Word: bidness
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...most audacious corporate comebacks in capitalist history, left Detroit with a historic legacy. But no sooner had the Chrysler chairman stepped down in 1992 than the wheels began to fall off. His third marriage disintegrated. His 1995 partnering with Las Vegas financier Kirk Kerkorian in an abortive bid to take over Chrysler ended in a fiasco of lawsuits, not to mention accusations of treachery and avarice by his former colleagues...
...just knew Nagano wasn't playing it straight," says Kim Warren, international relations coordinator for the Salt Lake Olympic bid committee in 1990 and '91. "You can't believe the crap they were pulling. We were giving out saltwater taffy and cowboy hats; they were giving out computers." She is harsh on Samaranch. "He had to fly in on a private jet. He had to stay in the presidential suite--it had to be the finest room in the city. There was a particular type of NordicTrak he works out on, so we had to get that piece of equipment...
...Warren implies, Salt Lake City played along. Maybe not happily, maybe grudgingly, but Salt Lake City played along. The bid committee found the limos and the NordicTrak. It arranged for the room...
...lost out again. So it upped the ante once more. Past officials of Salt Lake's 2002 bid committee now admit that the munificence extended toward I.O.C. members in the form of contributions, scholarships and health care was worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. Furthermore, the Salt Lake Tribune reported that the committee spent nearly $10,000 on six shotguns and rifles that went to Olympic officials, including Samaranch. (The president said it's O.K., because he doesn't vote for the host city. But even his deputy, I.O.C. vice president Dick Pound, has said Samaranch possesses "the loudest nonvote...
...former S.L.O.C. and bid-team members who have admitted to the payments have had a harder time admitting to wrongdoing. Their attitude is, "Quid pro quo? Nah--we're humanitarians." Thomas Welch, the leader of the bid and organizing committees who resigned after pleading no contest to a spousal-abuse charge in 1997, told the Salt Lake Tribune he and other boosters did nothing wrong in their pursuit of Olympic glory. "Never, not once in all that time, seven years, did an I.O.C. member offer a vote for money," he insisted. "I never offered anything to get anyone to vote...