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Who's to blame is being sorted out by five separate investigations--the S.L.O.C.'s own; the U.S. Olympic Committee's, chaired by gadfly troubleshooter George Mitchell; the Justice Department's; a U.S. House of Representatives inquiry into whether laws prohibiting the bribing of foreign officials have been broken; and the I.O.C.'s, which could result in the resignation or expulsion of as many as nine of the body's 114 members, plus sanctions for four others. These reports, due to be issued during the next several weeks, will depict a system so systematically corrupt that it might easily have blinded the good folk of Salt Lake to reality. Whether the disclosures will be enough to deprive Salt Lake of the Games or topple the autocratic--some say dictatorial--18-year regime of I.O.C. head Juan Antonio Samaranch is doubtful. But the investigations will reveal certain things: that the leaders of S.L.O.C. were not present-day saints, that Samaranch is either delusionary or hypocritical to a Clintonesque degree, and that the relationship between the Olympic movement and the U.S. involves good measures of fear and loathing--fear that the money will go away, loathing for the other guy's values.
All the problems began in America--not in Salt Lake, but in Los Angeles. The 1976 Montreal Games had dutifully lost millions of dollars, and the 1980 Moscow Games, boycotted by the U.S., didn't make a ruble. The Winter Games, always staged in nice little Currier & Ives villages, had seldom turned a profit. Therefore, naturally, no sane city wanted to play host to the Games. Then, in 1984, Peter Ueberroth and his Los Angeles organizing committee put on a splashy, TV-friendly, penny-squeezing Olympics that netted $220 million. Suddenly suitors were turning handsprings before the I.O.C., each performing citius, altius, fortius than the last. Two cities had asked for the '84 Games, but in 1985 a dozen came begging for the '92 Winter Games, and six vied for the summer events. What they were willing to do, and what it all might lead to, was evident from the get-go. Brisbane flew lobsters, kiwi fruit and its mayor from Australia to East Berlin for a 1985 I.O.C. meeting, then hired a hotel staff from across the Wall to cater. The lunch tab was $1.9 million. Sofia's bidders, who had put out a meager $50,000 buffet, trudged glumly back to Bulgaria. (As if even Brisbane had a chance! The competition that season included Barcelona, Samaranch's hometown. Guess who won.)
The great skier Jean-Claude Killy had earlier helped Albertville, France, secure the rights to the '88 Winter Games, and remembers how quickly things were evolving. "We didn't offer trips and lodging. We gave them little gifts, souvenirs like Savoyard knives and pens," he says. "Then the stakes became much more considerable."