Romney also recalls his first meeting with Welch, during a Utah visit in 1995, as "a personal brush with the Olympic committee that left me with a bad taste." At dinner, he said, Welch "glad-handed guests and played cutesy with the waitresses," who wore low-cut bustiers.

Later, they went to Welch's home high on the east bench, described as lovely but "a little ostentatious." Romney said that "(everything) about Tom seemed made for show. I suppose I attributed the same motives to the Utah Olympic effort, an opportunity to put on a show."

He described the invitations Welch extended to IOC members during the bid for all-expense paid trips to Utah as looking "like something you'd get in an e-mail spam. 'You have been identified as one of the four key individuals who must see our city if we are to win.' "

Romney said he met with "60 Minutes" journalist Mike Wallace in New York City about the program's plans to air an interview with Welch. Romney's comments weren't used in the final piece broadcast at the end of the Games, but he said his views were represented.

Donors and volunteers

A section of the book, "Touching Utah's Billionaires," tells who did and who didn't donate money to the bid effort. Efforts to solicit money from Jim Sorensen and Earl Holding, a "character" who worried about spoons being stolen from his hotels, yielded nothing.

But Ray Noorda, Alan Ashton and Jon Huntsman came through. As did the 23,000 volunteers at the Games, praised by Romney as the people who gave the most. He dedicates his book to "the managers, staff and volunteers who proved that dream can become reality."

There are harsh words for the U.S. Olympic Committee. "In almost every interaction we had had, the USOC had been indecisive, internally confused and political, and resistant to any change that might affect in the slightest their self-interest," Romney wrote.

He goes so far as to say the Colorado Springs-based organization is worse than the International Olympic Committee. Despite the media's portrayal of the IOC's extravagances, Romney said "the IOC was relatively restrained compared to the USOC."

USOC executives drove Cadillac Sevilles, received salaries as high as $600,000, and had "massive, elegantly appointed offices" in Salt Lake City, he said, even though they seldom spent more than a few days a month here.

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