These were some of the words and phrases tossed around during Tuesday’s contentious, three-hour Senate Commerce Committee hearing on the crisis of ethics, leadership and management within the U.S. Olympic Committee:
Scandal. Vendetta. Sordid mess. Dysfunctional (at least a dozen times). Abuse of position. Lousy. Resent the implication. Half-truths, misrepresentations and innuendoes. Mob mentality. Pattern of conflict of interest. Bloated bureaucracy. Personal attacks. Devious.
Anyone listening would have thought the Olympic motto of higher, stronger, faster, had been changed to lower, viler, nastier.
“Scandal seems to follow the USOC like dogs follow a meat wagon,” Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) said.
When the hearing full of barbed exchanges between principals in the current mess and pointed questions from Senate Commerce Chairman John McCain (R-Ariz.) and five Senate colleagues had ended, the only thing certain was that Congress will tell the USOC how to clean up its act and then make sure it happens. That cleanup won’t be easy, given how much mudslinging occurred even in front of the senators.
“For 20 years I have opposed federal oversight of USOC decision-making, but it is now time to rethink that position,” Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell (R-Colo.) said. “The federal government provides billions in indirect support for international sports activities in the United States.”
There were calls for an independent commission to restructure the USOC and talk of another Senate hearing in two weeks. Congress can revoke the USOC’s charter.
“This committee has a big job to drain the swamp over at the USOC,” said Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska), who helped draft the 1978 federal legislation that made the USOC the national governing body for all Olympic matters.
Yet the immediate issues that have caused the turmoil were far from being resolved.
That leaves the organization to face weeks–or months–of more bitter turmoil over a rift made public by the handling of allegations of ethical improprieties by Lloyd Ward, the USOC’s chief executive.
Ward is locked in a personality clash with USOC President Marty Mankamyer, whom the five USOC vice presidents and two other executive committee members have asked to resign. They charged her with trying to undermine Ward by manipulating the investigation into his actions.
“I hope none of you at this table will have to work together in the future. It won’t be a pretty sight,” Sen. John Breaux (D-La.) said.
He was referring to Mankamyer, Ward, former USOC ethics compliance officer Pat Rodgers and USOC executive committee member Rachel Godino, all of whom testified Tuesday.
At the end of the hearing, Ward proposed the impasse could be broken by his offering to resign if the executive committee and board of directors called for it. He said Mankamyer should do the same.
“If they want one of us or both to go, it should happen,” Ward said.
The 21-member executive committee meets Feb. 8-9 in Chicago, when there likely will be an attempt to ask the 123-member board of directors to force Mankamyer out. The next board of directors meeting is April 10-12.
“I think reasonable people can come together and find a solution that will benefit our athletes,” Mankamyer said after the hearing. “It seems to me this is not the time to have any more change.”
The USOC has had three presidents and four CEOs since 2000.
Asked by McCain why she thought seven USOC executive committee members had called for her resignation, Mankamyer said, “If I were removed, one of the seven would take my place. I think it was sort of a mob mentality.”
Although he did not mention it at the hearing, Ward said in his prepared statement he recently refused an offer to “walk away from all of this emotional turmoil with a very attractive settlement if I would simply go quietly.”
A USOC ethics committee report said Ward had created “the appearance of a conflict of interest” by asking a staffer to help secure an Olympic-related, $4.6 million contract for a company where Ward’s brother was president. The deal did not go through.
Acting on that report at a Jan. 13 meeting, the USOC executive committee effectively passed the buck by deciding the only sanction Ward would face was a possible reduction in his annual performance bonus.
“[The executive committee] punting on this issue seems to me to be sending a lousy ethical message,” Wyden said.
Two-thirds of Tuesday’s hearing involved questions about the investigation into Ward’s behavior, the rest on the overriding issue of how the USOC organizational structure has left openings for chronic friction between volunteers like Mankamyer and paid staff like Ward.
“We thought we had created a system that would work,” Stevens said. “Now it is clear to me something in that system has failed.”
Part of the system is an allegedly independent, ethics oversight committee, from which three members resigned after Ward was not cited for violating the USOC code of ethics.
The ethics committee chairman, Kenneth Duberstein, was questioned about his apparent conflict of interest in the case. Duberstein is a paid lobbyist for General Motors, a USOC sponsor, and Ward sits on the GM board of directors.
“I believe there was no conflict,” Duberstein testified in his first public comment on the matter. “We have been a lobbyist for General Motors since 1989. I was generally aware in 2000 or 2001 Mr. Ward was on the board. We have no business dealings with the board of directors.”
Ward also is a member of GM’s public policy committee, which deals with issues involving lobbyists.
“There has been one ethical misstep after another,” Wyden said.
“The [USOC’s] dysfunctional structure makes people do bad things,” Duberstein replied.
