other events where the event itself becomes the reason for a lot of new construction, a lot of revitalization and the like, and we ve certainly seen that here in sochi where a number of the hotels are new, the sporting venues obviously are new. the press center is new. so that s all had to be constructed in a fairly short period of time. we re hearing, of course, back here lots of scary, troublesome stories about explosive material in toothpaste tubes, black widows. what s your personal concern about sochi? about security at sochi? yes. listen, as the leader of the u.s. delegation, all i can say is that what we ve seen and what we ve heard seems that the level of security is quite appropriate, is very good, and i
little context, anytime you have one of these big international events, and unfortunately that includes olympics, security is an issue. it was an issue leading up into the london games, for example, and here because of its geographic proximity to an area that s actually in a war, that creates some other special security concerns. within the boundaries of sochi, within the so-called ring of steel, there s a lot of security, but, you know, once you have your credential, once you have your i.d.s and so forth, you can move around and get into the venues. does from your perspective from what you see, what from you ve heard, from what what s been told you, does the city seem to be as prepared as it needs to be given it s close to some war zones and that big events, as you know, tend to
from what you see, what from you ve heard, from what what s been told you, does the city seem to be as prepared as it needs to be given it s close to some war zones and that big events, as you know, tend to attract bad people? yeah, they do, unfortunately, and, again, anytime you have a big event, particularly a big sporting event where you have lots of different people, you know there s going to be a lot of media there, there has to be a lot of security, a lot of security preparation. there s a lot of preparation, for example, that goes into a super bowl and super bowl security planning. with respect to sochi, you know, we ve been received well. we have a nice hotel. our accommodations are just fine, but from what i hear from some of the athletes who are doing some of their training, they re quite satisfied. as you are eyeballing it, it seems they seem prepared. i know you can t know what s
going on behind the scenes or any of that, but it seems just by eyeballing it that the city is prepared. you know, it seems so. a lot of it s very new, and, you know and i have seen this in other events where the event itself becomes the reason for a lot of new construction, a lot of revitalization and the like, and we ve certainly seen that here in sochi where a number of the hotels are new, the sporting venues obviously are new. the press center is new. so that s all had to be constructed in a fairly short period of time. we re hearing, of course, back here lots of scary, troublesome stories about explosive material in toothpaste tubes, black widows. what s your personal concern about sochi? about security at sochi? yes. listen, as the leader of the u.s. delegation, all i can say
taped conversation between two u.s. diplomats that happened to be in the ukraine at the time and were not complimentary to the eu somehow appeared on the web and were being pushed by the soviets. is the soviet union capable kind of as a final question, are they capable i m sorry, the russians, you can tell, right? are the russians capable of protecting these olympics and keeping them safe? do they have the intelligence capability and do they have the manpower capability to make these safe? i m going to hazard the estimation that yes, they do. they have put an awful lot of effort into this. they ve collaborated with our security people. i think you can assume they ve done just everything they could possibly do to keep the olympics safe. and that s not a guarantee. sochi is a fairly small place. it is a contained place. so i agree with ambassador negroponte, they probably can