Chairman Smith, Senator Dorgan, Members of the Committee,
Thank you for inviting me to talk with you today about the unique
security and public safety experience we had in Salt Lake as
we prepared for and hosted the 2002 Winter Olympic Games. It’s
an practice for the management of each Olympics to pass on to succeeding
Games their “lessons learned” – both successes
and mistakes. Although security and safety planning and implementation
varies greatly from country to country depending on the structure
of law enforcement, there are operational lessons that we learned
in Salt Lake from those who came before us and there are pragmatic
lessons that we have endeavored to pass on to those who come
after. I appreciate the opportunity to share some of those with
you today.
I am going to limit my comments today to a number of broad principles
that were critical to our security planning and implementation.
Mark Camillo, who led the federal public safety planning effort
in his role as lead for the US Secret Service and can more appropriately
address the operational aspects of the Salt Lake security and public
safety plan.
First, a quick review of primary lessons we incorporated into
our planning in Salt Lake from the Games that came before us.
There have been several extremely thorough reports written on the
terrorist
attack at the Munich Games, each of which helped inform our approach
to Olympic security. The lack of basic security measures and
cooperation between the Organizing Committee and law enforcement
was stunning
by today’s standards. This allowed the terrorists easy access
to their targets at the Olympic Village and meant that, once the
hostages were taken, there was no set crisis-management procedure
to fall back on. In part due to the lack of planning for a security
crisis, the person who negotiated with the terrorists, at their
request, was the head of the organizing committee – my
counterpart. For the first critical communications with the terrorists,
an untrained
chief executive negotiated for the lives of athletes. Today,
it seems incomprehensible that this ever happened. Although there
were many hard lessons learned from the tragedy of Munich, and
the repercussions of that attack are felt to this day, there
are
two I want to focus on here.
First, communication and coordination between law enforcement
and the organizing committee are essential. Although it is often
difficult to maintain a true public/private partnership – particularly
between law enforcement and the private sector – when you
are securing the Olympics Games, it is critical. The relationship
must be seamless and the two must work as one team – practicing
together, clarifying roles and responsibilities, and communicating
constantly.
In Salt Lake, the organizing committee worked hand-in-glove with
federal, state and local public safety from day one. The teams
that designed the venues, laid out locations of everything from
tickets booths to parking lots to seats and trailers met regularly
with law enforcement and took their input every step of the way.
Our goal was to design security into our Games, instead of just
putting a security overlay on the venues when they were done.
Putting together a public safety plan that could anticipate and
prevent
attacks at ten different venues, the Village, Opening and Closing
Ceremonies and our downtown Olympic Square was a painstakingly
detailed effort. It required thinking through potential terrorist
scenarios and devising workable procedures to prevent them in
all types of weather and crowd conditions. Finally, these procedures
had to be coordinated with all the other Games plans. After all,
it’s easy to secure a venue if you simply shut down the roads – but
then how do we get the people in, particularly when vehicles are
the most commonly used terrorist weapon? Transportation and public
safety have to work hand-in-glove – and many times there
are no easy solutions. There are always concerns about securing
the athletes in transit, and concerns about limiting vehicle access
to any Olympic venue. Every road closure, every decision about
which route buses would take, where the athletes would be dropped
off and where the spectators would park and ride was made in close
consultation with law enforcement. During the Games, a video feed
from our transportation center of all the major roads and interstates
fed directly into the Public Safety Command Center – and
law enforcement sat side-by-side with the transportation operators
to ensure that response and monitoring were smooth.
We faced many barriers in achieving this level of integration
and coordination between law enforcement and the private sector,
primarily because we have too many unnecessary firewalls that prevent
real coordination between government and private companies. We
were fortunate in Salt Lake that all the senior participants from
Secret Service, FBI, FEMA and DoD were willing to break new ground
and take the risk of letting the organizing committee into the
day-to-day planning. That effort paid off and the seamlessness
of our coordination was one of our greatest successes in Salt Lake.
The second lesson we took to heart from Munich was to take every
precaution when securing locations where large numbers of athletes
would gather – especially the Olympic Village. I won’t
detail all the steps we took in securing the Village. However,
our deterrents included double-fencing the perimeter, judicious
use of cameras, motion detectors, screening people and goods through
magnetometers twice before letting them in, and an inner, even
more secure location that only the athletes could access. High-threat
delegations, such as the Israelis, were given the most secure locations
within the village and were allowed to bring their own security.
Drills were run repeatedly on how to deal with an attack on the
village – any scenario that can be dreamed up was planned
for and rehearsed. Again, securing the Village was a joint project
from day one between law enforcement and the organizing committee.
One of the major lessons we learned from the Los Angeles Games
was the need to do background checks on all employees and volunteers.
This can be quite difficult unless the process is begun well
in advance. Those who were in Los Angeles told us that, because
many
background checks weren’t completed before the Games began,
convicted felons were holding critical posts – even security
posts-- at Games time. I heard from the public safety leadership
in LA that they had more problems during their Games with crimes
committed by volunteers and employees who turned out to have records
than they did from any other source. So, we started the screening
process early and anyone who didn’t pass a background check
couldn’t work or volunteer for our Games. That meant that
we had to have over 40,000 background checks performed – and
for those who would have Olympic Village access, the check was
quite intensive.
From Nagano, we learned a lesson that became even more valuable
to us after 9/11. You may remember that the flu hit that region
of Japan during the Nagano Games, and had a devastating impact
on both the athletes and those attending the Games. Nagano was
a relatively small geographic area, with tens of thousands of
people from all over the world tightly gathered for several weeks – with
bad weather on top of it. We learned how critical it is to put
in place a public health operation that can immediately spot
an outbreak and move to contain it. In a confined geographic area,
sickness can spread like wildfire. Working with CDC, FEMA, Department
of Energy, and DoD, Utah and the Salt Lake Organizing Committee
(SLOC) prepared a state-of-the-art public health monitoring and
response plan and created the in-state capability to rapidly
analyze
biological and chemical samples. We received constant reports
not only from Olympic areas, but non-Olympic locations as well.
We
also had environmental monitors that tested the air in key locations.
Our biggest concern may have been a possible biological or chemical
terrorist attack, but it was Nagano that brought home to us the
importance of quick identification, reaction, containment and
treatment in the crowded Olympic environment.
But it was the lessons learned from Atlanta that had the most
impact on security and public safety preparations for Salt Lake.
Other witnesses here today will be able to talk in more detail
about security and public safety planning in Atlanta. The after-action
reports we received from Atlanta, and the lessons that were passed
on to us by the public safety community, indicated that many
of the problems in Atlanta reflected how slow we were as a nation
to begin to recognize that terrorism was becoming a security
issue
inside the United States. When Atlanta began preparing for the
1996 Games, there had not been a successful foreign terrorist
attack on US soil. Then, in 1993, the first World Trade Center
bombing
happened, and most of us heard of Osama Bin Laden for the first
time. Not long thereafter, Timothy McVeigh stunned us all by
his brutal attack on innocent people in Oklahoma City. Meanwhile,
in
Japan, terrorists used Sarin gas in the subways – showing
how easy it was to wreak havoc and death in what had previously
been regarded as a safe urban area. The reports we received indicated
that with each new incident, the planners would develop ways to
prevent and respond to these types of attacks. However, the planning
effort faced an incredible obstacle due to the dozens and dozens
of federal, state and local law enforcement and public safety entities
involved in Games security and safety – with no clear command
and control structure for Games planning. There was relatively
clear understanding of who was in charge after an incident occurred – but
there was no structure establishing who was in charge of planning
for Games safety and preventing a terrorist incident from happening.
And that was the crux of the problem. In the United States, we
have a unique public safety structure. It evolved from our desire
as a country to make sure that power is always retained at the
most local level of government possible and that we never create
the all-powerful law enforcement arms that viciously rule in
other countries. But, in meeting this admirable goal, we sometimes
sacrifice
coordination – one of the key “lessons learned” from
Munich. In Atlanta, where there were over 50 different public safety
agencies – federal, state and local all “in charge” of
securing a piece of the Games, the attempt to voluntarily pull
everyone together to develop a coordinated plan apparently didn’t
work. We were told afterwards that, about a year out from the Games,
Vice President Gore came to Atlanta for a security briefing and
asked a straight-forward question – “Who’s in
charge”. The answer back was “it depends”.
Not a good answer. Accurate, but when you are holding the largest
peacetime
event in history and terrorism has begun to rear its ugly head
in your country, you want someone who can tell you that they
are responsible for the overall effort. In Atlanta, no one was.
So
the primary lesson from Atlanta was that coordination among government
agencies was just as critical, if not more critical, than coordination
between government and the organizing committee.
With one year to go, the federal government began to infuse massive
resources into Atlanta – over 14,000 troops were sent in.
Federal law enforcement agents came in by the hundreds. They hardened
the Olympic Villages, increased security on the athlete transportation
system, and put multiple layers of security on most of the sports
venues and Opening and Closing Ceremonies. But, the Olympics is
more than just sport – it is the gathering of world in celebration
of peace and the human spirit at festivals, concerts, art shows
and more. And one of the major celebration points, Centennial Olympic
Park, became the target of a bomber. Another bitter lesson – sports
and the athletes are not the only targets of terrorists – sometimes
it can be the celebration itself that becomes the target.
Both of these lessons would have enormous impact on our planning
in Salt Lake.
Following Atlanta, the White House decided to create a structure
that would clarify who was in charge and make someone accountable
for ensuring that a coordinated security and safety plan was
put in place. President Clinton issued Presidential Decision Directive
62 which set out a hierarchy for all so-called “National
Special Security Events.” It put the U.S. Secret Service
in charge of planning and operational security, the FBI in charge
of intelligence and the immediate response to a terrorist incident,
and FEMA in charge of handling the consequences of an event with
mass casualties. Even more important to SLOC, in terms of getting
work done on a day-to-day basis, this meant there were just three
easily-accessible individualsin charge of making sure that everything
came together in their areas of responsibility.
On the state level, Utah also put in place a structure that would
produce a coordinated and integrated public safety plan and – just
as importantly, put someone in charge. The Utah Olympic Public
Safety Command (UOPSC) was created by the state legislature in
1998 with the authority to plan and direct the Olympic security
and public safety efforts of various state and local police agencies
in a unified way. At Games time, all of the personnel would work
as part of a unified Olympic command – under direction
of the Olympic Public Safety Commander and not under the command
of
individual sheriffs and police chiefs.
Both of these structures, the federal NSSE designation and the
Utah Olympic Public Safety Command, were new and I will admit
we faced difficulties over the years as these new reporting relationships
were evolved and refined. However, by the beginning of 2001,
both
structures were working extremely well and most if not all of
the problems had been resolved. These structures ensured that our
final
public safety plan truly was coordinated and integrated at every
level – federal, state, local and the organizing committee.
One of the greatest lessons that we pass on to future Games is
this model for creating a coordinated effort – even in
the unique structure of U.S. law enforcement and public safety.
We took the second lesson of Atlanta – that all large gatherings
could be the target of terrorist attacks – to heart as well.
First, we decided in consultation with the Secret Service that
rather than spreading our Olympic celebrations, concerts and medals
presentations around the city, we would create one multi-block
area which would hold all the events and create a single site to
secure. Admittedly, Salt Lake Olympic Square was an enormous site – stretching
over eight city blocks. But, it is easier to secure a single
perimeter and have limited points of entry for magging and bagging
the public
than it is to duplicate this effort in multiple sites. And, it
allowed us to truly concentrate our resources where they could
be most effective.
We revisited this lesson from Atlanta in the weeks after 9/11.
In addition to events held by the Organizing Committee, there
were many events being held by the State, Salt Lake City, and others – some
expected to draw thousands of attendees. Each event was reviewed
by the federal government and for those where there was some concern
that the event could be an attractive target, the event was either
cancelled or a more robust security plan was put in place. We recognized
the reality that you can never harden every target – to
do that you would literally have to shut down the state. However,
we also decided that there was no reason for us to create additional
targets by having more events than we could secure appropriately.
Another lesson we learned in Salt Lake that we have passed on
to future Games is the importance of having a very clear communications
plan – both before and during the Games. Obviously, the
media is going to ask questions about the security plan for a
Games and,
just as obviously, the people answering need to be aware that
there answers may be read or heard by those looking to plan an
attack.
This was initially a problem for us in Salt Lake. We had dozens
of local public safety officials involved in planning for the
Games, and the media soon learned that they could go to these
individuals
and often get dramatic or sensational answers to their questions.
It was one of my greatest frustrations. Particularly when it
was televised on national TV which venues were the safest and
what
the vulnerabilities were of other venues. The public safety community
was unable to reach agreement on how much should be made public
and who should talk until just months before the Games. Honestly,
the horrible events of September 11 probably did more to convince
some of our officials that communications during a crisis should
be handled by the leadership of the public safety organization
than any of the theoretical conversations we had earlier.
In my opinion, the most important lesson we learned in Salt Lake,
and the one that I repeat whenever I get the opportunity, is
the critical nature of intelligence in preventing an attack. Most
Games
focus on two security aspects – preventing an attack by hardening
the venues and transportation system and ensuring that the resources
are in place to respond to an attack. In Salt Lake, there was also
tremendous emphasis put on gathering information from all levels
and sources and sharing that information between federal, state
and local officials. While I can’t speak in this setting
to the different methods employed by the federal, state and local
governments to gather intelligence, I can tell you that it was
a highly coordinated and aggressive effort. Jurisdictional issues
didn’t appear to come into play; instead, each level of government
used its people in every way appropriate to gather information – then
all levels of government shared in the data once it was analyzed.
Why do I think this was so important? As I said earlier, it is
impossible to harden every target – even the Olympic venues.
Remember that many of our venues were literally mountains – mountains
which could easily receive several feet of snowfall in a night
and where the temperatures dropped below zero after dark and the
winds could reach storm force. We couldn’t put fencing all
over those mountains; cameras and other equipment aren’t
reliable in that cold; and there aren’t enough people to
stand perimeter duty over hundreds of square miles in the freezing
cold twenty-four hours a day. So, the Secret Service designed an
effective effort – using the latest technology and surveillance
methods and some very hardy agents. But, in the end, our best
offense was to know about a possible attack on a venue like that
before
it happened. Good intelligence, effectively shared and utilized,
was critical.
The final lesson learned from Salt Lake that I want to focus on
is the importance of putting the security and safety team in place
as far out as possible, and then exercise, exercise, exercise.
In Salt Lake, we had our final team from the Secret Service, FBI,
FEMA, DOD and SLOC in place over a year out. This team had to manage
as one unit during the Games, and they spent over a year meeting
and talking daily until working together became second nature.
That broke down many of the usual barriers to a truly integrated
operational effort.
We also held exercise for all levels of personnel involved – from
the local cop on the street to the senior management at SLOC. And
we didn’t hold one or two exercises – we held dozens.
And with each we learned. I remember clearly one of the first I
participated in where, instead of letting the venue manager and
the law enforcement lead at the venue make the decisions, I ordered
the evacuation of the building because of smoke – theoretically
sending hundreds of people into an area where a car had just exploded.
Lesson learned – let the operational decisions be made by
those on the ground. And with each exercise, we all learned – and
we fixed the problems we found and then went looking for more.
We tell all future Games to start exercising early and to make
sure that they conduct their exercises in conjunction with the
government agencies that they will be working with during the Games.
It’s the only way to make sure that when the real thing starts,
you’re ready.
Mr. Chairman, all of these lessons have been passed on to Greece,
Turin, and China. In some cases, the problems we addressed are
uniquely American – in others, they are applicable to any
country hosting an Olympics and trying to ensure that the Games
are safe from terrorist attack. I would urge you as you look
into security and safety planning for those Games, that you ask
the
following questions:
n Is there an integrated and coordinated security plan that has
been adopted by every entity – public and private – with
a role to play in securing the Games? n Is there a clear chain
of command for security and safety? n Is there an aggressive intelligence
operation and will the information be shared with those on the
ground that need to know it? n Have exercises been conducted with
all participants? n Has the process for communications during an
incident been agreed to? n Have security precautions been put in
place for all large gatherings around the time of the Games – and
not just the Olympic venues? n Is there a real-time public health
monitoring and response plan? Has it been tested? n Have all
security precautions been taken at the Olympic venues, in the
transportation
system, and at the Olympic Village, including background checks
of everyone working in the Games?
Clearly, the upcoming Games in Greece will have a different level
of coordination and communications challenges from those we faced
due to the assistance that is being provided by other countries
to the security effort. Therefore, understanding the steps that
have been taken to ensure that all security and safety related
operations are well-integrated and closely coordinated is all the
more important.
I’d like to close with a personal comment. During the three
years that I served as CEO of the Salt Lake Organizing Committee,
I was asked many times whether or not it made sense to continue
holding the Olympics, considering the increased security risks
and the enormous expense of hosting the Games. My answer then,
as now, is that it is more important than ever that the Games
continue and that the United States play a major role in the continuation
of the Olympic movement.
For the athletes, the Olympic Games represent the culmination
of years of effort and sacrifice. But for the rest of us, the
Olympics are about far more than sport. Sport is merely the stage
on which
the athletes perform – and in them we see the qualities
of the human spirit that inspire us all. The Games reaffirm that,
no matter what country or culture, the human spirit can triumph
and achieve through hard work, dedication, persistence, loyalty
and commitment. In this time when the children of our nation
and
our world need real heroes, real role-models, the Olympics provides
those heroes.
In Salt Lake, hundreds of millions of dollars were spent by the
federal, state and local governments and SLOC to secure the Games.
Literally thousands of people – cops, soldiers, firemen,
federal agents, public health workers, and volunteers – put
in hundreds of thousands of hours in harsh weather and cold to
keep the Games safe. Was that investment worth it? Absolutely.
Because the Olympics also carries the dreams we have of a world
at peace – the world we are trying to create for our grandchildren
and those who come after. It is dream shared by all nations who
send their finest to compete in the Olympics. And it is a dream
we saw and felt on February 8, 2002 when, in spite of the threat
of terrorism, every nation invited to our Games still sent their
Olympic team and the athletes of the world marched together into
opening ceremonies. Now, more than ever, the Olympic athletes are
lights of inspiration and hope in our world – we cannot
let terrorists put out that light.
I look forward to answering any questions you may have.