Salt Lake Scandal Well Documented

In 1991, Tom Welch, head of Salt Lake City’s bid to win the Olympic Games, wrote a letter that looks now to be a key piece of evidence in his forthcoming trial on charges connected to the worst corruption scandal in Olympic history.

“Few experiences in my life, past or present, mean as much to me as the privilege I had to show you Salt Lake City and our people,” Welch wrote on May 1, 1991, to International Olympic Committee President Juan Antonio Samaranch.

“Please know,” Welch goes on to say in a comment later proved dead wrong but which may hit at the central issue of whether he ever had the criminal intent prosecutors must now prove, “neither this city nor I personally will ever do anything but that which will bring honor and credit to the Olympic movement.”

Welch’s letter, found in files maintained by his chief aide Dave Johnson, is among documents made available to The Times as part of an open-records request. The documents--in all, 10,000 pages, seven boxes’ worth--illuminate the rich material at issue in the federal court case against Welch and Johnson even as they provide an exclamation point to the bid scandal, which erupted two years ago.

The documents do not immediately appear to include a bombshell--nothing that would conclusively prove innocence or guilt in court.

Instead, the material makes clear once again how Salt Lake’s bid team tried for the 1998 Winter Games, losing to Nagano, Japan--and then, determined not to lose again, set out to land the 2002 Winter Games with a campaign that included more than $1 million in cash, gifts, scholarships and other inducements directed to IOC members or their relatives. In June 1995, led by Welch and Johnson, Salt Lake City won the 2002 Games.

The scandal prompted the ouster or resignations of 10 IOC members and led the IOC last year to enact a wide-ranging 50-point reform plan. U.S. prosecutors indicted Welch and Johnson in July on 15 felony counts, among them conspiracy and mail and wire fraud; settlement of the case appears unlikely and a trial may begin within months or even weeks or the Feb. 8, 2002, start of the Salt Lake Winter Games.

The documents made available Saturday were among some 200 boxes provided in 1999 to prosecutors by the Salt Lake Organizing Committee, or SLOC. In turn, prosecutors have shared the papers with defense lawyers as a normal pretrial information exchange--what attorneys call “discovery.”

“Nothing that we have seen from SLOC and in discovery suggests that [Welch and Johnson] did anything other than what they believed the bid committee expected them to do--and what they believed was necessary,” said Welch’s attorney, William Taylor. Prosecutors could not be located Saturday for comment.

The files released Saturday contain profiles, notes and correspondence on IOC members found in Johnson’s filing cabinets. They are what current SLOC President Mitt Romney was referring to when, in September, he told the IOC at a meeting in Sydney, Australia, that members of the so-called “Olympic family” ought to brace for the release of more potentially embarrassing documents linked to the Salt Lake bid.

Ireland’s Patrick Hickey, for instance, in a March 1991 letter to Welch labeled “strictly private and confidential,” says Italian Olympic officials “had some stories” about “certain IOC members,” unnamed, who “have entered into a contract with Nagano to vote for them for a fee of $100,000.” Hickey was made an IOC member in 1995; he is also-- as he was in 1991--president of Ireland’s Olympic committee.

In another example, an undated note, apparently from Anders Besseberg, head of the International Biathlon Union, instructs Johnson to buy a “Browning semi-automatic Bar II rifle with Boss-system in cal .338 WM for me” and to write a “small letter that this is a gift from SLOC to the president IBU.” The letter does not contain last names; it is addressed to “David,” signed “Anders” and was found in Johnson’s “B”-letter files.

It has long been known that Salt Lake bidders gave Samaranch at least three firearms--worth thousands of dollars--made by Browning Arms of Mountain Green, Utah, but the documents bolster Samaranch’s long-held contention that he did not ask for any gifts or favors from the Salt Lake bid team.

In a May 16, 1991, letter to Welch, Samaranch acknowledges the wish of those in Salt Lake to present a gift to his wife, Bibis, who was also due to visit Utah. “Although we appreciate very much your kind gesture and understand your warm wish to extend this special welcome,” Samaranch says, “we would both prefer that no gifts be offered.”

Romney’s September comments in Sydney prompted open-records requests from The Times, the Salt Lake Tribune and the Associated Press. SLOC’s policies make all of its records available, though some material--phone numbers, medical records and school transcripts--is edited out; it took SLOC lawyers and staff 184 hours spread over two months--at a cost of $11,000--to sift through the seven boxes with a black pen before making the papers available to The Times, the Tribune and the AP.

It remains unclear, SLOC officials said Saturday, what details could be found in the other 190-plus boxes--whether, for instance, anyone but Johnson kept extensive files on IOC members.

Romney said Saturday he hoped SLOC staff, trying to maintain focus on preparing for the Games, would not be forced to respond to a costly and time-draining request to go through each box: “I am pleased that I think this chapter is over. The [seven boxes of] documents are now available to the public and now the focus turns on Tom and Dave and the Justice Department.”

The documents released Saturday underscore the lawyers’ adage never to put anything in writing that you wouldn’t want to someday see printed in the newspaper--or produced in court.

Welch, for instance, trying to flatter influential Canadian IOC member Dick Pound, assures Pound in a 1990 letter, “I fully anticipate you will be president of the International Olympic Committee and will welcome the world to the 1998 Olympic Winter Games.”

In a 1992 fax sent to IOC member Rene Essomba of Cameroon, Welch authorizes Essomba to cash in an air ticket SLOC had bought for him the year before--to “allow you to hold [the cash] for a future visit to Salt Lake City.” Essomba died in 1998, and it was not clear from the documents whether he used the cash for a ticket--or merely kept the money.

In an apparent draft of a September 1991 letter to African IOC member Jean-Claude Ganga, Welch declares that “there is not a single issue more important” than the support of African members--some of whose children, it turned out, were the beneficiaries of the scholarships and other inducements.

Ganga was among the 10 IOC members who were kicked out or resigned because of the scandal. He accepted more than $200,000 in cash, medical care and travel expenses. He and Welch also formed an investment partnership, according to a report issued in February 1999, by the SLOC ethics board.

In the revised letter on bid committee stationery that though undated is seemingly the one actually sent to Ganga, Welch says “the most important thing” is “to make sure that I have your confidence and support. I never want to let anything undermine our personal relationship.”