Word: atlanta
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Ghastly though it was, the Atlanta explosion had the perverse virtue of being clear-cut terrorism: an obvious bomb, identifiable victims, even fingerprints to dust for. Those caught up in the tragedy of TWA 800, which fell into the sea killing all 230 aboard, lacked such certainties. Grieving relatives wanted to take home their deceased. The U.S. Government and much of the general public wanted to know whether one of America's commercial airliners had been blown out of the sky by terrorists. These questions, during a grueling and sometimes chaotic week, seemed at times incompatible--urgencies with different priorities...
...village green of the Games, a global common ground where everyone could congregate and share the bonds symbolized by five interwoven rings. Last week our minds needed such a venue. There was a lot of magic and malice we had to reconcile: the triumphs of will and spirit in Atlanta, the gruesome carnage and fear that fell from Flight 800 over Long Island...
That is very much what Atlanta, and the world, is facing now, as the magic that was supposed to surround the Centennial Games was undone in two moments, when a plane suddenly plunged and when a strong shuddering left every flag hanging at half-staff. It takes only a small bomb, and anxieties run like a fuse. After the explosion in the dead of night, every tremble became an aftershock. A volunteer touched a microphone, and everybody jumped. A box of paper on the floor prompted worried looks. As people looked over their shoulders, a shiver led to a global...
...games will go on." those emphatic words were spoken by Francois Carrard, director general of the International Olympic Committee, after a homemade pipe bomb exploded in Atlanta's Centennial Olympic Park at 1:21 Saturday morning. His spirited announcement at 5:20 a.m. was an echo of the last time that violence devastated, but did not halt, the Olympic Games, when 11 members of the Israeli team were killed by Palestinians in Munich in 1972. But this determination not to let a terrorist act obliterate the Olympic spirit was also a stance against an unwanted future--against an awful time...
Although it was almost unimaginable that Atlanta would turn out to be like London--or Munich, for that matter--authorities thought they had done all they could to ensure that these would be the safest Olympic games in history. Even before the explosion of TWA Flight 800, the White House was acutely aware that the Games were a big, inviting terrorist target, and Vice President Al Gore personally reviewed all the security arrangements for Atlanta. Indeed, the bombing on Saturday occurred in the midst of what amounts to an armed camp--with 30,000 law-enforcement officers deployed to protect...