Did he or didn't he?
Mitt Romney said news reports Thursday that he used obscenities to criticize security personnel and transportation volunteers were inaccurate.
"I used the 'H-word.' It takes a lot of frustration to get me to say the 'H-word,' " he told the Deseret News.
The accusation came from Capt. Terry Shaw, a Weber County sheriff's deputy who is in charge of Olympic security at Snowbasin.
Several calls to Shaw Thursday were not returned.
Shaw reportedly said the Salt Lake Organizing Committee president was abusive during an incident at the resort Sunday and demanded an apology.
"That's absolutely, completely wrong," Romney said. "There were a lot of people who were very angry with the officers."
On Sunday, Romney told reporters he helped authorities unsnarl a traffic jam by waving through a bus that had been stopped because the passengers didn't have the proper paperwork.
Some 75 buses were waiting to get into the resort at that point for the men's downhill competition. More than 2,300 people were kept waiting as long as a half-hour.
But news reports have surfaced saying Romney stepped in and berated workers using foul language. Shaw said the SLOC boss owes the Snowbasin staff an apology.
Romney doesn't see any need to apologize and said he told the officer who was dealing with the bus causing the delay that he "wanted to know what the 'H' is going on here." He said he did not speak to other personnel.
"There's no question I was frustrated," he said.
Romney said he was not aware of any concern raised by authorities over his handling of another traffic-related problem the same day.
He stood on I-84, waving traffic past a Snowbasin exit, where a parking lot had filled.
But according to a Morgan County sheriff's report filed by deputy Kodi Taggart, Romney and three or four other men pulled up in a tan SUV and began directing traffic through the exit around Taggart's patrol car.
One motorist who Taggart tried to direct back onto the freeway told her "Mitt Romney himself told me to go this way," the report stated.
A fellow officer told Taggart the buses passing through the exit were "dirty," meaning the passengers had not been through any metal detectors, the report stated. Another officer said the buses should be allowed to go through the exit to pass through metal detectors at the Mountain Green park-and-ride lot.
Contributing: Deseret News staff writer Derek Jensen, The Associated Press
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