Summer chill

Threat of terrorism at Athens Olympics hard to ignore

You might not want to hear this. And let me say that I’m hardly into the post-9/11 mode of trying to scare the devil out of folks. But as you’re reading this, security experts tell us it’s naive to assume foreign terrorist organizations aren’t busy calculating ways to create deadly havoc on the Athens Olympics.

That doesn’t mean anything will come of the plotting, fortunately. Or that a plan will even be hatched. It is just part of the cat-and-mouse world of terrorism and counter terrorism, where the bad guys run their plans through the equivalent of cost-benefit analysis and security planners spend months, even years, prior to international gatherings such as the Olympics trying to think like terrorists.

It turns out security folks worked up 800 worst-case scenarios of how terrorists might scheme to wreak havoc on the Sydney Olympics. Nobody is saying how many of these tabletop exercises will be played out for Athens, but experts see the 2004 Games as a security nightmare, saying they present an inviting high-profile target in an unstable part of the world.

“From our experience over the last year, we’ve come to understand that terrorist organizations like al-Qaeda routinely have a two-year window of planning before they carry out major operations,’’ says Kyle Olson, a bioterrorism expert and vice president of Alexandria, Va.-based Community Research Associates. “So I think it’s reasonable to say right now that somebody over there is sitting, looking at maps, doodling plans, trying to figure out where the most advantageous target point is going to be.

“These same people are saying, Can we get in? How much [damage] can we do? And if we want to get out, can we get out?’’

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To the credit of the Greek organizers, they’ve been quick to recognize the daunting task and hire Peter Ryan, widely respected for overseeing security at the Sydney Olympics. They also have a new airport outside Athens, with state-of-the-art security, baggage and passenger handling systems. And experts say the security planning is ahead of where it’s been at comparable times for recent Games, but because of its political climate and location, Athens presents different challenges than Atlanta, Sydney and Salt Lake City.

It is also assumed that Athens security, while mindful that people want to watch sports and not a security exercise, will shade towards a brute force approach -- which is to say there will be a pronounced Greek Army presence at sporting venues and in downtown Athens.

But then, there is reason to be on edge.

Historically, Greece has been the center of an awful lot of political hullabaloo, positioned as a washstand from the Middle East to Europe. The country has bred two deadly terrorist organizations -- the Revolutionary Nuclei and the Revolutionary Organization 17 November, which presumably has been weakened by recent arrests -- and Athens is less than a day trip from the bases of 25 groups that the U.S. State Department has designated foreign terrorist organizations.

The bulk of these groups, from Al-Jihad in Egypt to the Salafist Group in Algeria, tend to be anti-U.S. or anti-Western, or they hold deadly grudges against Israel or Russia. And, of course, the international community is on guard for al-Qaeda terrorists and friends who high-tailed it out of Afghanistan.

“If you wanted to draw a bull’s-eye on the world map and focus on where the people are that like to shoot, blow up and otherwise eliminate other folks, you wouldn’t have to miss very far to hit Greece,’’ Olson says. “There are lots in the neighborhood.’’

So, at this point, Athens security figures to be tabletopping everything from what happens if there’s a traffic snafu and people turn violent all the way up to a Munich-type scenario, in which armed terrorists penetrate the Olympic Village. A suicide bomber has to be on the radar. Kidnapping is another threat. So, too, is the potential of a sleeper bomb planted by a worker during the buildup to the Games.

And how far can official security reach? In the past, you had the U.S. Dream Team in basketball and other superstar athletes, again notably the Americans, checking out of the Olympic Village in favor of five-star hotels and rented villas. Security experts wonder if this pattern might not change for the 2004 Summer Games.

What most troubles security and medical experts is the threat of a biological or chemical attack. Leading up to the Sydney Games there was no talk -- at least not publicly -- of an anthrax scare or the thought of terrorists releasing a biological agent into a crowded sporting venue. No one discussed such nightmarish scenarios as small pox and the plague.

“What has changed is we know there are terrorist groups out there who are willing to create mass murder and have the organizational skills to do it,’’ says Dr. Tara O’Toole, deputy director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Civilian Biodefense Studies. "And what some people thought was a pretty sturdy moral line against using biological weapons has been crossed. Now you can argue that whoever sent the anthrax [in the U.S. last fall] didn’t mean to kill people, if you want to. But that won’t matter for the people who come after. So that has all changed.

“Meanwhile, the science and technology, particularly in the realm of biological weapons that you need to put these things together, is moving ahead at a pace that I think most people can not imagine.’’

Come 2004, O’Toole assumes Greek officials will be able to deploy sensors capable of detecting, say, a cloud of anthrax or something going by. That is after the fact. What would follow becomes the burning issue. It’s suspected officials, as a precaution, will stockpile medicines, but nothing is certain as Europe is only now learning how to deal with chemical and bioterrorism.

“Europe is where we were two years before Salt Lake City in terms of awareness and level of concern,’’ O’Toole says.

Ah, yes, changing times. Here it is two years from Athens, and rather than debate the potential for rigged officiating we’re honing up on foreign terrorists, medical stockpiles and praying the Athenian public health system has its act in gear.

Mike Fish is a senior writer for CNNSI.com.

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