Greeks Had Olympic Security Well in Hand

Re “Was a Greek Tragedy Thwarted?” Oct. 2: There are a few problems with Greg Krikorian’s piece on security at the Athens Olympics: First, it was not FBI Agent Jim McGee’s “job” to “keep terrorists from attacking the Games.” Greece had that responsibility. The story reads as though the U.S. was the only nation involved in security preparations, although probably 95% of the expense and the manpower was supplied by host country Greece. There was more “chatter” about an Al Qaeda attack in American newspapers than there was in the communiques monitored by U.S. and NATO spooks. If there were 500 U.S. security people who were “unseen” in Athens during the Olympics, there were thousands of machine-gun-toting Hellenic National Police and soldiers on every street corner of any consequence. Security at the Olympic venues was similar to that at an airport, and it was manned exclusively by Greeks. Working for a Greek newspaper during the Olympics, I learned that Greeks and other Europeans don’t have the same heightened sensitivity to terrorist attack as we do. After all, Sept. 11 happened here. But we also have the frequent color-coded terrorist alerts that keep us in a constant state of anxiety. It was too bad we had to take our anxieties with us to Athens.

Whose $100-million security operation was Krikorian referring to? The Greeks spent something like $2.5 billion on security, as several Greeks put it, to protect mostly Americans and Israelis and a few Brits.

Robert Bruce

Ukiah