Slippery slopes
Former ski chief says Salt Lake paid for USOC trips
Posted: Wednesday February 17, 1999 12:20 PM
NEW YORK (AP) -- Salt Lake City Olympic bidders paid for ski
trips for three U.S. Olympic Committee members, a former ski
official has told a panel investigating corruption in the games.
Howard Peterson, former executive director of the U.S. Skiing
Association, said Tuesday that he identified one of the members and
gave information on the other two to an investigation headed by
former Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell.
"I told them one name, the location of the trip and the
amount," Peterson said from his Utah home. "I told them two
others were involved."
Peterson said the trips occurred in the late 1980s, when Salt
Lake was trying to win the USOC's approval to bid internationally
for the 1998 Winter Games.
At the time, the USOC had a $25 limit on gifts from bid cities.
Peterson spoke as the Mitchell inquiry appeared to focus on
gifts Salt Lake City gave to USOC board members, site selectors and
staffers.
A letter from the USOC's outside lawyer, John Cook, asked
hundreds of committee representatives to detail any gifts they
received from bidders.
"Did you personally receive any gifts or financial advantages
from any United States bid city or any representatives of a bid
city that exceeded $25 in value?" the questionnaire said.
It then asked eight questions about any gift received, including
what it was, who gave it, where and when it was received, and
whether it was reported to the USOC executive director as required
by the rules.
Information gathered by Cook's sweep will be turned over to
Mitchell and the Justice Department, USOC spokesman Mike Moran said
Tuesday.
The Mitchell commission was appointed by the USOC in December
after it was found that Salt Lake City bidders provided almost a
half-million dollars in scholarships for sons and daughters of IOC
members.
That news has turned into the biggest scandal in Olympic
history, with nine IOC members expelled or resigning and at least
13 others under investigation by an internal task force.
Last week, a Salt Lake ethics panel detailed more than $1.2
million in cash, scholarships, travel, medical care and other
inducements to 24 IOC members during the city's successful bid for
the 2002 Winter Games.
The USOC picked Salt Lake City in 1989 to bid for the 1998
Winter Olympics. Those games went to Nagano, Japan, and Salt Lake
City automatically retained the U.S. designation, winning the 2002
Games in a landslide four years later.
Mitchell's panel is examining the USOC's role in that selection
and preparing recommendations to avoid a recurrence of any
wrongdoing it finds.
The letter from Cook was the first time the Mitchell commission,
which is expected to brief USOC leaders on Feb. 28 and release its
findings the next day, was known to be focusing on the USOC's
decade-old selection of Salt Lake City.
Peterson was initially reluctant to cooperate with the Mitchell
investigation, but said he changed his mind because he was
impressed with the work the inquiry appeared to be doing.
Copyright 2003 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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