DENVER — The Salt Lake Tribune is fighting the U.S. Olympic Committee's request to keep some information secret in a lawsuit filed by its former drug czar.
In a motion filed Monday in U.S. District Court in Denver, the newspaper charges that USOC's proposed protective order in Wade Exum's lawsuit "renders what should be public information inaccessible to the public and the Tribune."
The USOC filed a motion Nov. 22 asking the judge to permit the organization and Exum to designate any document it produced as confidential, protecting the documents from use outside of litigation. Exum only wants medical records to be categorized as confidential.
Exum, who served USOC's director of Drug Control Administration for nine years, sued the USOC in July, charging its leaders sabotaged the anti-drug battle it hired him to wage and discriminated against him because he is black. Exum also said the USOC evaded its responsibility to screen and discipline athletes for drugs in its quest to produce medal-winning competitors.
He had resigned a month before filing the suit.