Marion Jones glances at the scoreboard after placing fifth in the 100m final in Sacramento on Saturday. She timed a modest 11.14 seconds

They assume the identity of innocents the way Frank Abagnale Jr shrugged in the brass-buttoned uniform of a Pan Am pilot; they slip into the skin of martyrs the way he once passed himself off as a doctor. Abagnale was a young con artist and expert forger with a sweet disposition who cashed cheques to become a millionaire while confounding the FBI agent Carl Hanratty.

Method athletes plead phoney innocence with Brando’s depth of emotion as they keep their endorsement cheques coming while eluding officials from the US Anti-Doping Agency.

To analyse his thrill seeker’s mentality, Abagnale once explained to Hollywood reporters: “I was always willing to take it to the next level. Could I get away with it?”

To cloak a drug test that once disclosed a banned stimulant in her system, Kelli White emoted, with tears as her props, “I know that I did nothing wrong and sought no advantage.”

Once nabbed, the act ended for both White and Abagnale. Each went over to the other side as cheats turned spooks, ready to hand over the code secrets behind the philosophy of deception, all in scenarios straight from Abagnale’s autobiography-turned-movie ‘Catch Me if You Can.’

For months Marion Jones has been wind-aided in her efforts to proclaim her innocence, employing the biggest names in political spin to decry the way the anti-doping agency snoops have been nosing around her BALCO love connections. Although the reach of BALCO has touched her ex-husband, C. J. Hunter, and her current beau, Tim Montgomery, Jones can’t seem to fathom why her associations — including those with her tainted coaching choices of the past — would make her dubious.

Her overzealous PR flaks may indicate otherwise with their curious protest-too-loud strategy, but Marion hasn’t been charged with anything, yet. She is not among those on the BALCO perp walk. For now, the anti-doping agency’s list of charged drug cheats includes the track stars Alvin Harrison, Chryste Gaines, Michelle Collins, Regina Jacobs and Montgomery.

And yet, one, two or all of the accused may end up as proud members of the US Olympic team, with them probably convinced they belong even if there is a potion percolating in their bloodstream.

“Rationalization is essential in cases like these,” the head of the Josephson Institute of Ethics in Los Angeles, Michael Josephson, who has worked with elite athletes, said when reached by phone on Friday. “These people need to think they’re good people.

“Insiders in the sport construct an inner world. And in that world, they say to themselves, ‘This is what you have to do to perform.’ They don’t view it as cheating. And inherent in this whole process is a pre-decision to lie about it: I have asthma, a sleep disorder; it was a tainted supplement, and so on.”

It’s popular to say this denial strategy is in lockstep with the art of American survival as seen through the prism of television’s conga line of backbiting, takedown reality shows. And it’s easy to fold an athlete’s fatal flaws into a culture in which there is a shrinking credibility of the words, “I’m innocent,” uttered by every executive in handcuffs.

“What we saw in Enron was accounting on steroids,” Josephson said.

Now White is one of the good cops after admitting in May that she took the hard stuff — like undetectable steroids and blood-boosting agents. White did not fail a conventional steroids test for these substances, but when the anti-doping agency showed her documented evidence, she did the unthinkable: She confessed.

There was a plea deal involved for leniency. Instead of facing a lifetime ban, she received a two-year suspension, but her job as an informant came after lying via rationalisation grew wearisome.

Unfortunately, there are other athletes — some likely on the track right now — who have more mental stamina than White for their version of ‘Catch Me if You Can.’ Somewhere, there is probably a dirty syringe with a drug for mental endurance.