The same IOC member who accused Salt Lake City of bribery in its bid for the 2002 Winter Games said Tuesday there was nothing wrong with former President Richard Nixon's newly revealed maneuvering to bring the Olympics to the United States in 1976.
"All governments support bidding cities. There's nothing unethical in that. . . . That is absolutely normal," Marc Hodler, a senior member of the International Olympic Committee, told the Deseret News from his home in Switzerland.Hodler also said he was not concerned that Nixon's dealings involved his national security adviser, Henry Kissinger, who was a leader of the IOC's recent efforts to reform the bidding process in the wake of the Salt Lake scandal.
"I see nothing wrong (with Kissinger's involvement)," Hodler said. "My feeling is definitely that the United States has been very correct and hasn't done more than other governments. I never heard of anything unethical. Of course you campaign."
Kissinger did not tell the IOC about his involvement with the 1976 bid when he was appointed to its highly publicized reform commission last year, IOC spokesman Franklin Servan-Schreiber said Tuesday from the organization's Swiss headquarters.
"I don't think it would have changed anything. As far as we're concerned, the contribution of Dr. Kissinger has been fundamental to the reform of the IOC," Servan-Schreiber said. "I don't think there is anything we read today that would make us question his contribution. . . . For us it has absolutely no bearing."
Kissinger was touted by the IOC as one of the most prominent of the reform commission's 82 members, along with former United Nations Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali, Xerox chairman Paul Allaire and NBC Sports chairman Dick Ebersol.
The panel was formed after Salt Lake bidders were accused of trying to buy the votes of IOC members with more than $1 million in cash, gifts, scholarships and trips. It was Hodler who first labeled Salt Lake's actions bribery.
Kissinger was out of town Tuesday and not immediately available for comment, according to his office in New York.
The Washington Post reported Monday that declassified papers from the Nixon administration made public last week detailed an "all-out" effort to get the 1976 Summer Games for the nation's bicentennial celebration.
The U.S. candidate, Los Angeles, was widely viewed as the favorite for those Games, until Moscow decided to bid. The 1976 Summer Games ended up going to Montreal. Moscow won the 1980 Summer Games and Los Angeles had to wait until 1984 to host the Olympics.
Kissinger and the State Department were ordered by the president to participate, according to the article, and a memo to Kissinger described a proposed deal to support Moscow's bid in 1980 if the Soviet government withdrew its candidacy for 1976.
Another memo to Kissinger cited by the newspaper suggested IOC members resent verbal pressure "though they are less squeamish about various forms of bribery which it would not, however, be appropriate for American ambassadors to dispense."
Two months before the 1970 vote by the IOC to select a 1976 Summer Games host city, Nixon wanted U.S. ambassadors in countries that favored Moscow's bid to be "put on notice they had better deliver these votes at the May IOC meeting or else," the article stated.
White House chief of staff H.R. Haldeman, who may be best known for his role in Watergate, told Kissinger in a handwritten note, "We've got to win this one -- don't let it get away from us," the newspaper reported.
The reason was stated in a White House paper: "We are now in a direct confrontation with the Soviet Union on the level of international politics -- a confrontation to determine international public appeal under the guise of non-politics -- the awarding to the Summer Olympic Games of 1976."
The State Department offered to provide coaches and training to Peruvian and Panamanian athletes, according to documents cited by the newspaper. Salt Lake bidders were criticized for doing the same.
However, the State Department did reject two proposals from the Los Angeles bid committee, to give each of the then 72 members of the IOC "pieces of moon rock" and for Nixon to write to each of the members seeking their vote.
According to the documents cited by the Washington Post, the State Department wanted the moon rocks reserved for heads of state because they are supposed to be seen "at least symbolically as gifts to all the people of a particular nation."
And the personal notes from Nixon were nixed because the State Department said "it can be construed as interference and a violation of one of the fundamental principles of the Olympic movement."
A memo to White House adviser John D. Ehrlichman, another Watergate figure, said "In the past, the federal government has . . . honored the Olympic ideal of not giving national aid to the bid of any city for the Games. The government has limited itself to little more than making informal contacts with (IOC members) through our embassies abroad."
You can reach Lisa Riley Roche by e-mail at lisa@desnews.com