The Washington Post September 11, 2002
Security Is Measured; Officials Struggle With Precautions For Everyday Events
By Liz Clarke
With the backing of F-16 fighter jets, multimillion dollar budgets and Star Wars-style technology, the United States has proven in the year since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks that it can safely stage major sporting events such as the Super Bowl and Winter Olympic Games.
But mega-events aren't necessarily where a terrorist group might strike if it targets a sporting event, according to counter-terrorism experts. Far more vulnerable are the everyday, regular season games that draw just as many people but fewer extra safety precautions.
And that has left executives of the country's major sports teams and venues struggling with how much security they can routinely provide without destroying the communal experience that sports represents. At what point does security alienate fans by making it more of a headache than an escape to simply pass through a turnstile? "We want to be like the heating and air conditioning," says NFL vice president of security Milton Ahlerich, a former FBI agent. "We don't want security to be something you're thinking about. You may notice it coming in the gate. But if you go too crazy or too far, then you start becoming the focus."
Says John Pike, director of Globalsecurity.org, a defense-policy think tank: "Do we really want to get into a situation where everybody has to take their shoes off to see a girls' basketball game?"
As sports officials grope for the proper balance between fans' security and liberty, they're also groping with the appropriate role of sports in honoring the more than 3,000 who were killed in the attacks in New York and Washington and at the Pennsylvania crash site.
Millions of TV viewers were profoundly moved when the tattered American flag that was recovered at the World Trade Center was displayed during last fall's World Series and February's Winter Olympic Games in Salt Lake City. But in the eyes of many, a Budweiser Super Bowl ad featuring a team of Clydesdale horses trekking to Ground Zero and bowing their heads was crass commercialism.
No doubt, there will be more false starts to come as the American sports industry fine-tunes what constitutes adequate security and appropriate symbolism at sporting events in a post-9/11 world.
At its best, sports can build a community. It can lift a nation's mood and restore its self-confidence. And for terrorists, major sporting events can also serve as a compelling target.
"Sports are symbolically important in that you're striking at the heart of America," Pike says. "It provides live TV coverage, so it will be seen by millions of people as it happens. And you can kill a lot of people, disrupting life for the entire country."
As Pike sees it, the biggest problem in protecting sporting events one year after Sept. 11 is recalibrating the threat. In short, it's hard to determine if existing safety measures are enough without more specific knowledge of terrorist cells.
For instance, is al Qaeda a small group that can stage a successful attack every few years? Or does it represent 100,000 terrorists? If it's the latter, Pike notes: "They are very quickly going to run out of spectacular targets to attack and could very easily start going after college basketball games."
It's a question that divides the security community, says Juliette Kayyem, a counter-terrorism expert at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. And while Kayyem has concerns about security at sporting events, she is less worried about safety at the Super Bowl than she is a normal, ordinary day.
"I think we've sufficiently disrupted al Qaeda that we've made it more difficult to plan the big event," Kayyem says. "In some ways, sporting events are sort of an easy event to manage from a security perspective because there is a date and time to build up to it. The unfortunate thing is, there is no solution. If you fortify certain areas, obviously the risk is going to permeate down to the next level. If you make all the world-class events secure, then it's going to be the second level. I don't think there's much we can do about that."
As Pike puts it: "People don't rob Fort Knox, but they knock over liquor stores every night."
Nonetheless, sports officials are trying to make venues more secure and do a better job of policing who and what gets in.
Kevin Hallinan, head of security for Major League Baseball, remembers the events of Sept. 11 coming over him "like a fog," so disorienting it took a moment to figure out how to respond both personally and professionally.
His first step was making sure baseball's players were safe, and he assigned a security officer to travel with each team. Then he arranged a conference call among the directors of baseball's 30 ballparks to start overhauling security procedures -- from inspecting dumpsters around the venues' perimeter, sweeping the parks for briefcases and packages and reviewing evacuation plans.
By mid-week, NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue had postponed the weekend's games, as did all major sports leagues and college football teams. And he put Ahlerich in charge of a task force to develop "best practices" for NFL stadium security.
When New York's teams resumed play, thousands remained unaccounted for at Ground Zero. The Washington Redskins returned to their Loudoun County practice field amid an eerie silence, without the customary roar of takeoffs and landings at nearby Dulles International Airport. Fans were unusually silent, too, scarcely complaining about the long lines and probing searches that slowed entry to the nation's ballparks.
While some wondered if February's Winter Olympics should be canceled, Mitt Romney, president of the Salt Lake City Organizing Committee, set to work assuring the world's athletes they would be safe at the 2002 Games.
Both the Winter Olympics and Super Bowl were designated National Special Security Events, which meant that the Secret Service was automatically in charge.
Security plans were radically revised and reinforced for both events, with more focus on threats from the air. Disaster drills were staged in New Orleans, with federal officials calling in fake reports to test the readiness for responding to plague, explosions and other disasters. Drugs were stockpiled to counter chemical and biological weapons. And no-fly zones were instituted around the Louisiana Superdome and within a 45-mile radius of Salt Lake City.
The police and military presence topped 10,000 at the Winter Games, outnumbering the athletes more than four to one. Most were in uniform, but thousands of undercover agents (men and women of all ages) mingled with fans, shopped for souvenirs and skied down the slopes while combing the crowd for terrorists.
Amid this $ 310 million blanket of security, American athletes went on to win a record 34 medals. Third-generation Olympian Jim Shea Jr. gives much of the credit to the inspiration of Sept. 11 and a pep talk from President Bush, who stood among the athletes during the bitter night chill of Opening Ceremonies.
"He got us so fired up," said Shea, who won a gold medal in skeleton. "He said, 'The country is behind you, win or lose. We're all proud of you, no matter what happens. But now is the time to be heroes.' As soon as he was done with that speech, I wanted to race right then!"
For the most part, the world wrapped a supportive arm around American athletes during the Winter Games. But plans for the U.S. delegation to march into Opening Ceremonies carrying the World Trade Center flag were rejected by the International Olympic Committee, whose members felt it would be an inappropriate display of nationalism.
After delicate negotiations, a compromise was reached that allowed the flag to be carried in by a smaller honor guard of athletes and representatives of New York's Port Authority and Fire and Police departments during the traditional playing of the national anthem.
"We felt it was appropriate to begin the Games with a recognition of the greater meaning that had been brought to the Olympics by the heroism of our fallen heroes," Romney said.
Around the first anniversary of the attacks, it has been virtually impossible to tune in a sporting event that doesn't make reference to the tragedy. NFL coaches wear shirts embroidered with a U.S. flag and the date, 9-11. Tonight, Major League Baseball games will pause for a moment of silence at 9:11 p.m., followed by a video tribute to the victims of the attack. And NASCAR had changed the name of its upcoming race at Dover (Del.) International Speedway to the MBNA All-American Heroes 400.
For some, it is too much.
Salon.com's Gary Kamiya called for an end to "quasi-official messages of national healing" at major sporting events last February. "Such messages have increasingly begun to take over the tragedy they attempt to commemorate,"
Kamiya wrote. "The reality of Sept. 11 is buried beneath a mountain of red, white and blue treacle."
But it is the lack of acknowledgement by Olympic officials of the massacre at the 1972 Summer Games that is so painful for Benjamin and Dorothy Berger of Shaker Heights, Ohio.
The Munich Olympics introduced terrorism to the world, as hooded gunmen from the Palestinian terrorist group Black September took captive and killed 11 Israeli athletes. The Bergers' son, David, was among those slain. In the years since, they have repeatedly asked IOC officials to hold a moment of silence in the victims' honor during the Games, but it has never happened.
"They would like to forget the whole thing," Dorothy Berger says. "I guess that admits blame."
The Bergers have not attended an Olympics since. Dorothy Berger sometimes watches the competition on TV -- everything but wrestling and weightlifting, her son's sports. And she believes the Olympics have changed as a result of Munich.
"There is so much security," she said. "There was absolutely none in 1972. They left everything to the Germans, and we know what happened. I have very bad thoughts about that."
Today, at stadiums across the country, millions of fans have apparently made peace with sports' new reality.
Last weekend's Florida-Miami game drew a record 85,777 revelers to Gainesville's stadium, where there were no metal detectors or bomb-sniffing dogs in sight.
"I thought about it during the game when I looked around and saw all the people," said Fort Lauderdale's Dana Holding, asked if she had concerns about her safety at the game. "But it's not something you're going to stress about."
According to Lionel Dubay, past president of the International Association of Assembly Managers, those who run the nation's sports venues and concert halls are taking every step humanly possible to ensure that spectators are safe. But he concedes the obvious. "If someone wants to make a statement through a terrorist act at a public event," Dubay says, "they possibly could succeed."
Pike devotes much of his day to contemplating how. Mortars launched from nearby buildings? Suicide bombings?
In the meantime, the NFL's Ahlerich sees no evidence that the extra measures can be relaxed.
"We're in this for the long haul," Ahlerich says. "If we're advised by the U.S. government a year or two years from now the threat level has dropped down and gone away, then perhaps we can ease back. But we're not being told that.
"We're told we need to be careful. All Americans are being told this. And we're taking it very seriously."
Copyright 2002 The Washington Post
