Winter Olympics: Black Hawk helicopters patrolling the skies, F-16s on alert at a desert runway, sharpshooters on the rooftops and 3,500 National Guardsmen on the ground. Apart from adding a bodyguard to every bobsleigh team there seems little else that those responsible for security at the Winter Olympics could have done.
There is barbed wire and camouflage at the Olympic village in the University of Utah campus and thousands of doses of antibiotics ready in case of an outbreak of anthrax. And there are about five armed military or police personnel for every athlete.
Since September 11th, attention has focused on whether the Winter Olympics might be a potential target for what is known by anti-terrorist officers as a "spectacular". As the biggest international gathering since the hijackings, the 17-day event with its television audience and its many venues was seen by security chiefs as offering a chance for al-Qaida to remind the world that it had not disappeared. So the event was designated a national special security event (NSSE) and the job of co-ordinating the operation was handed to the secret service.
The security operation starts more than 100 miles away and thousands of feet above where the events will take place. Every commercial aircraft coming in to land at Salt Lake City airport requires its passengers to remain in their seats for 30 minutes before arrival. Yesterday one flight enforced the ruling to the letter, making sure that one man wanting to visit the toilet 29 minutes before landing was sent back to his seat.
Pilots are instructed to divert from the airport if passengers refuse the order. Thirty miles from the city, F-16s wait to be scrambled at the slightest hint of irregular flying. Even hot air balloons are being grounded lest they be hijacked. The Utah state governor Michael Leavitt said that about 15,000 law enforcement officers, including up to 7,000 from the federal government and 5,000 from the national guard, were participating.
Security will reach its peak during the opening ceremony tomorrow night, which President Bush will attend; no planes will be allowed to take off or land at Salt Lake City during the event. Tom Ridge, director of the Office of Homeland Security, claimed that Salt Lake City would be "one of the safest places on the globe" for the next two and half weeks.
Already there have been bomb hoaxes and at least one private plane forced to land by a Black Hawk after straying into prohibited airspace.
The intense security and the feeling that the Games will be one of patriotic American fervour have had one unforeseen advantage for the organisers. What once looked as though it might be referred to as the Bribery Games - because of the scandals involved in the bid to hold the Games here - has now become the Security Games.
National Guardsmen even patrol the press centre with M-16s, although this may be as much to ensure that the message of security is relayed around the world as to protect the media.
Some of the more elaborate security arrangements are not going ahead after all. The Japanese team have finally dropped their plans to bring their own gas masks. The FBI also yesterday dismissed a report that al-Qaida operatives had carried out surveillance exercises on electrical grids and water plants in the area. But special teams of sharpshooters with infra-red equipment will be guarding the more distant alpine venues in the grimmest of low temperatures.
All this security comes at a cost: the federal government has allocated $310 million for security and the city and Utah state budgets have added $35 million.
Meanwhile, a row over whether the United States team would be allowed to carry the tattered US flag recovered from the World Trade Center in the opening ceremony was resolved yesterday before it caused further embarrassment to the host nation and the International Olympic Committee.
The flag will be carried by a group of athletes joined by a guard of honour made up of police and firefighters as a climax to the ceremony but not now in the main Winter Olympics procession. The flag will then be hoisted as the official American flag along with other nations' flags at the Rice-Eccles stadium next to the Olympic cauldron.
Initially the IOC had decided that allowing the flag to be carried would be inappropriate and create a precedent but yesterday, after a furious American response, it reversed its decision.
The flag that once flew over the centre in New York has achieved iconic status in the US, being taken to Afghanistan as a morale-booster and hoisted last weekend at the Super Bowl in New Orleans. The US Olympic Committee had announced that it intended to carry it into the opening ceremony tomorrow night. The compromise was welcomed by the US Olympic Committee.
Guardian service
