DeFrantz Denies Part in Scandal

Anita DeFrantz, an International Olympic Committee vice president, denied Thursday that she was aware of the apparent buying and selling of votes during Salt Lake City’s successful campaign to become the host city for the 2002 Winter Games.

Asked if she had ever discussed corruption involving bid committee officials or IOC members with officials from the Salt Lake City bid, DeFrantz said, “God, no.”

DeFrantz, president of the Amateur Athletic Foundation in Los Angeles, was responding to an allegation in Thursday’s New York Times by former Salt Lake City bid committee vice president Dave Johnson.

Johnson, who resigned from the organizing committee in January after the bribery scandal began to unfold, told the newspaper that DeFrantz knew “everything” about Salt Lake City’s efforts, including cash payments and gifts to IOC members and scholarships for some of their children.

Thirty IOC members, more than a quarter of the members, have been implicated in the scandal. Four members have resigned and IOC President Juan Antonio Samaranch has summoned members to an extraordinary session next week to consider the expulsion of several others as well as reforms in the movement.

“From 1992 to 1995, every time we had an IOC member visit Salt Lake, she either flew to Salt Lake or during their visit would talk to them on the telephone,” Johnson said of DeFrantz. “She would call and ask, ‘Was he good or was he bad?’ She wanted to know if someone had asked us to do something that would put us in a difficult position.”

If the IOC member had asked for favors, Johnson said DeFrantz would respond, “ ‘That’s not good,’ or something like that. She didn’t say, ‘Don’t do it.’ ”

DeFrantz acknowledged the contact with her IOC colleagues during their trips to Salt Lake City and said that she routinely checked with Johnson afterward for his opinion on how the visits had gone. But she said that the subject of unethical behavior on the part of IOC members or bid committee officials had never been broached.

“It seems that history is being revised,” she said. “Dave Johnson never discussed what was up with me. Nor did Tom [Welch, the former bid committee president].

“I have never and I would never mortgage the Olympic movement for a bid city. The Olympic movement is too important to too many people.”

Johnson could not be reached for comment Thursday and his lawyer, Max Wheeler, did not return a phone call to his office.

DeFrantz, an Olympic rowing bronze medalist in 1976 and IOC member since ‘86, has been mentioned as a possible candidate to succeed Juan Antonio Samaranch as IOC president when his fourth term expires in 2001. She has not been linked to the scandal in any of the five investigations that have been completed. Another investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice is ongoing.

A spokesman for the Salt Lake Organizing Committee, Frank Zang, said Thursday that he had no knowledge about whether Johnson told an independent ethics committee investigating the scandal for the SLOC about his alleged conversations with DeFrantz.

As for $8,000 in expenses spent on DeFrantz revealed in an SLOC spread sheet, she said that covered airline tickets for her numerous visits to Salt Lake City.

“Anything they found that was inappropriate would have been documented,” Zang said.

DeFrantz was not mentioned in the 300-page report other than in a list of persons the committee interviewed.

Johnson did not cooperate with the independent committee investigating on behalf of the U.S. Olympic Committee and chaired by former Sen. George Mitchell. But one committee member, who did not want to be identified, said he was aware through a third party of Johnson’s allegations against DeFrantz.

DeFrantz said a lawyer for the committee asked her about them. They were not mentioned in the Mitchell Commission report.

“If you look at the people involved, you’ve got the No. 1 or No. 2 bad guy on the one hand and one of the most influential, respected IOC members on the other,” the committee member said.

Looking ahead to next week’s meetings at IOC headquarters in Lausanne, Switzerland, DeFrantz said she received a letter Wednesday that Samaranch wrote to all IOC members.

“He stressed the importance of the meetings and the difficult decisions we will have to make,” she said. “But he said that we have to be prepared to make them on behalf of the Olympic movement.”

In an interview appearing with an Italian sports newspaper, Gazzetta dello Sport, Samaranch said he will move to form a panel of influential non-IOC members to help redesign the IOC.

According to the newspaper, Henry Kissinger, former U.S. secretary of state, has been asked to serve. It was unclear from the report whether he has accepted