Organizers of Utah's 2002 Winter Games feared that the bomber who struck during the 1996 Summer Games in Atlanta, believed to be Eric Robert Rudolph, would come out of hiding to once again target the Olympics in the United States.
Their worries were compounded on Sept. 11, 2001 — the Salt Lake City Games only five months away — when international terrorists attacked the United States.
Rudolph, on the run since being charged in the deadly bombing of Atlanta's Centennial Olympic Park and other attacks in the Southeast, was captured early Saturday in North Carolina.
Although Rudolph may have never left the region, known as a haven for right-wing extremists, authorities in Utah had prepared for the possibility that the notorious fugitive would choose to reappear at the 2002 Games
"Our thinking was, 'Well, if he hasn't surfaced since (the Atlanta bombing), this would be a grand stage for him,' " FBI Special Agent George Dougherty, a member of the joint terrorism task force created to protect Utah's Olympics, told the Deseret News Saturday.
Several people reported seeing Rudolph in Utah before the Games, Dougherty said, including at one ski resort. "We had a couple of possible sightings of him," he said, but none was confirmed.
"We were aware of what he had done, and we were making plans to try to thwart something like that," Dougherty said. "We thought this was a perfect place for him to show up. We did. We were planning for that. Then 9/11 happened."
Even the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks that killed thousands in New York City, Pennsylvania and Washington, D.C., didn't lessen the concern over Rudolph.
"His name came up a lot," Dougherty said, recalling the sentiment to "not forget we have the Eric Rudolphs of the world out there that still pose a threat."
A bomb allegedly set off by Rudolph shattered the spirit of the Atlanta Games, striking at a downtown park similar to Salt Lake City's Olympic Square, the temporary gathering place during the Games that encompassed parts of eight downtown blocks adjacent to the Delta Center.
Salt Lake Organizing Committee President Fraser Bullock was in Atlanta's Centennial Olympic Park with his wife just a few days before a pipe bomb exploded there at 1:25 a.m. July 27, 1996, killing a mother attending a rock concert with her daughter and injuring 111 others.
Bullock, who at the time of the blast was still years away from leaving a business career for SLOC, recalled being stunned.
"When we heard about the bomb a few days after we left, we thought, gee, we were right there," he said Saturday. "That was scary."
He remembered the park as "very crowded. You almost couldn't move because of the crowds. . . . But it was fun to mingle and be there." The park featured Olympic bricks as well as a fountain much like the one now gracing Salt Lake City's Gateway shopping complex.
When Bullock was hired as SLOC's chief operating officer in 1999, he said the Atlanta incident figured prominently into the planning for what became Salt Lake City's Olympic Square, which included the site of the nightly medal awards ceremonies and concerts as well as sponsor exhibits.
Unlike Atlanta's 21-acre park, which was open to anyone before the bombing, visitors to Salt Lake City's Olympic Square had to pass through airport-style security before being admitted.
"Post-9/11 we would have done that anyway," Bullock said. "But what we wanted to do was have a place where people could come downtown and rub shoulders with the people of the world and yet feel safe. That obviously had its roots in what happened in Atlanta."
The Salt Lake Games became, of course, the most fortified Olympics in U.S. history, complete with armed soldiers in fatigues patrolling the streets and jet fighters in formation patrolling the skies.
Yet, despite all that security Salt Lake City didn't escape its Games unscathed.
A Feb. 24 explosion at a Utah Power terminal substation at 4800 W. 700 South caused widespread power outages, leaving the Salt Lake International Airport operating on back-up generators for a time and sparking a fire at a North Salt Lake oil refinery. The blast heightened Olympic security concerns, especially since Vice President Dick Cheney was in town to appear at the Games' closing ceremonies. The U.S. Attorney's Office has charged a 44-year-old cattle rancher in connection with the explosion.
Then, on the night before closing ceremonies, police clashed with hundreds of still-thirsty revelers who were upset with the decision to close Bud World, a downtown beer garden and entertainment magnet. The late-night confrontation resulted in 20 arrests and left some officers and others slightly injured.
Despite the hundreds of millions of tax dollars invested in Olympic security after the Sept. 11 attacks, the head of the Utah Olympic Public Safety Command, David Tubbs, knew how vulnerable the Salt Lake Games were.
Tubbs — who helped investigate the Atlanta bombing before retiring from the FBI three years ago — said midway through the Salt Lake Games that the blast "just shows you how fragile this whole thing is."
"Regardless of the job you do, some nut can come out and do something crazy."
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