Denver ? Sometime next month, Dr. Wade Exum expects to open boxes of documents that will identify U.S. athletes who tested positive for performance-enhancing drugs but were not punished by the U.S. Olympic Committee.

Exum is reluctant to take the drastic step, but believes it might be necessary to change what he called a “rotten-to-the-core system.”

Exum, the director of the USOC’s Drug Control Administration for nine years before resigning in June 2000, claimed the USOC, in its quest to win medals, evaded its responsibility to discipline athletes for using banned substances. He also maintained that half of all athletes who tested positive for drugs were not punished.

One month after resigning from the USOC, Exum filed a lawsuit claiming USOC leaders hampered his anti-drug battle and denied him promotions because he is black.

The USOC has denied the allegations.

While Exum and the USOC await a trial date, the drug-testing documents could be made public within a week after a pretrial conference in Denver on Aug. 5.

Several news organizations, including The Associated Press and USA Today, had argued successfully against a USOC motion to seal the drug-test records.

“I’m not interested in burning athletes,” Exum said in an interview Friday. “It is not my intention to go out and just open boxes and let the media print anything they want.

“If the documents become public and the names are in there, they’re there. That is not my main objective. I don’t want to have names thrown around to get that system changed. My main objective is to have that system changed. That’s a rotten-to-the-core system.”

Exum said as many as 100 athletes tested positive each year during his time as the USOC’s drug czar.

“We probably tested anywhere from 3,000 to 5,000 athletes a year,” he said. “There was always a positive percentage of about 1 to 2 percent.”

The athletes tested positive for substances ranging from stimulants to steroids. Many of them, according to Exum, were not identified or sanctioned.

Asked if those athletes included medal winners in the Olympics during the 1990s, Exum said, “As far as I know, yes. Both Summer and Winter Games.”

Asked if they included names the public would recognize, he said, “Yes.”

Last week, USOC spokesman Mike Moran told Sports Illustrated that the committee denies “any cover-ups or misrepresentations on our part in the drug-testing procedure. This man asked us, through our attorneys, for $5.5 million to keep silent. We have nothing to hide.”

Exum was upset by Moran’s remarks.

He expects to be vindicated.

“My question is, why did they confiscate and sequester my records for more than a year and file motions for protective orders to hide the facts? What is it I’m supposed to keep quiet about?” he said.

“My lawyers met with their lawyers, and they asked what it would take for me to just go away. So maybe they have something to hide.

“I’ve always maintained the facts are in the records, and they may be made public someday. I think they will.”