Planners breathe secure sigh of relief

SALT LAKE CITY -- Olympic security planners can finally relax. Their plan worked.

At $310 million, it was the most expensive effort ever to defend a sporting event. For Olympic athletes, 1.6 million spectators and Utah's residents, it was worth every penny.

A massive and complex operation to protect the Olympics worked almost to perfection, keeping people still jittery over the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks safe for 17 days.

National Guardsmen patrolled venues, police from around the country were on the streets, and F-16s and Blackhawk helicopters protected the airspace. Biological and chemical specialists were on alert and cameras looked everywhere.

A drunken street clash in the wee hours of the games' final day wasn't enough to ruin an unprecedented security effort that involved 60 agencies and departments, and employed more than 15,000 workers.

Besides several bomb scares and a false anthrax reading at the airport, there were no problems. Organizers say the huge security force was the reason.

"It may well have prevented potential threats or kept this from being a crime target," said Mitt Romney, head of the Salt Lake Organizing Committee.

Before the Winter Games, security leaders were confident they could protect the venues and athletes. Still, they worried a lone bomber might try to disrupt the games with an attack on city streets.

As the days went on after an uneventful opening ceremony, though, questions about the level of protection diminished.

David Tubbs, executive director of the Olympic security command, presided over a sparsely attended news conference a week into the games and drummed his fingers on the podium.

"I'm not sure what to say," he told the mostly silent journalists with a shrug.

So the plan worked. But it cost $310 million.

Did they spend too much?

"You're going to be criticized whichever way you go on that issue," Tubbs said.

If something went wrong, he said, the money wouldn't have been enough. Now, security expenses seem like a hefty check following an indulgent dinner.

"People are going to say we spent too much," Tubbs said. It hasn't been a frivolous binge, though. "We didn't ask for anything we didn't need."

Police had so little to do during the games that some volunteers went home early. It wasn't until Saturday night, when revelers turned away from a downtown beer garden tangled with police, that they got some action.

Police used foam-tipped bullets to disperse the crowd, and made 20 arrests. There were no injuries.

Throughout the games, there were 607 reports of suspicious packages, and bomb squads investigated each one. Just about all of them turned out to be nothing -- a forgotten backpack, a car battery by the side of the road.

Police spent a lot of time training for riotous demonstrations in the streets. Officers saw videos of the destructive tactics used by protesters in Seattle, Quebec City and Genoa, Italy.

But the demonstrators in Salt Lake City behaved themselves, and Saturday night's rowdy drunks were chased away within a couple of hours.

There was one big scare.

Utah Gov. Mike Leavitt got the call while watching figure skating: Air sensors at the airport had detected anthrax.

"For two hours, I thought we were in the middle of a big-time problem," Leavitt said.

It was a false alarm. The detector was cranked to its maximum sensitivity and returned an incorrect reading.

The day before the opening ceremony, police blew up a plastic grocery bag filled with fuses and electrical wire, calling the package near the Olympic media center a "hoax device."

Police said the bag might have been designed to see how authorities would react. It contained no explosives.

So, it the end, the security forces did exactly what they were supposed to do -- protect the city and Olympic venues and deter a major attack.

"You get a little sentimental about what's happened here," Tubbs said. "A lot of people will suffer a letdown."

Utah's governor, the city's mayor and even U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft say Salt Lake City could play host to the games again.

Scott Folsom, an assistant Salt Lake City police chief, said the Olympics have been a once-in-a-lifetime experience -- and they probably ought to stay that way.