A former chief of staff in the Salt Lake City mayor's office says he remembers the Olympic bid volunteer who tried to report corruption in the bid process as early as 1989 — but this is not the first time he's been asked about it.
"(I was asked) in the context of the federal (Olympic bribery) case," Mike Zuhl, who worked for then-Mayor Palmer DePaulis, told the Deseret News Friday but added he could not "divulge" anything else about an investigation.
Jack Turner, 45, now a video producer in Durango, Colo., said he gave Zuhl a report for the mayor in July 1989 that detailed irregularities in the bid process. It apparently is the earliest documentation of problems with Utah's Olympic bid.
The report was made public Thursday along with other information collected by the Utah Attorney General's Office in connection with its investigation of Salt Lake City's bid for the 2002 Winter Games.
That investigation essentially ended last July when bid leaders Tom Welch and Dave Johnson were indicted on federal fraud, conspiracy and racketeering charges in connection with the more than $1 million in cash and gifts given to International Olympic Committee members during the bid for the Games.
Zuhl said he remembers Turner and "vaguely recalls a report."
"He had concerns about the way the bid effort was being conducted, and he had concerns about the leadership of Tom Welch and Dave Johnson," Zuhl said. "I honestly cannot remember the substance of those concerns."
Zuhl said he doesn't recall taking any action on the report.
"I am sure (DePaulis and I) talked about it, but I can't remember what we did with the report," he said. "One concern was whether it was just a personal thing as opposed to something that warranted further investigation and a cause of concern."
Zuhl said he received the information in the context of knowing that Turner had had "some kind of falling out with Welch and Johnson."
DePaulis, now a state tax commissioner, declined to comment Friday, as did federal prosecutors. Defense attorneys for Welch and Johnson did not return calls.
Fred Ball, the former Salt Lake Area Chamber of Commerce leader who served on the bid committee, said Friday he didn't recall Turner "as being a real player. How much of this is sour grapes, I don't know."
A high-ranking Salt Lake bid official labeled Turner "a wannabe . . . he had talent in organizing events and was high energy, but he had no business acumen or necessarily any common sense."
The official, who declined to be named, said Turner was never told to bring a cross-country skiing race to Utah. "We had to bail him out because we didn't need to go belly up. . . . If it had failed, the bid committee would have taken the rap for it."
Turner said he ended up with a personal debt of more than $20,000 that took him five years to pay off after staging the World Cup competition on the Mountain Dell Golf Course next to I-80.
The event was intended to boost Salt Lake's bid to become the U.S. Olympic Committee's candidate for the 1998 and 2002 Winter Games. The USOC selected Salt Lake City over Anchorage, Alaska, in 1989.
The same official also said Turner was not present when Welch gave IOC President Juan Antonio Samaranch a gift. Turner said the exchange occurred at a brief meeting in a hotel during the 1988 Winter Games in Calgary, Canada.
"It was so embarrassing," Turner told the attorney general's investigator. "Samaranch was clearly annoyed. . . . He didn't even say thank you." Turner said he did not know what was given to the IOC president.
In a lengthy interview Friday, Turner told the Deseret News that he expected to be criticized once his name became public. "Truth is a great defense," he said. "But they got me once."
He acknowledged he had a falling out with Welch after the USOC's 1989 decision and has held onto a collection of letters, notes and other documents related to his days as a bid volunteer in addition to the report he gave to DePaulis.
After leaving the bid effort, Turner said he returned home to Colorado. He said he contacted the Utah Attorney General's Office about two years ago after hearing about the investigation. After being notified that no action would be taken, he said he felt discouraged.
Although he said he had no knowledge of the cash, gifts, trips and scholarships Welch and Johnson reportedly handed out according to the federal charges, Turner said he "wasn't surprised they did it. I was surprised it came out."
He described himself as naive. "I loved that project so much," Turner said of the effort to bring the Olympics to Utah. "Everybody says it was corrupt. But I can tell you just because there is corruption doesn't mean the only way you can win it is to be corrupt."
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