Security Blanket
The Secret Service leads the effort to protect 2,500 Olympic athletes and a million spectators
Utah Gov. Mike Leavitt was just winding up a heartbreaking tour of ground zero last October when he noticed something surprising. There, in the dirt, near the edge of the concrete and shattered steel from the fallen towers, was a lone acorn. Leavitt stooped to pick it up and dropped the acorn in the pocket of his blazer. Ever since, he has kept that acorn in his jacket and periodically rummages in his pocket to touch it anew. The acorn, says Leavitt, provides "a reminder that mankind has a capacity to rebound from tragedies like September 11."
The governor believes that the Winter Olympics to be staged in his state will provide that much-needed rebound. But his optimism that they will avoid being marred by terrorism is not universal. The Japanese have dropped their plan to lug 100 gas masks to Salt Lake City but, like several other delegations, will bring extra supplies of anthrax antibiotics. Picabo Street, the tenacious American Super G slalom champion, has confessed that she is just "as paranoid as everyone else" about a terrorist attack. The Australians won't even be opening their mail.
In the past, the Olympics have sometimes seemed tailor-made for terror. Ever since the 1972 summer games in Munich, when terrorists from the Palestinian group Black September killed 11 Israeli athletes and officials, Olympic planners have recognized that the internationally televised games could be a target. During the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, a backpack bomb thought to have been planted by survivalist Eric Rudolph detonated in nearby Centennial Olympic Park, killing one person and injuring 111 others.
Monitoring meals. This year the sheer size of the Olympics-70 medal events involving some 2,500 athletes, staged over 900 square miles-presents a huge challenge. The 17-day games will draw about 70,000 new arrivals a day to Utah. Food used to prepare 150,000 daily meals will have to be inspected. Just vetting the games' 18,000 volunteers against the government's terrorist watch list and criminal background checks is a daunting task.
Yet for all the games' vulnerability, security will be unprecedented, too. After the Atlanta games, President Clinton directed that the Olympics become a "national special security event," giving the Secret Service authority over the sites. Days ahead of an event, members of the Secret Service, National Guard, and chemical and biological weapons teams will sweep and secure Olympic sites. "The athletes will basically be in venues designed to protect the president," says Mark Camillo, the Secret Service's Olympic coordinator.
All told, the games will have about 10,000 federal, state, and local security personnel on hand, including some 2,000 Secret Service members, 4,000 members of the National Guard, and 1,000 FBI agents. Many of them will work in plain clothes to gather intelligence. Spectators will be bused or walk to sites and will follow a regimen similar to rigorous airport screening. Delivery trucks will be carefully inspected as well.
Unlike at the Atlanta games, the various federal, state, and local agencies providing security at the games will work together in one agency, the Utah Olympic Public Safety Command. Government personnel will monitor surveillance cameras and intelligence reports collectively at the UOPSC's Olympic coordination center, a room bedecked with a dozen large-screen televisions and 42 computers. David Tubbs, UOPSC's executive director, helped direct the FBI investigation of the Centennial Olympic Park bombing and recalls how disjointed security was. "The FBI command center and the Atlanta Police Department were miles apart," he says ruefully.
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