Olympic Security

To assist Greece in securing the 2004 Olympic Games, U.S. gov¿t. agencies provided training and other support in the 4 years leading up to the Games. Also, the U.S. gov¿t. provided some security and other assistance to Amer. athletes, spectators, and commercial investors, and expects to continue such support for future Olympics. This report: (1) determines the U.S. approach and coordination efforts for providing security assistance to the 2004 Summer Olympics; (2) examines the roles of U.S. agencies in Athens Olympics security and their financial outlays; and (3) reviews lessons learned in providing security assistance in support of the Olympics and how they are being incorporated into preparations for future Olympics. Illustrations.

Additional written evidence is contained in Vol. 3, available on the Committee website at www.parliament.uk/homeaffairscom

Uses the Sydney Olympics as a prism through which to explore recent Olympic scandals, media coverage, reform efforts, and controversies.

This NAO report (HCP 490, session 2007-08, ISBN 9780102954197), provides a progress report on the preparations for the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games. There are four years still to go until the Games take place and the NAO has set out a number of conclusions and recommendations regarding progress, including and covering the following areas: (1) On programme management and risk. The Government Olympic Committee should establish that the various delivery organisations are able to maintain their programme plan and that all arrangements for achieving their goals are up-to-date; also that GOE should align its risk assessments with the overarching programme plan it is setting in place; (2) On budget management. That the assessment criteria for applications to use contingency funds should allow for spend and save use of contingency, that is spending more on one project if it can help avoid delays later in other areas. (3) On evaluation of legacy benefits. The evaluation framework should set baselines against which to measure legacy benefits and disentangle the effects of the Games from other regeneration activities; (4) On management supplier performance. The Olympic Delivery Authority should be able to show by the end of 2008 that the systems for monitoring supplier performance across all objectives are in place and operating effectively; further the Authority needs to communicate to the suppliers the importance of collaborative working and also the Authority should establish whether effective competition is being acheived by suppliers. The NAO's overall conclusion is that preparations for the Games have progressed in important ways. The construction programme is on track; good practice is evident in the way procurement is being handled; the cost estimates have been developed and a clear baseline has been set for assessing costs and progress in the delivery of the venues and associated infrastructures. For related reports, see HCP 612, session 2006-07, (ISBN 9780102947335); Cm.7216 (ISBN 9780101721622); HCP 252, session 2006-07 (ISBN 9780102944273); HCP 85, session 2007-08 (ISBN 9780215514653).

Drawing on new archival documents and interviews, this book demonstrates the evolving role of international politics in Olympic security planning. Olympic security concerns changed forever following the terrorist attack on Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympic Games. The International Olympic Committee’s (IOC) choice to ignore security after the attack in Munich left individual Olympic Games Organizing Committees to organize, fund, and provide security for the major international event. Future Olympic hosts planned security amidst increasing numbers of international terrorist attacks, and with the Cold War in full swing. For some Olympic hosts, Olympic security now represented their nation’s largest ever military operations. By the time the IOC made security more of a priority in the early 1980s, the trends in Olympic security were set for the future.

Terrorism is a complex phenomenon that cannot be understood through reading of a number of unrelated academic articles or a dry overview of the history of terrorism or the investigative techniques. For A New Understanding of Terrorism, the Editors have chosen a different paradigm. They have selected numerous case studies from actual events that illustrate various typologies of terrorist actions, be it from a separatist, nationalist, lone-wolf individual terrorist, religious fanatics or environmentalist orientation, and they present these cases within the context of following the trajectories of the terrorist activity, the terrorist act itself and, the response to the event from the relevant authorities. Some chapters concentrate on terrorist attacks that actually took place, others speculate about the possibilities of an attack occurring sometime in the future, such as the chapters on the Olympic Games, Aviation or Rail Security. When possibilities rather than a specific event are discussed, the authors of these chapters draw the attention of the reader towards the same direction—the reasoning, the actual event and the response that followed. The thorough analysis of the presented case studies and the applied counter-measures will, hopefully, if not curtail then possibly at least mitigate the operational and ideological strength of terrorist groups or individual actors. A New Understanding of Terrorism will enable the reader to make the connection between the emotional charge inherent in any terrorist activity, the cold-blooded tactics that lead to the terrorist event itself and the pragmatic and very straightforward, but at the same time very simplistically designed, strategic response that has to come from a synergy between academics, military and law enforcement brainstorming design in order to be more effective in the future. ABOUT THE EDITORS: M.R. (Maki) Haberfeld is a Professor of Police Science at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City. She has worked for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, in the New York Field Office, as a special consultant. Prior to that she has served in a counter-terrorist unit in the Israeli Defense Forces and she left the army at the rank of Sergeant. She was also a lieutenant in the Israel National Police. For the past eight years, Dr. Haberfeld has been involved in developing, coordinating and teaching in a special training program for the New York City Police Department, where she teaches courses in police ethics, leadership and counter-terrorism. She was also an Academic Coordinator of the Law Enforcement Executive Police Institute for the State of New York, where she taught modules on counter-terrorism response. Agostino von Hassell is the president of The Repton Group LLC, a New York City based consulting group that deals mostly with national security issues. He has written numerous political and historical articles and is the author of two major military histories, Warriors: The United States Marine Corps and Strike Force: Marine Corps Special Operations. In 2003, he published a pictorial portrait of the United States—In Honor of America. He has taught as an adjunct professor in the graduate program of John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York, teaching members of the New York City Police Department in subjects such as counter-terrorism and leadership. He is a life member of the United States Marine Corps Combat Correspondents, the National Defense Industry Association, the Association of Former Intelligence Officers and the Authors’ Guild.

This 2nd edition of a highly successful book (published in 2000) provides a comprehensive, critical analysis of the Olympic Games using a multi-disciplinary social science approach. This revised edition contains much new data relating to the Sydney 2000 Games and their aftermath; and preparations for Athens 2004 and Beijing 2008 Games. The book is broad-ranging and independent in its coverage, and includes the use of drugs, sex testing, accusations of power abuse among members of the IOC, the Games as a stage for political protest, media-related controversies, economic costs and benefits of the Games and historical conflicts between organizers and host communities.

Historical research on the Olympic Movement is highly valuable as it displays processes of continuity and transformation by which knowledge building processes on the Olympic Movement, its structure and on Olympic sport can be expanded. The Olympic Movement can be addressed from multidisciplinary perspectives, including management, sociology, education, philosophy and history. This comprehensive collection examines the multifaceted profile of the Olympic and Paralympic Movement and presents new insights drawn from a variety of research projects. Historical and political dimensions of the Olympic and Paralympic Movement are addressed, along with educational, ethical, commercial and sociological perspectives. This book was originally published as a special issue of The International Journal of the History of Sport.