Winter Games Still on Tap

The International Olympic Committee declared Tuesday that the Salt Lake Winter Olympic Games will take place as scheduled in February, and a top IOC official disclosed that a plane crash during the opening ceremony has for years been part of the Olympic security worst-case planning process.

In another development involving security and the Olympics, Greek Prime Minister Costas Simitis said at a government meeting in Athens that his nation “will do the utmost” in preparations for the 2004 Summer Games. Security has long been a concern in Greece, where since 1975 a terrorist group dubbed “17 November” has killed nearly two dozen people, including four Americans. No member of the group has ever been arrested.

In Lausanne, at Olympic headquarters, the IOC’s ruling Executive Board voted unanimously to carry on with the Salt Lake Games, confirming an announcement issued last week by Jacques Rogge of Belgium, the newly elected IOC president. Vice President Thomas Bach, an influential IOC delegate from Germany, said the “commitment to the Games was very clear and unconditional,” signaling “the will to demonstrate solidarity with the Americans in not just words but deeds.”

Bach also said the unanimous vote of the 15-member board expressed “the message that the Olympic movement will not bow to violence.”

In the wake of last Tuesday’s terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, however, IOC officials also said security plans for Salt Lake must be “revisited and reviewed.” And IOC Director General Francois Carrard said that the IOC’s “catastrophe scenario” has long been an airplane crash during the Games’ opening ceremony.

“Our scenario was--and is--a plane crashing in the opening ceremony, full of people, full of fuel, in the midst of the opening ceremony, broadcast worldwide live on television,” Carrard said.

Since the 1972 Munich Games, when Palestinian terrorists kidnapped 11 Israeli athletes and coaches--all were killed, either in the Olympic Village or later in a firefight at a German airport--the IOC has been highly sensitive both to security concerns and to the unique publicity platform the Games provide, Carrard said. A bomb exploded at Centennial Olympic Park during the 1996 Atlanta Games, killing one woman and injuring more than 100 people.

At each Games since 1972, Carrard said, the plane-crash scenario has been among the prospects considered by “people working on the security at the governmental level and organizational level, with our input,” Carrard said. Asked if planning includes provisions to shoot down a plane carrying civilians, he said, “I’m not disclosing the measures.”

He did say: “What we have always advocated and insisted upon is that there is one person in charge. In other words, to have one chief,” adding, “We’ve always asked that there is one person, whatever, red phone, whatever, to do whatever should be ordered. That is for us a very key message.”

Other senior IOC members said they were unaware the plane-crash scenario has for nearly 30 years been an active part of Games planning. Australia’s R. Kevan Gosper, an IOC member since 1977 who played an active role in preparations for last year’s Sydney Games, said Carrard’s comments marked the “first time” he’d heard of such a thing.

Carrard’s comments came during a news conference held amid the first full Executive Board chaired by Rogge, who was elected IOC president in July. Rogge was not available Tuesday for comment.

Former IOC president Juan Antonio Samaranch of Spain, who at that Moscow session was given the lifetime right to attend Executive Board meetings, remains in Barcelona, his hometown, where he has been receiving medical care for the last several weeks. Sources said the 81-year-old Samaranch is comfortable and his condition has stabilized since he collapsed just days after Rogge’s election; Samaranch is now undergoing regular dialysis treatments.

The Salt Lake Games promise to be the last Olympics in the United States for at least 10 years, perhaps longer. Los Angeles, New York, Washington and five other U.S. cities already are vying for the 2012 Summer Games; Rogge, meantime, has made clear his desire to spread the Games around the world.

Immediately after the attacks in New York and Arlington, Va., Mitt Romney, president of the Salt Lake Organizing Committee, said security plans for the Games would indeed be reviewed. He is due to provide the IOC today with a security update. He had said last week, however, that he did not expect radical change to Salt Lake’s $200-million security plan because the framework was “quite complete.”

In Athens, Simitis, the prime minister, chairing a meeting of all Greek ministers and officials involved in planning for 2004, said Greece would spare “no effort” in its Games security plan, according to government spokesman Tilemahos Hitiris.

Greece’s culture minister, Evangelos Venezelos, who oversees the government agency in charge of most Games planning, said after the meeting, “The United States themselves will have the opportunity to try new measures, even more effectively on their own territory in Salt Lake City, and we will be present, we will watch and we will be informed.”

The Greek government has previously announced it intends to spend $600 million on safety measures for the Games. The Greek military reportedly is to be extensively involved in Games security.

An IOC inspection of delay-plagued preparations for the Athens Games is due to take place next week, and Rogge is to meet with Simitis.

While special attention was devoted Tuesday to security matters, the meeting in Lausanne also touched on a wide range of other issues. The IOC announced it will hold a special session in the fall of 2002 to reshape the package of 50 reforms it passed in December 1999 as a response to the Salt Lake corruption scandal.

The scandal erupted in late 1998 after it was revealed that bidders in Salt Lake had showered more than $1 million in cash, gifts and other inducements on IOC members or their relatives as part of the winning bid for the 2002 Games. Ten IOC members resigned or were expelled.

The fall 2002 session will be held in Mexico, at a city yet to be determined, Carrard said.