Russian Doping Blurs Innocence and Guilt, With Olympics Caught in Middle

Doug Mills/The New York Times

For the second time in four years, sports leaders are facing the question of whether to ban Russia and its athletes from the Olympics and other major competitions. And this time, less than a year before the Tokyo Games, there are loud and important voices arguing that there is no choice but to impose the harshest possible punishment.

The problem, those voices say, is not what antidoping officials know about Russia and its athletes. It is what they can never know.

Russia’s deletion and manipulation of thousands of drug-testing records have cast the credibility of hundreds of Russian athletes into doubt and raised uncomfortable questions about the integrity of next…