SALT LAKE CITY (AP) _ Salt Lake's Olympic bid leaders pleaded innocent Monday to charges they paid more than $1 million in cash and gifts to bring the 2002 Winter Games to Utah.
Bid chief Tom Welch and deputy Dave Johnson appeared relaxed and confident in U.S. District Court and said they were eager to tell their side of a story that has embarrassed and forced changes in the International Olympic Committee.
Magistrate Samuel Alba set an Oct. 16 trial date, but attorneys for Welch and Johnson said they would immediately move for a delay. They said it would take a year of collecting evidence before the trial could start.
Alba allowed Welch and Johnson to keep their passports over the objection of federal prosecutors.
The defendants will need the passports, their attorneys argued, to attend overseas depositions of witnesses in the Olympic scandal. Defense lawyers also were eager to examine the government's 400 boxes of evidence.
Welch and Johnson face a count of conspiracy, five counts of mail fraud, five counts of wire fraud and four counts of interstate travel in aid of racketeering. The charges carry a combined sentence of up to 75 years in prison.
"We did not do anything that violated the law. We did not do anything that other cities hadn't done," Welch said outside the federal courthouse. "We didn't do things that should embarrass this community. I think that not only will be vindicated and found not guilty, but history will put it in perspective."
Johnson said the defense will put on a case that implicates hundreds of Olympic players, Utah politicians and business leaders. Johnson also defended his part in the scandal, saying he saw nothing wrong with giving IOC members cash.
"You have to understand the context," Johnson said before his arraignment. He elaborated afterward.
"We were involved in a culture a lot of people don't understand. Most people haven't been out of this country, and there are people that live differently than we do and make decisions different than we do," Johnson said.
Welch, 55, was president of Salt Lake's bid committee and Johnson, 41, his vice president. They were specifically accused of disguising $1 million in illicit payments to influence 15 IOC members.
The men rejected plea-bargain offers and have maintained their innocence of any criminal wrongdoing. They are especially eager to rebut charges they concealed their dealings from Utah political and business figures on the board of trustees, and their lawyers are confident of acquittal.
Welch brushed aside a personal appeal by Mitt Romney, the new head of the Salt Lake Organizing Committee, to accept a plea deal to a single tax felony.
Within days, on July 20, Welch and Johnson were indicted by a federal grand jury on 15 felony conspiracy and fraud charges.
If the trial takes a full year to begin, it will come just as Salt Lake is gearing up for the 2002 Games. But the federal courthouse is expected to shut down any trials or hearings during the games.
Welch has made a last-minute change in lawyers, replacing defense attorney Tom Schaffer with Brigham Young University law professor Michael Goldsmith, once a New York organized-crime prosecutor. Goldsmith was brought in to buttress defense claims that the Justice Department had to stretch conspiracy and fraud statutes to fit the once-loose world of Olympic lobbying.
Welch's main criminal defender is William Taylor, a prominent Washington lawyer who represented Clinton administration staffers during the Whitewater investigation.
Utah Attorney General Jan Graham is expected Monday to announce the status of her inquiry into whether Welch or Johnson violated any state law. The federal indictment is partly based on an obscure Utah law against commercial bribery. Graham's chief deputy, Reed Richards, has said there was little point in pursuing the matter at the state level.
The money Welch and Johnson are alleged to have paid financed U.S. college educations for some of the IOC delegates' children. Other funds paid for first-class travel or covered extravagant gifts, including a golden retriever.
One defense strategy is to get now-banished IOC members to testify that the kind of lavish treatment doled out by Welch and Johnson was standard business inside the Olympic movement, not criminal bribery.
The defense also will argue that cash payments wired to IOC members were in many cases meant to help impoverished athletes in their countries, Johnson's attorney, Max Wheeler, said.
(Copyright 2000 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
