Scandal Spreading To Nagano

Even before the Olympic games get under way, the choice of a host city is a competition all its own.

With a corruption scandal widening around Salt Lake City's bid to host the Winter Olympics, some are questioning whether Nagano organizers unfairly enticed the IOC to win the bid, reports CBS News Correspondent Barry Petersen.

The Olympic flame that was lit in Nagano was not the only fire there. Another fire burned 90 books of records on how the Japanese wined, dined, and won over the members of the International Olympic Committee in the early 1990s, especially the more than 60 who traveled to Nagano.

The look at Nagano comes in the midst of a widening corruption scandal sparked by Salt Lake City's bid to lure the winter Olympics wth hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash, scholarships, and gifts to IOC members and their relatives.

Samikazu Yamaguchi, a senior member of the Nagano bid committee who quietly ordered records burned in 1992, says they wanted details of their trips kept secret. He insists there was nothing to hide.

By burning the books, the Nagano bid committee comes out ahead on two points. First, it can keep claiming that everything it did was right. Second, those alleging wrongdoing will find it all but impossible to prove allegations, such as a charge that IOC members were treated to free department store shopping sprees.

However, there were plenty of freebies allowed by IOC rules, starting with first-class plane tickets to Japan.

IOC members and their wives stayed in lovely little resorts like the ones in the mountains above Nagano. They were given free hotel rooms, lavish dinners, and even geisha girls to pour the sake. No wonder, by some estimates, the Nagano bid committee spent as much as $26,000 per person entertaining them.

Then there were the gifts. Eisetsu Shiratori, a famous Japanese artist, gave IOC members prints of his works, only to hear later that some sold off his prints while still visiting in Japan.

On Tuesday, a Finnish member of the IOC resigned, the first member of the international committee to step down in the Salt Lake City Olympic scandal.

Former middle-distance runner Pirjo Haggman, 47, had been an IOC member since 1981, and was one of the first two women on the committee.

Reported By Barry Petersen