Playing It Safe

By Lev Grossman

When it comes to saving lives, there's no bronze and no silver, only gold. You either do it or you don't. That's why the U.S. is spending more than $300 million to turn this year's Winter Olympics into a terror-free zone: the world is watching, and we have only one chance to get it right. With 70,000 visitors a day mingling with 2,500 athletes from 80 countries in Salt Lake City, Utah, where concealed weapons are allowed even in day-care centers, security will be no easy task. These Olympics will definitely not be all fun and games.

This raises an interesting question: How do you secure a sporting event without taking the fun out of it? Answer: checkpoints. Control the borders, the theory goes, and you control everything. That's why visitors on the way into the 20 Olympic venues will be scanned with metal detectors, and why all vehicles will be held back 300 ft. Hundreds of surveillance cameras that can scrutinize an ID badge from 1,000 ft. away will watch entrances, exits, highways and parking lots, and spectators are warned not to bring bags larger than 10 in. by 12 in. Utah is in the midst of a heated debate over gun laws: on Jan. 1, the state ordered colleges, hospitals, parks and other venues to allow concealed weapons as long as the bearers have licenses for them. Utah's vocal gun lobby, backed by Republican state representative John Swallow, is pushing for the right to bring guns into Olympic events, if only to store them in lockboxes. So far, the organizers have stood firm against that.

Olympic officials hope to turn the city itself into a secure environment. Anyone entering the seven-block pedestrian zone known as Olympic Square will be searched. Sensors will monitor the local food, air and water supplies for chemical and biological toxins. And the FAA has created a no-fly zone called the "Olympic Ring" for commercial and private planes that encompasses a 45-mile radius from Salt Lake International Airport. Even so, insists Salt Lake Olympic Committee president Mitt Romney, "once you're inside the secure perimeter, it will feel and look just like prior Games."

The shadow of Sept. 11 looms large over the Olympics, but this security strategy is based on bitter lessons learned years earlier at the Games in Atlanta, where a pipe bomb exploded in a public square, killing a bystander and injuring more than 100 people. President Clinton responded with a directive placing the Secret Service in charge of security for all major public gatherings, including the Olympics; the directive also tasked the FBI with crisis management--anything from hostage rescues on down--and the Federal Emergency Management Agency with coordinating disaster response. Salt Lake City is the first test of Clinton's plan.

The effort thus far has yielded an almost heartwarming level of cooperation among security agencies known for being fiercely territorial. The Secret Service may be calling the shots, but more than 60 federal, state and local organizations are working together in Salt Lake City, and ad hoc multi-agency task forces with heavy-duty acronyms--the Utah Olympic Public Safety Command (UOPSC), the Olympic Joint Terrorism Task Force (OJTTF)--are thick on the ground. More than 15,000 federal, state and local personnel will watch over the Games, among them 1,900 members of Utah's National Guard--the largest single call-up in the state's history--as well as 100 U.S. Marshals and 200 Border Patrol agents from the Immigration and Naturalization Service. Surveillance aircraft will circle overhead, with F-16 fighter jets on standby at nearby Hill Air Force Base. While rifle-toting athletes ski the Soldier Hollow biathlon course, armed National Park Service rangers not far away will be patrolling Wasatch Mountain State Park.

Tying it all together will be the Olympic Coordination Center, a 24-hour Justice League-style headquarters crammed with TVs and computers. State and local law-enforcement information systems have been linked so that suspicious activities, such as "fans" who are stalking athletes or casing power plants, will be highlighted. FBI, Secret Service and intelligence agents working in the OCC will have access to the most detailed database on terrorists ever created. For the FBI and CIA to share precious security information with other agencies at all is itself unprecedented. After touring the facilities, Homeland Security director Tom Ridge was impressed but cautious. "It's unprecedented," he told TIME. "But that doesn't mean anyone is standing up and giving a guarantee."

At least the spectators are giving Salt Lake City an unqualified vote of confidence. After an initial dip following Sept. 11, daily ticket sales have risen to an average of $200,000 a day in January; sales have already smashed the record set in Nagano. If Team USA gets the job done here, these Games will become the blue-print for securing high-profile events in a post-World Trade Center world. "This has become a training ground for national security," Utah's Republican Senator Orrin Hatch says proudly. "They're writing the rules here." Let's hope they work. Unlike most Olympic athletes, terrorists aren't known for playing by the rules.

--Reported by Peta Owens-Liston/Salt Lake City and Elaine Shannon/Washington

With reporting by Peta Owens-Liston/Salt Lake City and Elaine Shannon/Washington