Moscow versus Los Angeles: the Nixon White House wages Cold War in the Olympic selection process

Abstract

In 1970 the Nixon Administration bribed members of the International Olympic Committee in an effort to bring the 1976 summer games to Los Angeles. These actions injected Cold War issues into the process of selecting Olympic host cities. This effort initiated a political confrontation with the Soviet Union, since Moscow was another of the candidate cities. Although weak and vulnerable to political assaults, the International Olympic movement's decentralized organizational nature made it difficult for the Nixon White House to bring the Olympics to Los Angeles. The administration learned from this failure and was more successful in offering more limited support to efforts to host the 1980 Winter Olympics.