Dollars May Make IOC Use Sense

In his best-selling book last year, “The Death of Outrage,” former drug czar William J. Bennett vented about the lack of public outcry over the behavior in the oval office of one William J. Clinton.

Well, I’ve got good news for outrage fans such as Bennett. The International Olympic Committee is doing its best to revive it.

The latest efforts are contained in a 55-page report released Friday by the IOC commission assigned to conduct an internal investigation into corruption associated with Salt Lake City’s successful bid to become host city for the 2002 Winter Games.

It took that many words to tell us much of what we already knew, that at least 18 of the IOC’s 115 members when the investigation began, including four who resigned, took advantage of Salt Lake City’s $1-million-cash (and assorted other enticements) for-votes scheme.

More outrageous were the commission’s recommendations.

After calling for the expulsion of five members at the conclusion of the initial phase of the investigation in January, the commission added only one new name to its most wanted list.

That was Paul Wallwork, a heretofore undistinguished member from Samoa whose wife borrowed $30,000 from the Salt Lake City bid committee’s president, Tom Welch. Welch told an associate that the loan was repaid, although without interest.

Others, meantime, were punished according to a sliding scale of reprimands, including “most serious of warnings,” “serious warning” and “warning.” One can presume that those receiving the dreaded “most serious of warnings” will be grounded, while those seriously warned will have to go to bed without supper, and those merely warned will be assessed a timeout in the corner.

Particularly outrageous were the cases of two of the IOC’s most influential members, Kim Un Yong, an executive board member and former vice president from South Korea, and Phil Coles of Australia.

From the evidence presented, a jury might conclude that both were at least as guilty as Wallwork, maybe more so. Yet, the commission let them off with the most serious of warnings.

The commission at least was concerned enough with propriety to leave its file on Kim open pending the receipt of further evidence. The file on Coles, however, has been closed, although he was accused of accepting about $60,000 in travel expenses from the Salt Lake City bidders.

The commission’s chairman, IOC vice president Richard Pound of Canada, called Coles’ actions “ill advised,” but concluded that his crime was the inability to distinguish between hospitality and outright bribery.

Another conclusion could be that it helps to have friends in high places. After testifying before the commission, Coles went to dinner with Pound.

In reading the report, however, outrage was difficult to sustain because of the commission’s occasional inclusion of comic relief.

Such was the passage on Anani Matthia of Togo, who initially refused an unauthorized second trip to Salt Lake City in 1995. But the bidders were so persistent, enlisting the persuasive powers of Togo’s ambassador to the United States, that, ultimately, Matthia was powerless to refuse.

In other words, he didn’t want to break the rules, but the devils from Salt Lake City made him do it.

By extension, it can be argued that all IOC members were clean because, after all, they wouldn’t have taken bribes if bribes hadn’t been offered.

The IOC just doesn’t get it.

But it had better get it before the end of this week.

President Juan Antonio Samaranch has called an extraordinary session for Wednesday and Thursday at IOC headquarters in Lausanne, Switzerland. Remaining members will be asked not only to vote on the commission’s recommendations but also to implement serious reforms to prevent such a scandal from occurring again.

In interviews with the media at his home in Spain last month, Samaranch called the scandal “exaggerated” and said that it had done “disproportionate damage” to the Olympic movement.

There have been strong indications since, however, that Samaranch is taking the scandal very seriously. That could be because he has finally been convinced that the IOC’s sponsors are.

Sponsorship money is the mother’s milk of the Olympic movement. The 11 worldwide sponsors under contract will have contributed about half a billion dollars between the 1996 Winter Games in Nagano, Japan, and the 2000 Summer Games in Sydney, Australia.

Eight of those companies haven’t committed beyond 2000, and representatives of some of them said last week they might not unless they are convinced that the IOC is prepared to adopt the same ideals that it advocates.

They could not have been encouraged by the commission’s report Friday, a virtual whitewash, but all said they were less interested in seeing heads roll than in the IOC’s plans for the future.

“We want to see demonstrated reform,” UPS spokeswoman Susan Rosenberg said. “We expect them to lay down the framework, the priorities and how they’re going to move forward. We want them to polish the tarnish that exists.”

And if the IOC doesn’t do that?

“The ultimate contingency for us is that we can make the choice not to continue our sponsorship,” she said.

It’s possible that the IOC ran replace sponsors that don’t renew with others who are still willing to pay about $50 million over a four-year period for an association with the Olympic rings.

But no one in Lausanne is eager to take that chance. Salt Lake City already is slashing its budget and will face a crisis if it can’t count on anticipated sponsorship dollars between now and 2002.

“If we are not able to deliver what needs to be done at the session, then we’re facing a very, very serious situation,” the IOC’s marketing director, Michael Payne, told the Wall Street Journal last week.

It was clear that Samaranch also understands that when he took the unusual step last week of calling the chief executive officers of several sponsors. He told them he will take full responsibility for making sure the rings are polished.

No one should be surprised that he responded to the concerns of sponsors. This ugly episode has taught us one thing above all else. When money talks, the IOC listens.

Randy Harvey can be reached at his e-mail address: randy.harvey@latimes.com.