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.
Some of the Secret Service's counterterror measures seem worthy of a James Bond movie. Securing a 2-mile ski run is trickier, for example, than securing the entrances to an ice-skating rink. But Secret Service agents-buttressed by special forces teams from the National Guard, Forest Service cops, and backcountry Park Service rangers-will patrol the frigid alpine venues 24 hours a day by snowmobile, on skis, and on snowshoes. Sharpshooters will be stationed on some mountaintops, and alpine observation teams will be equipped with infrared night-vision goggles and thermal imagery equipment that can detect the elevated body temperature of intruders.
To prevent aerial assault, F-16 aircraft will be on alert at nearby Hill Air Force Base, and U.S. Customs Service agents will patrol the skies in Black Hawk helicopters. Throughout the Olympics, Salt Lake City International Airport will be at the center of restricted airspace that extends more than 50 miles, and it will shut down during the opening and closing ceremonies, which expect to host more than 40,000 people. Gliders, crop-dusters, and radio remote-controlled aircraft will be banned from re stricted airspace. Anthrax precautions have been boosted, too. All mail will be inspected off site and screened for biohazards, and chemical and biological sensors have been added in and around venues.
Utah and Salt Lake provide several other unexpected deterrents to terrorist assault. The September 11 attacks caught virtually everyone off guard in New York and Washington, but Olympic planners have known for years the exact time and place that events will take place. "Terrorists depend on surprise and complacency, and they won't find it here," says Governor Leavitt. In fact, September 11 may provide a security dividend. "The public is much more ready to report suspicious activity to law enforcement now," says the UOPSC's Tubbs. And while Salt Lake competition venues are spread over a vast area, the winter games are actually much smaller than the summer games-the 2000 Sydney games, for example, had roughly four times as many events and athletes as Salt Lake.
Well prepared. The relatively remote location and modest size of Salt Lake City provide additional counterterror protections. "Geography gives me some encouragement,'' says Mitt Romney, president of the Salt Lake Organizing Committee. "You couldn't close down airspace on the East Coast in New York City or Atlanta area for an extended time like we will do here." If an attack does occur, Salt Lake is one of the best-prepared cities in the country to handle it, owing to its long history of training for possible contamination from chemical and biological weapons stored at nearby Army depots. Nine hospitals in the area are prepared to decontaminate victims of chemical attacks.
Olympic officials hope that peaceful protests and the many hoaxes the games inevitably attract don't distract from maintaining security. Salt Lake Mayor Rocky Anderson has limited protest demonstrations to eight designated areas during the games, and several groups have already applied for protest permits. "We don't want the real bad guy to get away while we are diverted dealing with an animal rights protest group," says the Secret Service's Camillo.
Still, Camillo and Governor Leavitt know that no one can guarantee an incident won't occur, no matter how much fencing goes up-and 3 miles of chain-link fence already ring the Olympic Village where athletes and officials will stay. "What would it say if the world, because of fear, chose not to meet as a civilized people?" asks Leavitt. After taking every reasonable precaution and more, he believes the games, and the show, must go on.
Securing the Winter Olympics
This year's Olympics in Salt Lake City, from February 8 to 24, will feature the most extensive security measures ever. Some 10,000 security personnel, costing $310 million, will be on hand. The federal government's share will be more than $230 million--more than twice the amount it spent on the much larger 1996 summer games in Atlanta.
SECURITY AT ALL VENUES
All sites will be secured by Secret Service agents and National Guard members.
Spectators must take shuttle buses or walk to the venues.
Spectators must pass through magnetometers and have their bags searched.
No large backpacks or food or drink will be allowed.
Delivery vehicles will be searched and screened before approaching sites.
All venues will have a 300-foot standoff zone for vehicles.
OLYMPIC SITES
(1) Ice Sheet at Ogden: ice curling
(2) Snowbasin ski area: downhill and slalom skiing
(3) Salt Lake Ice Center: figure and speed skating
(4) Rice-Eccles Olympic Stadium: opening and closing ceremonies
(5) Utah Olympic Oval: speed skating
(6) E Center: ice hockey
(7) Utah Olympic Park: bobsled, luge, skeleton, ski jump, Nordic skiing
(8) Deer Valley Resort: freestyle and slalom skiing
(9) Park City Mountain Resort: snowboarding, giant slalom skiing
(10) Soldier Hollow: Nordic, biathlon, and cross-country skiing
(11) Peaks Ice Arena: ice hockey
(12) Media Center: center for 9,000 accredited media members
SALT LAKE CITY INTL. AIRPORT
Armed National Guard members will be on duty in the airport, which will be the first in the nation to screen each checked bag for explosives. No flights will take off or land during opening and closing ceremonies.
HILL AIR FORCE BASE
F-16s will enforce a 52-mile-radius restricted flight zone over Salt Lake City and nine Olympic venues throughout the games.
OLYMPIC MEDALS PLAZA
The site of all medals ceremonies--to be held in the evening--and headline concerts. The plaza is in an eight-square-block area in downtown Salt Lake City surrounded by fencing and open only to pedestrians with tickets who pass through magnetometers.
OLYMPIC VILLAGE
Covering 70 acres of the University of Utah campus, the village will house 3,500 athletes and officials in 20 buildings. It is surrounded by 10-to-12-foot chain-link fences topped by motion detectors. Athletes and officials will have their own E-mail addresses and be encouraged to use the village's cybercenter instead of the mail.
[Map labels]
Salt Lake City
Great Salt Lake
Utah Lake
Provo
[Highway labels]
215, 15, 80, 84, 40, 189, 15
BY THE NUMBERS
A central command post will coordinate a vast security apparatus:
THE CHALLENGE
Spectators 1 million
Daily arrivals in Utah 70,000
Ticketed events 140
Medals events 70
Olympic athletes 2,500
Olympic officials 1,000
THE RESPONSE
Overall security : 10,000 federal, state, and local personnel, including more than 1,000 FBI agents and 2,000 members of the Secret Service.
National Guard members: 3,500 will man staff magnetometers, secure venue perimeters, and inspect vehicles.
Hazmat teams with chemical and biological sensors will monitor venues and surrounding areas.
Government inspectors at warehouses and off-site facilities will inspect mail, food, and other deliveries.
F-16s stationed 30 miles from Salt Lake City will be on alert throughout the games.
Black Hawk helicopters from the U.S. Customs Service will patrol the skies.
State Department and INS agents will be able to do instant background checks on foreign visitors.
National Park Service rangers will patrol slopes near ski events.
FEMA staff, nuclear response teams, and EMS personnel will handle any post-disaster response and casualties.
Hundreds of observation cameras will be located at and near competition sites, gathering places, and the Olympic Village.
Sharpshooters will be posted around and near venues.
Cipro: Thousands of doses of the antianthrax drug will be on hand.
Sources: Mountain High Maps, Salt Lake Organizing Committee, Utah Olympic Public Safety Command, U.S. Secret Service
Graphic by Rob Cady and Rod Little. Coordinated by John Englund--USN&WR
This story appears in the January 28, 2002 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.