Olympics
Without any attacks, terrorists have struck already

By Blaine Newnham
Seattle Times associate editor

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ATHENS — Let's face it, without an explosion occurring or a hostage being taken, terrorists have already damaged the Athens Games.

Ticket sales are half what they were expected to be. Similarly affected will be the numbers of rooms rented and meals eaten. People are frightened about the possibility of a terrorist attack.

Greece taxed its citizens heavily to transform the infrastructure of Athens to be equal to the task of hosting the Olympic Games — a new airport, better roads and expanded mass transit.

Since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, on the United States and the Iraq war, it has been obligated to tax them further, spending four times what Australia did in 2000 to attempt to guarantee the safety of athletes and spectators.

The number is at $1.5 billion.

The Greek police say they will involve nearly 70,000 people to secure the athletes and the venues during the Games. The plan is complex. It also involves more than the Greeks.

At the insistence of the United States, armed special forces from other countries — notably the United States and Israel — will apparently carry weapons to defend their dignitaries and be prepared to defend and evacuate their athletes if necessary.

Greece has said only it will protect the athletes. The law prohibits outside forces from carrying guns in the country. Israel, which lost 11 athletes to a terrorist takeover in Munich in 1972, has in past Olympics ignored such laws, recently in Australia in 2000 and in the United States in 1996.

The Greeks fear outside forces that don't speak the language or understand the culture might overreact to a motor scooter dashing onto a sidewalk to avoid traffic, or a small bomb blast by one of the country's dissident groups.

While the possibility of foreign troops may unsettle the Greeks, their procrastination in developing Olympic sites is contributing to overall concerns.
 
Facilities need to be "locked down," cleared before they can be secured. Normally that is done months ahead of use. In Athens, some facilities and transportation systems were still under construction this summer.

The Greeks will have military frogmen in the harbor at Piraeus protecting eight cruise ships acting like hotels and more than 1,000 cameras watching and listening at Olympic sites.

A $300 million surveillance system is at the heart of the security plan. Recently, a blimp outfitted with high-resolution cameras and a chemical-detection system was added to the arsenal.

The Greeks say they will not disturb the flavor and festivities of the Games with too much security. The length of lines of spectators waiting to get into events as they are scrutinized could be severe, however.

The Greeks were sure they no longer had a domestic security issue with the incarceration last year of the November 17 group of terrorists that in 1989 killed the husband of the Athens mayor, Dora Bakoyannis.

Then with exactly 100 days to go before the opening ceremony, small bomb blasts went off in suburban Athens. The Greek police allayed few fears when they said the group responsible was seeking only attention and had no designs on injuring anyone.

There is a Communist group — Anti 2004 — that is worried more about the presence of NATO and the United States in Greece than the Arab terrorists, and has expressed great concern over the use of the 1,000 surveillance cameras after the Games. The group will demonstrate during the Games.

What will happen?

Who can know?

Said an Athens cab driver in March: "There will be no sabotage of the Olympics because Arabs like Greeks."

Explained Paul Anastasi, a spokesman for the mayor of Athens, "Greece has followed a balanced foreign policy, always sympathetic to the Palestinian cause, and condemning the attack on Iraq.

"Some suggest it would be totally unjustified to attack Greece, but that is a romantic notion. We cannot overlook the opportunity (of) the Olympic Games, with 21,000 journalists here, for anyone wishing to draw attention to their cause."

Greece has taken seriously the notion of making its country — at the gateway to the Middle East — secure. The Greeks understand the tarnished legacy they could leave if they permit an attack on Olympic athletes or spectators.

The question is, can they deter it? And if they do, hasn't the damage already been considerable?