Congress Planning IOC Session

The influential U.S. Senate Commerce Committee, keen on reminding the International Olympic Committee that it might yet wield a potent financial stick, is making plans for another wide-ranging session on Capitol Hill.

Probable topics include the issue of Congress’ role in ensuring the IOC’s accountability for reforms it has pledged to enact in the wake of the Salt Lake City bribery scandal earlier this year, a Senate aide said. Also under consideration are the issues of doping and of the role for athletes in the IOC, the aide said, stressing that the agenda is far from final.

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), who chairs the Commerce Committee and who led a hearing in April that inquired into the Salt Lake scandal, committed to the autumn hearing in a meeting Wednesday with several former Olympians now organized as Toronto-based OATH, or Olympic Advocates Together Honorably.

On Thursday, the meeting was tentatively set for mid-October, a Senate aide said.

The April hearing came amid circulation of a bill that would hit the IOC in its Swiss bank accounts by redefining its tax-exempt status in the United States and limiting its chief sponsors’ Olympics-related tax deductions.

At the end of the April hearing, however, McCain announced that any far-reaching legislation would be deferred until the end of 1999.

He took his cue that day from former Sen. George Mitchell (D-Maine), who chaired a U.S. Olympic Committee inquiry into the scandal and who testified that it would be reasonable to take a wait-and-see approach.

Since then, McCain has received monthly briefings about the pace and structure of the IOC’s reform efforts, dubbed IOC 2000. Three working groups are examining a variety of issues, including the structure and membership of the Lausanne, Switzerland-based IOC and the way it selects cities to host the Summer and Winter Games.

By convening another Commerce Committee hearing, aides and others said, McCain does not intend to signal that he is dissatisfied with those reports.

Instead, said 1976 Olympic swimming gold-medalist John Naber, among those who met Wednesday with McCain, “He is very interested in making sure the IOC 2000 commission makes significant reforms to prevent anything like the ethical fiasco we’ve seen this year.”