SEOUL, South Korea -- Anita DeFrantz, the highest-ranking American on the International Olympic Committee, is widely credited with helping Salt Lake City get the 2002 Winter Games.
Yet she's been relatively untouched by the vote-buying scandal surrounding Salt Lake's Olympic bid that's cost at least 10 of her colleagues at the IOC their positions.DeFrantz continues to serve as an IOC vice president and as a member of the powerful management committee overseeing the 2002 Games for the Salt Lake Organizing Committee.
She's even touted by some as a successor to IOC President Juan Antonio Samaranch when his latest term ends in 2001, and, thanks to him, is playing a key role in his effort to reform the IOC.
But DeFrantz's answer to whether she knew about the more than $1 million in cash, gifts, scholarships and other inducements given to her fellow IOC members by Salt Lake bidders has not wavered.
"Absolutely not," DeFrantz told the Deseret News in a recent interview. But she did offer new details of what she did do to help Salt Lake City woo the votes of IOC members.
"It's really not a big deal," she said. "I did what I could do."
Just how far an IOC member should go to help a bid city is the latest issue raised by the scandal, which will again be before the IOC as its members meet here this week.
Australia's Phil Coles may be ousted for what he did on behalf of Sydney's successful bid for the 2000 Summer Games -- compiling personal information on his colleagues, including such details as their marital problems.
DeFrantz acknowledged that she provided the Salt Lake Bid Committee with information on the personal interests of other IOC members, details that were used to select gifts.
For example, DeFrantz said in one case she told bidders that an IOC member was interested in gardening. The unnamed member was presented with a book on the subject worth, she said, only about $30.
That was well within the $200 limit set by the IOC for gifts from bid cities. Those were the types of gifts DeFrantz said she knew about, not the lavish shopping sprees that got Salt Lake into trouble.
Information about IOC members
A former SLOC official forced out in the scandal, Dave Johnson, claimed in a New York Times interview last March that DeFrantz knew what was being done to court the votes of IOC members.
Johnson was quoted as saying DeFrantz would call him after an IOC member's visit "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."
DeFrantz said she did talk with Johnson after the visits but not about requests made by IOC members for cash, scholarships or other items that fell outside the gift-giving rules.
"I asked if the visit had gone well, if there had been any problems. I was not privy to their decisions to make those offers," she said. DeFrantz said she remembered asking about one particular member she declined to name.
"I'd certainly heard one of my colleagues had a drinking problem and I was deeply concerned how he fared in Salt Lake City," DeFrantz said, recalling she asked whether he'd over-indulged on the trip.
Johnson, who is considered a likely target of the FBI's ongoing criminal investigation into bid activities, declined to comment on DeFrantz when contacted last week.
DeFrantz estimated she came to Salt Lake City about a dozen times to accompany visiting IOC members on venue tours and at lunches and dinners hosted in their honor.
More important, DeFrantz said, was her interceding when a member of the IOC turned down an invitation by the bid committee to visit Salt Lake City. DeFrantz estimated she only helped out in "a handful" of cases.
"(They'd say), 'So-and-so wasn't willing to come on a trip, would you speak with them,' and I would say, 'Sure,' " DeFrantz said. She also said she introduced Salt Lake bidders at various IOC meetings.
A firm power base
Despite her involvement with Salt Lake City's bid, though, DeFrantz does not appear to have lost any of the power she's amassed during her 13 years on the IOC.
"Her star was pretty high before this. It just hasn't fallen," said Jim Easton, the other member of the IOC from the United States and a longtime friend of DeFrantz.
"I think she's maintained her status as one of the leaders of the IOC in this thing, especially in the United States," Easton said. "She's been a voice of reason."
Dick Pound, an IOC vice president from Canada who's considered the front-runner to succeed Samaranch, agreed that DeFrantz hasn't been hurt by the scandal.
"I think it's sort of swirled around her, but it hasn't really affected her either way," Pound said.
Always a Samaranch supporter, DeFrantz has remained loyal to the IOC president throughout the crisis caused by the scandal, even as he was being pressured to resign.
Samaranch has rewarded her with a prominent role in his effort to reform the IOC and trusted her to testify in his place at a congressional hearing into the scandal earlier this year.
"Anita is a critical force in our reform process. . . . The IOC is proud to have (her) as its representative to the United States," Samaranch said through a spokesman in response to Deseret News questions.
"She has been faced with some tough situations, but she has done well by sticking to what she believes in -- the good the IOC does for athletes around the world," Samaranch said.
He named DeFrantz to head up one of three committees looking at reforms. Her assignment? Figuring out the best way for the IOC to choose the sites of future Olympic Games.
A dossier subject
Another IOC assignment given to DeFrantz was part of a three-member panel that recommended the fate of Coles, the IOC member who put together personal information on his colleagues.
DeFrantz is among the IOC members who appear in Coles' dossiers. The information reportedly found its way into the hands of Salt Lake City's bid and was made public recently by Australian officials.
The secret files from Sydney describe DeFrantz as an "idealistic member (young)" and note "her priority for comfort and convenience of athletes."
The same document also suggests that she raised concerns about Sydney's offer to pay the transportation costs of athletes coming to Australia for the Games.
"Offer to pay transport costs = akin to bribe," the report states. It goes on to suggest that DeFrantz bought her own souvenirs while visiting -- books on Aboriginal language for her mother.
While he wouldn't talk specifics, SLOC Chairman Bob Garff said that's been his experience with DeFrantz. "She didn't ask for favors, want favors. (She) steered away from favors. I think all of those things add to her credibility."
Garff said he has "enormous respect" for DeFrantz. "The fact she has not been associated with the scandal or any of its tailings is an indication of her integrity, too," he said.
Accustomed to controversy
Controversy is nothing new to DeFrantz. She was a bronze medalist in rowing in the 1976 Summer Games in Montreal but made her name in the sports world for leading the fight against the boycott of the 1980 Summer Games in Moscow.
That attracted the attention of the IOC, and in 1986 she became not only the first American women but also the first black women in the world elected to what has long been seen as an "old boys club."
In 1992, she became the first female vice president of the IOC.
DeFrantz also serves on the U.S. Olympic Committee. In that role, though, she did not support Salt Lake City's bid to become the the U.S. candidate for the 1998 and 2002 Winter Games.
Instead, she backed Anchorage, Alaska, which had already tried and failed to win the votes of the IOC. DeFrantz had been hired by a consulting firm working with Anchorage to design an athletes village for the Alaska bid.
DeFrantz said she got the job because of her experience running one of the athlete housing sites at the 1984 Summer Games in Los Angeles. Anchorage, she said, was more appealing to IOC voters.
Salt Lake City, she recalls telling other members of the USOC before the 1989 vote, was a good place for athlete training facilities "with little chance of winning the bid."