But Romney's other agenda — buffing his own image for a political career — was never far from the surface, according to many former associates.

The man who was famous at Bain Capital for letting others take the credit suddenly was giving his permission for a series of Olympics promotional buttons bearing his own likeness, accompanied by slogans like "Hey, Mitt, we love you!" and "Are we there yet, Mitt?" There was even a superhero pin depicting Romney draped in an American flag.

His determination to present himself as a white knight came at a cost: Some colleagues now say he magnified the extent of the Olympics committee's fiscal distress, risked some possible conflicts of interest among board members and shunted aside other people whose work had been instrumental in promoting the Games.

"Mitt could have been a hero if he had just come in and been polite," said Sydney Fonnesbeck, a former Salt Lake City Council member and a longtime critic of Romney. "What turned me sour was his demand to get all the credit and ignore everybody who put in thousands and thousands of hours before he arrived."

That day in March 1999, the success of the Games was far from assured. Scanning the memorabilia in D'Alessandro's office, Romney sought inspiration from a signed copy of a memoir by Winston Churchill, the British statesman who epitomized resolve in the face of grave threats.

Taking over the Olympics would be Romney's personal crucible.

"He had done what he wanted to do in business and was looking to leapfrog into the world of public service," said Robert Garff, the chairman of the Salt Lake Organizing Committee, who has known Romney since childhood. "This was the thing he could do to propel himself into the national spotlight, which I believe was all part of his overarching plan of his life."

A tainted prize

Romney communicated his intention to take full command of the Olympics on his first day on the job in February 1999. A century and a half after his ancestors trudged through Emigration Canyon to help pioneer the valley as a land of the righteous, Romney arrived in a cheerless ballroom in a Salt Lake City hotel. Immediately, he raised a rhetorical scythe at the trustees of the scandal-tainted organizing committee.

"There is no justification for compromising integrity," Romney warned the 53-member board. "I will expect that if any of you casts a shadow on the Games, even where no wrong may have been done, you will stand immediately aside."