Gov. Mike Leavitt wants the first admission of what was done to get the 2002 Winter Games to come from Utah, not the International Olympic Committee headquarters in Switzerland.
So the governor is pushing for the Salt Lake Organizing Committee Board of Ethics to finish its investigation into the bribery scandal by the end of the week.The IOC is scheduled to release its findings to a worldwide audience on Sunday. Other investigations by the U.S. Olympic Committee and the federal government are ongoing.
"Doing it first and doing it thoroughly is the first step of the healing process," the governor's spokeswoman, Vicki Varela, told the Deseret News Monday.
"This community is the community that will host the Games. In order for that to be done successfully, this community has got to stare its own problems in the face," Varela said.
Leaders of the ethics board could not be reached for comment. The chairman, former Utah Supreme Court Chief Justice Gordon R. Hall, told the Deseret News last week that the board should be finished before its Feb. 11 deadline.
But Hall also said he did not want to release information about the investigation until it is completed. He said to do so would jeopardize the results.
A special meeting of the SLOC Board of Trustees had been scheduled for last Thursday but was canceled when ethics board members said they had nothing ready to report.
Leavitt dropped a hint about his preference in his State of the State address Monday night, promising Utahns they would hear a complete report on the allegations in "a short time."
The SLOC Board of Ethics operates independently and is apparently conducting its investigation without any outside help, even though the organizing committee offered to hire a law or accounting firm to assist.
"It's a huge undertaking," Varela said. But she said the SLOC Board of Ethics is doing more work than either the IOC or the USOC investigative commissions.
"We know that because, for example, Dick Pound (the IOC vice president in charge of the IOC investigation) was in town for 36 hours. The bulk of his time was spent interviewing the review board about their work," she said.
The governor heard an update on the progress of the ethics board earlier this month, during a series of meetings at the Governor's Mansion that led to the resignations of SLOC's two top officials.
SLOC Chief Executive Officer Frank Joklik and Senior Vice President of Games Dave Johnson resigned on Jan. 8. Joklik will continue to run the organizing committee until his replacement is named.
Leavitt was the first to acknowledge that investigators were looking into allegations that IOC members visiting Utah were provided with prostitutes, a story that has been widely reported.
Varela said the allegation has not been substantiated.
"Prostitution is not something the ethics review board had any substantive information on at this point," Varela said. "It is our understanding that it's never been found to have any substance."
In other developments Tuesday:
-- Officials of the U.S. Department of Justice have already interviewed more than a dozen individuals who were involved in helping Salt Lake City win the Olympics, the Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday.
A grand-jury subpoena has been issued to Stephanie Pate, who was former bid boss Tom Welch's secretary, the newspaper reported. Pate went to work for US WEST, a major sponsor of the 2002 Winter Games.
Pate's attorney, David Watkiss, told the newspaper that she will be interviewed by prosecutors in Salt Lake City Wednesday and may testify before a federal grand jury at a later date.
The attorney for another longtime member of the bid effort, Craig Peterson, declined to comment on whether his client had been issued a subpoena. "I am not a source of information," Jay Bullock told the Deseret News Tuesday.
-- Nagano, the Japan city that beat out Salt Lake City for the 1998 Winter Games, is now admitting to giving IOC President Juan Antonio Samaranch an expensive samurai sword during its bid.
The sword, presented to the IOC leader in 1991, is estimated to be worth between $9,000 and $19,000. Nagano officials had already acknowledged giving an unnamed IOC senior official a valuable painting by a local artist.
-- Australian Olympic officials sent a strongly worded message to the International Olympic Committee suggesting it clean up its act in the wake of corruption allegations.
The Associated Press reported IOC board member Kevan Gosper of Australia was told to convey the message by Sydney 2000 officials concerned about bribery allegations surrounding Salt Lake City's successful bid for the 2002 Winter Games.
Gosper said the officials agreed that the IOC must recover its image "so people can concentrate on the Sydney Games, which are important to us in Australia and important to the IOC itself and its image."
-- The director of the Cedar City Area Chamber of Commerce, Harry Brown, said he fears the bribery scandal could force organizers to seek state funding or put on a less than first-class Games.
"We can't allow this go into state funding," Brown said in a report by The Associated Press. "I'm real concerned that the Olympics remain a totally private enterprise."