

Ask any doping lab and it'll tell you that there are two reasons you get rid of samples shortly after they're used. First, this is usually a rules requirement. Second, there is a storage problem. Freezing test after test, year after year, for cycling, track & field and 44 other sports, presents insurmountable logistical problems. So the samples are discarded weeks after their use.

This begs the question: Why are only some saved? And, what happened to them during the years intervening? If someone at the lab was willing to share the test results, what was the motivation? Same question for this person's eventual counterpart at the French cycling federation or Ministry of Sport.

Then we get to the test itself. Was the test conducted during 2000, or 2004? The question still seems unclear. If the latter (which seems likely the case), are we sure the test for EPO in urine has utility five years after the sample was taken? The French lab says yes. But at least two other labs say no. And there seems no scientific basis for claiming that the test is valid after the urine has been sitting for half a decade.

I'm not casting about for reasons to chip at the allegations against Armstrong. I'm saying that it's the process itself under attack. Drug testing as WADA describes it in the Code erodes as long as WADA does not come to its defence. WADA's Media Relations Manager, Frédéric Donzé, offers what seems tepid defense of the lab, saying, "They have no way, and WADA has no way as well, to match the sample with the name of an athlete." Yes, that's true. But only the lab can leak the results, and only the lab's management, and WADA, can decry the fact that such results were leaked. I find no evidence that either organization is angry or even chagrined at the lack of proper protocol followed.

WADA has worked hard to be taken seriously. Now it needs to take its own best practices seriously. WADA's chief, Dick Pound, has made many hard-nosed proclamations against those who don't abide by the rules. In the past he was always talked about athletes. Now it's the labs, the national governing bodies, the national Olympic committees, who appear not to be abiding by rules. It's time for Pound to stand up for process. Absent that, his silence may render his own organization crippled and eventually irrelevent.