IOC Still Seems as if It Has No Clue

While George Mitchell, the former Senate majority leader, was in New York on Monday, calling for the International Olympic Committee to reform itself, IOC Vice President Dick Pound was north of the border, demonstrating again why the IOC can’t.

The day began with the U.S. Olympic Committee’s special inquiry panel releasing its report on the Olympic bid selection process, a 53-page document that amounted, basically, to one more anti-IOC broadside.

The panel, headed by Mitchell, denounced the IOC for creating and tolerating a “culture of improper gift giving which affected every city bidding for the Olympic Games” and proposed “fundamental structural changes to increase its accountability to the Olympic movement and to the public,” among them:

* Term limits for IOC members, who would be elected by their respective countries, rather than appointed by IOC President Juan Antonio Samaranch.

* Regular independent audits of IOC finances, with the findings to be published at least annually.

* A ban on IOC members accepting any gifts of more than “nominal value.”

Hours later, Pound conducted a conference call from his Montreal office. The IOC’s chief in-house investigator acknowledged having had dinner Sunday with an IOC member implicated in the Salt Lake City scandal and shrugged off Samaranch’s recent remarks that media coverage of the scandal has been “exaggerated” and “has done disproportionate damage” to the IOC and the Olympic movement.

Sunday in Lausanne, Switzerland, Pound and the IOC’s investigative panel listened to Australian IOC member Phil Coles defend himself against charges that he had turned site-inspection trips to Salt Lake City into virtual expenses-paid vacations for himself and his family.

For roughly an hour, Coles responded to a list of alleged freebies, ranging from trips to the Super Bowl to ski excursions to free clothing and use of a condominium during December 1995--decked out with Christmas tree and all the appropriate trimmings, of course.

Then, inquisition concluded, Coles and Pound decided to dine together.

“Phillip and Michael Payne, our marketing director, and I did have dinner last night in Lausanne after the hearings,” Pound said. “We had a very nice dinner, thank you. But we didn’t talk about [the investigation].”

Asked if he found anything wrong with “the appropriateness” of such a gesture, Pound replied, “Absolutely not. Phillip and I go back to 1960, when we were on our respective countries’ Olympic teams. We are friends and colleagues. I see nothing improper about that.

“You know, it’s done all the time. In circuit court, you have the judges and the criminal bar and the defense bar having dinner all the time. And then the next day they go in and do their jobs with no difficulty at all. That’s what we’re doing.”

Pound was also asked about Samaranch’s remarks, published in several Spanish newspapers last weekend, about media criticism of the IOC.

“There’s probably a little human nature in all of this,” Pound replied. “We all have been taking it for the past couple months and even though you’re on the ropes and trying to deal with things, once in a while you throw out a jab just to let people know you’re alive.”

Pound conceded that Samaranch has tended to view the scandal from, shall we say, an Olympian distance.

“I think President Samaranch sees some of the issues from 30,000 feet,” Pound said, “whereas those of us who are in it on a daily basis, at least in my case, don’t have that luxury.

“I think he may well have been referring to the fact that far more attention is being paid to the IOC when in context with the European community, you’ve got an $8-billion problem each year of corruption that can’t be dealt with.

“That’s a matter of perspective that, I guess, is troublesome. But the IOC, notwithstanding all of that, is taking this very, very seriously.”

Pound said he hadn’t yet read the Mitchell Commission’s report but objected to some of the language when a reporter quoted passages from the document.

“I do not for a moment accept the broad brush stroke of ‘a culture of corruption,’ ” Pound said. “I have problems with [the use of the word] ‘improper.’

“You know, this is an international organization and it absorbs and embraces an awful lot of cultures where the giving of gifts is not only normal but it’s almost an essential part of life. . . . ‘Improper gift-giving’ is something that I think is perhaps a little too harsh to make as a general statement.”

Pound also disputed a published report quoting Jacques Rogge, a member of the IOC inquiry panel, as saying the panel had completed its investigation of 13 IOC members implicated in the Salt Lake City scandal and its recommendations are now “in the hands of the president.”

“There are no recommendations in the hands of the president because there are no recommendations yet,” Pound said. “They still have to be made. We’ve only talked about them. We’re working to a consensus and that’s the way we’ve been trying to work. But you don’t know whether you’ve got the consensus until somebody writes it up and you all look at it and say, ‘Yes, that’s really what I thought.’

“We’re going to be spending the next couple of days on a pretty urgent basis to try and get that written and circulated so that we can all sign off on it.”

Pound added that new information provided by the Salt Lake City ethics panel has required his inquiry group to examine “six or seven” additional cases along with the 13 ongoing cases.

IOC, reform thyself?

Guarding against the likelihood that the bluebloods in Lausanne can’t or won’t, U.S. politicians took further action Monday. The Senate Commerce Committee announced it would conduct hearings into the Salt Lake City scandal next month. The witness list and exact date have yet to be set, but the committee, headed by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), is expected to consider legislation that would hit the IOC where it hurts--stripping the organization of its tax-exempt status.