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3 Quit Olympic Panel
on Ethics
In a widening rift within the United States Olympic
Committee over conflict of interest charges against its
chief executive, Lloyd D. Ward, three members of the
organization's ethics committee resigned yesterday. Their
action brings to five the number of officials who have
stepped down since Monday, when Mr. Ward was cleared of
committing ethical violations.
The ethics committee members who resigned yesterday said
they had lost confidence in the Olympic committee's ability
to enforce its ethics code, according to an Olympic
executive who had seen their resignation letters.
Mr. Ward, hired by the Olympic committee 15 months ago, was
accused of directing a staff member to help advance the
cause of a business run by his brother and a childhood
friend. He has since called that action an error in
judgment.
The resignations deepened the most serious crisis for the
Olympic committee since the Salt Lake City bidding scandal,
when more than $1 million in cash and other gifts were
provided to International Olympic Committee members in an
attempt to bring the 2002 Winter Games to Utah. In the
ensuing investigation, 10 members of the International
Olympic Committee were fired or asked to resign.
Moreover, the unrest comes only 19 months before the
organization sends its armada of athletes to Athens for the
2004 Summer Games and could hurt its effort to secure
sponsorships crucial to its success.
In the wake of the Salt Lake City scandal, a commission led
by former Senator George S. Mitchell found that the United
States Olympic Committee had failed to oversee the bidding
process properly. The ethics commission was established as
a result of the scandal.
On Monday, it presented its findings on Mr. Ward to the
organization's executive committee, which overwhelmingly
concurred with the ethics committee that Mr. Ward had not
violated the ethics code.
The turmoil in the organization led two United States
senators yesterday to say that the Olympic committee was
"struggling in the areas of management and governance" and
to seek a meeting with the organization's leaders by the
end of this month. One of them, Senator Ted Stevens,
Republican of Alaska, was the author of the Amateur Sports
Act of 1978, which gave the Olympic committee authority
over amateur sports in this country. Now, he said, it may
be time to revise the act.
Fifteen members of the executive committee said in a letter
yesterday that they agreed with the statements of Mr.
Stevens and another senator, Ben Nighthorse Campbell,
Republican of Colorado, and said the United States Olympic
Committee would meet with the senators Jan. 27 or 28.
"We felt it was important as a group to indicate we take
this matter very seriously," said Paul George, the
executive committee's vice president. "I think we need the
impetus they'll provide."
The lack of stable leadership is endemic at the committee.
Mr. Ward is its fourth chief executive since 1999, and
Marty Mankamyer became president last year after Sandra
Baldwin resigned for falsifying her résumé. Some members
of
the executive committee met by conference call Thursday
night to set in motion a plan to replace Ms. Mankamyer, an
Olympic committee official said.
Dick Pound, an International Olympic Committee member from
Canada who helped investigate the Salt Lake City scandal,
said, "The danger is if they don't get this put to bed
properly, they'll destroy the Olympic franchise in the
United States."
He added, "What ought to be the strongest national Olympic
committee in the world has had leadership crisis after
leadership crisis."
The turbulent week began when the executive committee met
Monday near Denver and agreed, on the recommendation of the
ethics panel, not to punish Mr. Ward. He had been accused
of directing a staff member to advance a $4.6 million
proposal from his brother's company, Energy Management
Technologies, to provide backup power for the Pan American
Games in the Dominican Republic in August. Ward did not
list his connection to his brother's company in a U.S.O.C.
disclosure form.
Brian Derwin, an executive committee member, resigned after
the 15-4 vote Monday. He said he felt that Mr. Ward had
clearly committed an ethical violation and that the
executive committee's motion to accept the ethics panel's
finding "did not address the underlying distrust and
dysfunction within the U.S.O.C."
On Wednesday, the Olympic committee's ethics compliance
officer, Patrick J. Rodgers, resigned and accused Kenneth
Duberstein, chairman of the ethics committee, of telling
him to find a way to make the Ward matter "go away." Mr.
Rodgers said Mr. Ward had clearly violated four provisions
of the organization's ethics code.
And yesterday, Edward Petry, Stephen Potts and John Kuelbs
resigned from the ethics committee. They did not return
telephone calls seeking comment.
Mr. Rodgers, who is friendly with the three, said, "They
believe that improper direction was given to the committee
by Duberstein." Reached at his office in Washington, Mr.
Duberstein declined to comment. On Thursday he called Mr.
Rodgers's accusations "poppycock."
Mr. Petry and Mr. Potts are experts in the field of
corporate ethics. Mr. Petry is the executive director of
the Ethics Officer Association, a trade group. From 1990 to
2000, Mr. Potts served as the director of the federal
Office of Government Ethics.
Mr. Kuelbs is a senior vice president of Teledyne
Technologies and was added to the ethics committee two
months ago.
A person familiar with the ethics committee's deliberations
said that the three former committee members signed off on
the decision to exonerate Mr. Ward. The person indicated
that at least two of the resignation letters had more to do
with a loss of faith in the U.S.O.C.'s commitment to
enforce its code of ethics than any deep conviction that
Mr. Ward should have been sanctioned.
The ethics panel is a standing committee of the Olympic
organization, but only 2 of its 10 members, Reyne
Quackenbush and Nicholas Peterson, who sit on the
organization's athletic advisory council, belong to the
organization's board of directors. The other eight are
independent. Mr. Quackenbush said, "I'm staying on the
committee."
Mr. Ward refused to comment directly on the ethics
committee resignations. But in a telephone interview
yesterday he said: "I have no insight as to why they did
what they did. It's an independent body. But I still feel
the way I felt. One, the decision of the executive
committee was fair and just, the due process was fair and
just and the outcome was fair and just."
Referring to the events of the past five days, Mr. Ward
said, "We should be about the business of sport, but we
have this sideshow going on and we need to bring it to an
end."
However, the scrutiny promised yesterday by Senators
Stevens and Campbell is not expected to bring peace to an
organization that craves stability but rarely displays it.
Mr. Ward and Ms. Mankamyer said they welcomed the interest
from Senators Stevens and Campbell. Mr. Ward said he
believed that the senators' intervention "could get all
these issues addressed and put to rest."
Ms. Mankamyer, who called erroneous a report that she had
called a meeting of U.S.O.C. vice presidents yesterday to
deal with the situation, said she was hoping to wait "for
the dust to settle and we can get our arms around the
facts."
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