Security woes boost fears of Oly terror

ATHENS, Greece -- Intelligence officials who have long feared terrorism at next month's Olympic Games say delays in completing the security apparatus and athletic facilities have left too little time to fully test systems meant to detect or respond to an attack.

Although officials say they have no evidence of a planned attack by Islamic groups, they have constructed a web of protective measures that includes AWACs surveillance planes, NATO sea patrols, radiation detectors and thousands of soldiers and police.

But a sophisticated security command center, meant to integrate information from thousands of surveillance cameras as well as sonar in the ports and helicopters overhead, will not be operating completely until mid-July. This will not allow sufficient time to debug the system and fully train technicians, according to officials from Greece and other countries involved in security planning.

Greek officials have said the American-led consortium building the system has provided defective software and failed to complete work on the command center by the May 28 deadline. The system's developer, Science Applications International Corp., based in San Diego, declined requests for an interview and did not respond to questions sent by e-mail.

In addition, now six weeks before the opening of the Games, the main Olympic park and the soccer stadium are still construction sites. Surveillance cameras cannot be installed until the complexes are finished, and the major stadiums have held no events, which would have allowed officials to test their security procedures, officials said.

"We're running out of time," said a foreign intelligence official advising the Greeks on security. "The degree to which you run it down to the wire, therein lies the greatest risk."

Intelligence and law enforcement officials from five countries working with the Greeks on security were interviewed in the past two weeks. None would allow their names to be used, nor even their countries, primarily out of concern for Greek sensitivities.

"We have done everything humanly possible," said George A. Voulgarakis, the minister of public order. "We have spent more than we could afford." The expected $1.2 billion security bill is four times that spent in Sydney, Australia, for the last summer Olympics in 2000.

Copyright C 2004 Deseret News Publishing Co.
Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved.