Operatives of Osama bin Laden (click here) conducted "meticulous" surveillance of Salt Lake City, the online magazine Salon recently reported. The revelation that Salt Lake City might be a target of bin Laden is cause for concern for those officials tasked with security for the 2002 Winter Olympics, whose opening ceremonies begin on February 8. The specter of Olympic terrorism has haunted planners of the games ever since 1972, when a group of Palestinian terrorists kidnapped and killed eleven Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics....
...National Alliance: "Milking the Mainstream Press"
One of the first hate groups to consider targeting the Olympics was the National Alliance (NA), the largest and best-organized neo-Nazi group in the U.S. The NA is headed by William Pierce, author of The Turner Diaries, a novelized blueprint for an armed revolution that has inspired a number of terrorists, including Timothy McVeigh. In 1999, Pierce expressed boredom with the Olympics, telling his shortwave radio audience that he "found it difficult to become very excited about the Olympics…ever since basketball became one of the official Olympic sports." However, as the Salt Lake City games approached, some of his followers began to see opportunities to exploit the Olympics....
