Scandals: Doing Well by Doing Good

By David E. Thigpen

As president of the U.S. Olympic Committee, Robert Helmick had a job whose power and prestige were rivaled only by the nobility of its ideals: patriotism, sportsmanship and international understanding. For the past six years, the Des Moines lawyer and former water-polo star controlled a $75 million annual budget and headed a federation of 41 organizations that train and finance America's Olympic athletes.

But last week Helmick's reign ended abruptly amid reports that he had accepted payments from organizations seeking Olympic contracts. His sudden resignation from the unsalaried post shook the USOC and sapped public confidence during a crucial fund-raising period, only five months before the 1992 Winter Games begin in France.

According to newspaper reports, Helmick received at least $275,000 in consulting fees over several years from clients such as Turner Broadcasting, the U.S. Golf Federation and Saatchi & Saatchi advertising. Helmick admitted receiving the payments but insisted that he had done nothing wrong. "There was no conflict of interest," he said.

A longtime sports lawyer, Helmick claimed to have formed many of his business associations before he came to the USOC and maintained that he "accepted business only for valid business reasons." He said he was leaving the USOC to ensure that it would not be "paralyzed" by controversy. But William E. Simon, the former U.S. Treasury Secretary who was USOC president from 1981 to 1985, had a very different view. Helmick, he said, had committed an "impropriety" that made his resignation "necessary."

Helmick was not the only suspected Olympic profiteer. According to the U.S. Skiing federation, which trains the Olympic ski team, USOC executive director Harvey Schiller offered to augment the team's financial grants in exchange for ski passes and accepted free ski equipment for his personal use. Schiller denies this, saying he paid for all the equipment he received. But Howard Peterson, president and CEO of U.S. Skiing, also charged last week in a letter to the USOC that "individuals in the USOC have used their position to intimidate and threaten others who comment on the actions of the USOC."

Peterson attributes the USOC's alleged abuses to its near absolute power. "Some of the sports federations receive 90% of their funding from the USOC, and two-thirds take at least 50%," he says. "When you have such dominance from one source, a lot of people are unwilling to risk being open to retribution."

As for Helmick, his troubles are not yet over. The International Olympic Committee, of which he has been a member since 1985, said that it would also investigate his business deals and that his position there could be in jeopardy. Meanwhile, the executive committee of the USOC will meet this week to take up an urgent task: choosing a new president.