Terror at the Olympics
"The games will go on." With dawn still just a promise, the words sought bravely to reassure, but there was about them an air of banked hope, of hollowness. A few miles away from the Olympic Village, two people lay dead and doctors struggled over dozens more, all victims of a twisted mind whose enduring contribution to the world was a clumsy device stuffed with a few handfuls of explosives -- a simpleton's creation that nevertheless managed to still the fevered celebration of the Olympic Games and cause a nation and its guests to wonder what strange evil had come suddenly among us. And so the games shall go on, as the International Olympic Committee's Francois Carrard vowed -- but what kind of games? True, canceling a single event would amount to concession to the coward or cowards who deposited the anonymous leather satchel with its deadly contents in Centennial Olympic Park. But carrying on seemed a daunting prospect. Thanks to grace, good fortune and some very alert and courageous police officers, the number of dead and injured was not much higher. Tragic as the actual number is, however, the bomb's shattering effect had little to do with numbers. Like nearly every act of terrorism, the bomb was a totem, a dark reminder of a kind of hatred so futile and unfocused that its possessor cares little or not at all about the identities of its victims--in President Clinton's words, "an act of cowardice that stands in sharp contrast to the courage of our Olympic athletes." The dark side. Sadly, the images we will recall from Atlanta will not be only those of elegant gymnasts or spectacular swimmers. We will also have the sinister satchel, the damaged bodies in the dark, the tearful moment of silence, the half-staff flags for the duration of the games. If they are not quite so chilling as the images of the silhouetted gunmen of Munich in 1972, they are not at all what Atlanta's proud city fathers had in mind when the glittering opening ceremonies began just over a week ago. Coordinating closely with state and federal officials, Atlanta had mounted a massive $303 million security operation, said to be the largest for a peacetime event in the United States. With more than 30,000 police officers, private security guards, military personnel and special agents from the FBI and the Treasury Department's Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, it seemed as if almost nothing could go wrong. And yet, days before the bomb blast, an armed man somehow found his way into the building where President Clinton was to view the opening ceremonies just a few hours later. Security guards identified the man, and he was removed without incident. But after the explosion, visitors, athletes and journalists told of security procedures that were less than rigid at some of the 40 Olympic venues scattered across Atlanta and the surrounding area. Still, the bomb exploded outside the heavily guarded venues in the "open" area of Centennial Park, a kind of giant mosh pit where thousands, including those who couldn't find or afford tickets to the hundreds of events, jammed themselves in among a jumble of snake charmers, tattoo parlors, beer tents and bungee-jumping rides. Day and night, the place was packed, and it had a kind of surreal quality about it, with bikini-clad girls mixed in with fathers pushing strollers, adolescents frolicking in the Olympic fountain and elderly foreign visitors doing their best to make sense of the scene. In such an environment, it was clearly a fatuous hope to guarantee security, but after the explosion, authorities in Atlanta redoubled their efforts to do so. Unattended bags. The moment of the explosion seemed every bit as surreal as the environment in which it occurred. Shortly before 1:25 on Saturday morning, Centennial Park was still teeming with people, many listening to the funk band Jack Mack and the Heart Attack. A tussle among some adolescents near a tower containing broadcast equipment brought a police officer within minutes. After he broke up the disturbance, the officer noticed an unattended satchel on the ground next to a bench adjacent to the tower and alerted other security officers. They quickly determined that the package was suspicious and began moving people away. The procedure was in keeping with their training. For the first full week of the Olympics, security personnel seized and destroyed more than 100 unattended bags and packages, none of which contained bombs. As the security team was moving the people back from the tower and the unattended satchel, the bomb inside exploded with a cracking roar. Melih Uzunyol, a 38-year-oldtelevision cameraman, had been summoned to film the security operation. A father of two with a history of heart trouble, he went into cardiac arrest within seconds of the blast, and paramedics were unable to revive him. Just a few yards away, a grandmother listening to the music with her daughter, son-in-law and their children was struck in the back by several shards of shrapnel. Elsewhere people lay dazed and bleeding, some of them the police and security officers who had tried to move people away from the tower. James Westbrook, an Atlanta firefighter stationed near Centennial Park, was among the first rescue personnel on the scene, arriving in a golf cart the fire department had reserved especially for negotiating the crowded streets. "I've been in the fire department 16 years," Westbrook said, "and I've never seen that many people that critically injured." One of the first people he saw was a young woman who collapsed, he thought, from a heart attack. With other firefighters, he rushed to assist several badly bleeding people nearby. The scene, Westbrook said, reminded him of an old Chuck Norris movie, Invasion USA. Bodies, he said, "were everywhere." A little over a mile away, at Grady Memorial Hospital, the treatment facility closest to Centennial Park, David Holland, internal medicine specialist, was sleeping in an upstairs room. It had been an unusually quiet night for a Friday, and there had been little call for his services. Even before Melih Uzunyol and the first of the seriously injured victims began arriving by ambulance, a doctor catnapping in the same room as Holland was beeped. The two physicians rushed downstairs to the emergency room to assist the staff there. The hospital was soon swamped with bodies, many of them the most seriously wounded; other hospitals in the city received victims with less serious injuries, mostly cuts to the neck and upper body from flying shrapnel, apparently the housing of the bomb. In our city? Across Atlanta, the nation and the world, the grim news spread quickly. Atlantans were most in shock. George Thomas is a Coca-Cola employee who develops new formulas for taste tests, but like many at the company, he had volunteered to help with the games, arranging buses for the news media and Olympic officials. Thomas heard about the bombing about 2 a.m. on his radio at home. "I can't believe this is happening to our city," he said sadly, about an hour before dawn. Grimly, the authorities began trying to piece together what happened. Woody Johnson, the FBI's special agent-in-charge in Atlanta, announced that his agency would take the lead in the investigation. There were no immediate suspects, but authorities are believed to be focusing on militia groups that had made threats about disrupting the Olympics. Authorities have already traced a phone call warning of the bomb to a pay phone near Centennial Park, and the caller is said to have spoken with no trace of a foreign accent. As the criminal investigation accelerated, Olympic officials began marshaling a task force of thousands of military personnel and security officers to "re-sweep" all Olympic venues for explosive devices. Well before dawn Saturday, the streets of Atlanta were swarming with soldiers in camouflage, National Guardsmen with bright red berets and a dizzying army of other specialists wielding sensitive detection devices and leading bomb-sniffing dogs on thick leashes. On being told of the bombing after they awoke, athletes were variously dismayed and alarmed. Barnaba Kinyor is a 28-year-old Kenyan competing in the 400-meter hurdles. "They are very scared," Kinyor said of his teammates and other athletes he had spoken with in the Olympic Village, on the campus of Georgia Tech. "Some of them are afraid that maybe when they go outside they will be attacked. We don't understand why they are doing this. We are only ambassadors for our country, we have not done anything bad." Visitors to the games had mixed reactions. John Beard had just driven down to Atlanta that day from his home in Raleigh, N.C., with his 13-year-old son, Justin. They had gotten the Olympic bug the past week watching the games on television, and had decided to take the trip to Atlanta on the spur of the moment. By dawn Saturday, they were headed home. "I don't see how they can protect against something like this happening again," the elder Beard said. Added Justin: "I'm sorry we can't stay, but I don't want to get blown up or anything." Not everyone was leaving town. Bob and Mary Lynn Logan had also just arrived in Atlanta from their home in San Antonio, Texas, and they had tickets to see men's basketball and women's soccer. They intend to go. "It's a shame," Bob Logan said. "There hasn't been anything like this since Munich." Mary Lynn Logan was resigned but philosophical. "These things happen," she said. "I guess it's the way of the world now."
advertisement
