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Journalism of Courage
Helicopters hovering above the Acropolis. Sensor-packed white blimps in the sky, with a landing port just across the Helliniko Olympic Complex where the Indians will play hockey. Metal detectors everywhere — outside each stadium, at the media village, at the press centre.
Patriot missiles primed to fire. Equipment moved from Iraq to Greece to guard the Games. A mechanism in place to shoot down any rogue aircraft 120 seconds after it has been identified — the only reason for delay being the time spent to inform the Prime Minister and get his verbal okay. A security budget of $1.6 billion; 70,000 security personnel on duty.
It is not for nothing that the Athens Olympic Games, the first after 9/11, are being called the largest peacetime security operation in European history. For Greece, an incident-free Games is imperative to prove to sceptics — primarily the US — that it was up to the challenge in the first place. After all, even basketballer Shaquille O’Neill dropped out, allegedly over terrorist concerns.
‘‘This is the biggest security arrangement in Greece’s history’’, says Regina Dessiniotou, spokesperson for the Ministry of Public Order. ‘‘After 9/11, the paradigm changed…We have worked with seven countries under the Olympic Advisory Group. And used the Nato family network.’’
For Dora Baykoyannnis, Athens’s dark-haired mayor, security was also something close to the bone. Already spoken of as a potential prime minister, she lost her husband to an ultra-left terrorist assassination in 1989.
The perceived enemies of Greece’s showpiece event are many. Al Qaeda is an omnipresent threat. The host has its own, longstanding problems with left-wing and Turkish minority militias. The Russians are worried about the Chechen rebels.
Protecting the Games is as much an international project as the Olympics themselves. The OAG, assisting the oragisers, involves security experts from the US and the UK, France, Israel and Germany; Spain and Australia, as the two immediate past Olympic hosts, are also OAG members.
Yet the help is all in the background. On the streets, at the metal detectors, manning the stadium gates — every face you see is Greek. When it was suggested in 2003 that the British, American and Israeli teams would fly in armed guards, there was a public uproar. ‘‘It was a huge issue’’, remembers Kris Panas, a development issues worker in Athens, ‘‘the Greek public was very upset. The government had to backtrack and say, ‘No, no, it was only an idea’.’’
So if there are any US Marines or Mossad agents in Athens, hidden perhaps with their national squads at the Games Village, nobody knows about them.
Over three years, 11 ‘‘dress rehearsals’’ were held to test security arrangements. The first exercise, Trojan Horse, took place on August 8-9 2001. A month later came the attack on the Twin Towers. By the time of Operation Gordian Knot in May 2002 the threat perception for the Games ‘‘had grown exponentially’’ says an official at the nodal Ministry of Public Order. Incidentally, the ministry is headed by a former commando turned politician.
Subsequent mock security ops — each evocatively and appropriately named, borrowing from ancient Greek legend — factored in every possible mode of attack. In November 2002, Exercise Rainbow simulated a suicide plane hurtling into the Athenian seaport of Piraeus.
A year later, Flaming Glaive — named for a medieval blade-like weapon — tested preparedness against biological and chemical attack. Hydra 2003, named after the multi-headed monster in Greek mythology, focused on concurrent attacks at four venues. In 2004 itself, Blue Odyssey projected a WMD attack centred on a yacht. Hercules Shield was a dry run of strategic and political response time. Finally, Olympic Guardian II in May 2004 was the closest approximation of the Games under attack.
Despite the pressure of the job the average man or woman in uniform — drawn from the Greek army, navy, air force and coast guard — are not stern, inscrutable robots. They smile and put visitors completely at easy.
‘‘They’ve probably been told to be extra-polite’’, says Australian radio show host Christine Davy — her co-host, as it happens, is former cricketer Simon O’Donnell. ‘‘But’’, she adds, ‘‘there must be something about the air in the Mediterranean.’’The Greeks probably have a simpler word for it — hospitality.
