Following a hearing Tuesday into the USOC ethics controversy called by Senate Commerce Committee Chairman John McCain, senators said they will move to reorganize the USOC leadership, which has been blamed for infighting that has tarnished its image.
McCain said the senators will hold a hearing within the next month to determine how to restructure the USOC leadership. The changes are expected to come by revising the Amateur Sports Act of 1978. They could shrink the 123-member board of directors to fewer than 20 and pare down the 21-person executive committee.
Also, Senator Ben Nighthorse Campbell said that he favoured some form of federal regulation of the Olympic Committee.
USOC Ethics Committee Chairman Ken Duberstein said the committee’s board of directors and 21-member ethics committee is “totally unwieldy”. He said the committee needs a streamlined board of 10 to 14 members and a CEO with the authority to act without constantly being questioned by the board of directors.
The conduct of the ethics committee also came under scrutiny, including whether Duberstein had a conflict of interest. The Duberstein Group, his consulting concern, lobbies the Senate on behalf of General Motors and the USOC’s chief executive Lloyd Ward is a member of G.M.’s board.
The ethics panel cited grave worries about media leaks regarding the investigation. Some accused USOC president Marty Mankamyer of inflating the allegations against Ward to drive him out of his post, which was denied by Mankamyer.
Meanwhile, Ward told the senators that he would resign if the USOC Board and executive committee asked him to, and he suggested that Mankamyer should stand for a similar vote of confidence.
At the witness table Ward, and the USOC’s former chief ethics officer Patrick Rodgers, engaged in a testy debate over whether Ward should have been more seriously penalized by the ethics committee and whether Rodgers made unauthorized forays into the electronics calendar kept in Ward’s computer.
