Olympic Security: The Relevance to Homeland Security

Peter J. Ryan
Commissioner, New South Wales Police
Chief Security Advisor, IOC for the Athens Games

Impossible, complicated, difficult, challenging, complex and technologically advanced, are all descriptions used to explain the intricacies of planning security for the Olympic Games. Indeed it is all of these and more. Given recent world events of the past 18 months, the task has become even more complex. In many presentations I have made on Olympic Security, I have stressed the fact that each Games builds upon the experience of the last and the thinking and technology probably pushes frontiers in both management of the issue and the development of the sophisticated technological support employed by security forces.

If you will bear with me for a few moments whilst I reflect on my past 40 years in law enforcementófrom the early 1960s my professional life has been strongly influenced by the political response to world tensions. The UK was in the forefront of the NATO strategic response to the threat of war with the Soviet Union. We were, as both police officers and members of the Army reserve forces, constantly training and re-training for what we believed to be the inevitable devastating atomic, then nuclear, bomb attack by the former Soviet Union against cities in Britain. We trained to maintain government and the rule of law, to evacuate and relocate the civilian survivors and to fight in the streets against the invading Red Army. In the scenarios against which we trained, my role also changed as I rose through the ranks of the British Police Service, until I too was included in the perhaps not-so-lucky group who would be protected in nuclear shelters built to house the interim governments to lead recovery after the war. This training, modified to take account of changing strategy and technology, continued right up until the decline of the Soviet Union in 1990.

Meanwhile, things had changed in other areas. The IRA had brought their bombing campaign to the British mainland, and Middle Eastern Terrorist Groups conducted bomb attacks and other outrages on the streets of London. Countermeasures and consequence management for all of these had to be accommodated in the training regime of the police. We were protecting the country.

I mention these things to draw the connection to protection of the Olympic Games in the present day. The Olympic Games are a celebration of human achievement, of sporting prowess and the non-sectarian, non-political ideal of the ìbrotherhood of man.î In more recent times, the promotion of artistic and intellectual excellence has been introduced to further promote the Olympic Ideal. Of course there is huge national pride at stake and intense competition to be the country with the most medals or the fastest athletes, but with some minor exceptions, antipathies are put to one side in pursuit of the Olympic ideal.

Why then have we turned the security of such a worthy event into an exercise of national security? The reason, Munich 1972 which shattered, perhaps forever, the Olympic truce, known since ancient times in Greece as, ìEkecheiria,î where warring states would lay down their arms for seven days prior to, during, and seven days after the Olympic Games. September 2001 has re-focused this exercise into a true national security response.

The concentration of effort required now to produce an Operational Security Plan for the Olympic Games is truly Herculean in scale. Planning for security commences years ahead of the event, involves several hundred people, and takes on a form which is probably not repeated in any other public event. Yes, sure, as law enforcement or security experts, we have planned for and implemented large security tasks. One-off major sporting grand finals, Formula One Grand Prix, Presidential or Head of State visits, large scale public meetings or demonstrations, etc. are all in the regular planning requirements for government and law enforcement agencies. The Olympic Games, however, are the equivalent of ten Grand Finals a day for 16 days, spread over huge cities filled with people moving about between venues, watching or attending public entertainment events, for almost 24 hours a day. Many heads of state, some of whom require very high levels of protection, move among these spectators, often in a fairly random manner. You can throw in the occasional strike, public demonstration or protest for good measure. Airport arrivals and departures, and baggage handling on a grand scale stretch our immigration and customs procedures. For a law enforcement and security agency, the Olympic operational period is 60 days, involving, in the case of Athens, 50,000 security personnel at peak times. Wars have been planned and executed in less time and with less people.

So let me link this to Homeland Security, which might be called something else in another country, but the principle is the same.

As I mentioned earlier, a security plan on the Olympic scale is directly related to the national defense of any host country. Some nations, the United Sates for example, and some European nations on a lesser scale, already have massive self-defense mechanismsóhuge military establishments, well-equipped and trained police forces, and government agencies dedicated to keeping the country safe, and the enemy at bay. However, this huge effort is not universal and some countries are quite weak and vulnerable. But the traditional national defense has been principally to defend against conventional military attack, not necessarily against internal or external terrorist attack. The security operations for the Olympic Games are, in fact, exactly designed to do just that, and much more. It simply tests every plan we have for every contingency. The lessons from this for any nation must be preserved and absorbed and developed further. National Security now begins on the streets of our cities, the ports and airports and vulnerable borders which all nations have.

Looking at those Olympic Games in which I have firsthand experience, I can say that the arrangements for security made-and are makingóa huge and lasting impact on national security. In Australia, for example, there was in existence a well-rehearsed national anti-terrorist plan, which was designed to involve all agencies at State and Federal level. In the build-up to the Games, we conducted huge exercises to test the validity of the plan in an Olympic context, even against the likelihood of a chem/bio attack on a stadium. The plan worked, well mostly. We found that the key senior people who would be involved in a live incident had never tested the plan. My role as the Commissioner of Police, those of senior federal and state cabinet members including the Prime Minister, had never actually taken part in a recent exercise. The planners had made assumptions as to the information requirement and decision tree that these top-level people would employ. Some of these assumptions made in good faith, were misguided. In the exercises, the real people performed their roles and the decision levels, operating procedures, information flow and communication paths were modified.

The exercises highlighted the fact that we had deficiencies in our operational response. The Special Air Service (SAS) of the Defense Forces formed and trained an additional anti-terrorist squadron and they also developed a capability to board large ships underway at sea. The country had very limited capability to respond to a chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear incident and this gap was closed by an intensive program of training and equipment purchase including the medical and public health response mechanisms. These changes and improvements alone cost tens of millions of dollars. These and many other changes took place, which have all been a tremendous legacy for the ability of Australia to deal with the present and future threats of global or domestic terrorism.

In the case of Greece, the geophysical and geopolitical location of the country presents very many more risks than say a country, which holds the Games in the center of its mainland, accessible only by road and air; both routes being capable of tight control as was applied here in Salt Lake. Or in a country which is geographically isolated and with strict control over the relatively few accessible ports of entry such as Australia. The borders of Greece are very difficult to police, a huge coastline with hundreds of small ports and easily accessible beaches, porous land borders with relatively unstable countries in the Balkans and a known, huge illegal immigration problem.

The divergence of terrorism, its links to organized crime, and the sheer ruthlessness of action displayed in todayís environment, places a strain on our ability to track all possible threats. During the Olympic Games, the world comes to the host country and could bring with it problems from their own country of origin. Many of these countries are politically or economically unstable and have their own or house other active terrorist groups, particularly nations in Africa and South East Asia. It is not simply a likely attack on our own homeland but an event aimed at others that takes place in our homeland. The emergence of extreme right and left wing issue groups in Europe, some claiming the name of former high profile terrorist groups, is a new problem to consider as well as the many faces of global religion-based terrorism which, although operating under different names, are fundamentally linked in their objective. To prepare ourselves for all these possibilities, the host country actually pulls together all agencies dealing with national security under one roof to assess the risk to the Olympic Games. Why not work like that all the time instead of in silos.

Therefore the Olympic Security operation is a de facto national security response. It cannot be anything else. Fluttering like a flag in the storm of world events and politics, the security response has to adapt to the rapidly changing environment, instantaneously. Plans have to change, assumptions reconsidered, tasks redefined. We do this constantly in our Olympic planning and it should be so for the broader national picture. The preparations for the Games and the investment in security infrastructure will be an enormous legacy for the country and its national security capability, after the Games are over. This opportunity should not be wasted.

As an exercise in testing cooperation, there is no better context. Every government agency is involved, at the national and local level. Local police have to learn to work with both the public and private sector and tensions can be high as each protects self-interest, industrial secrets and role primacy. However, at the end of the day, and sometimes getting to this point is painful, the police have primacy in the command and control co-ordination area and the other agencies each retain their important role and exercise their professional responsibilities in the areas in which they are competent. There can be no room for interagency jealousy and non-cooperation; peopleís lives are at stake, national security is at risk. But inter-agency rivalry does exist, people do not cooperate as they should, information is not freely exchanged. If all goes well, the extent of this is never discovered, but should an incident occur which could have been prevented by better communication and cooperation, the accusing finger will point towards someone and the public will look for and expect the culprits to be dealt with. The culprits will also have to live with themselves afterwards.

Dealing with public perceptions, fears and expectations is a critical task. The public can be quickly frightened, which in turn defines their behavior. Witness the massive worldwide drop in air travel after 9/11 and the fear of plague amongst mailroom workers world wide following the anthrax scare. We need to think through our communication and information policies very carefully indeed. In whom are we trying to put the fear of dread by our actions, the man and woman in the street or the terrorist? We really do need to gain public acceptance for our strategies. Throughout the Olympic planning and operational stages, we try to encourage a sensible but truthful strategy to re-assure the public and encourage attendance. This strategy should continue all the time in these uncertain days to reduce fear in the population.

So what are the lessons we can learn?

We must:

Establish clear mission targets
Define operational concepts
Engage in thorough planning
Encourage interagency cooperation and joint training
Involve and liaise with the private sector
Agree on clear definition of roles and responsibilities
Manage conflict
Characterize risk parameters
Target investment, particularly towards joint information and communication systems to manage the intelligence and share its product
Promote international cooperation to target terrorist groups and track funding
Seek public acceptance of policies to protect the country

These are some of the main features we should consider as paramount in the whole exercise of planning to defend our homeland