whether that takes place in the ring of steel or whether it happens anywhere else around russia, the fundamentalists don t care. their point will be made one way or the other. so that remains the biggest threat. so bottom line, it appears from what you re telling me on the one hand it is involved with russia and the russian intel, as you said, they have no bound row lees and they can collect boundaries and they can collect the information wherever, whenever they want to. so you sort of enter the country at your own risk. do you feel, though, there is so much hype leading up to the games, we re only a few hours into the olympics, and so far, so good. but the folks there, or u.s. allies, making sure that the folks there are safe. nobody can let their guard down at this time, right? no. and we have to be pragmatic. sochi right now is a high threat environment. so we have to treat it as such and we have been. certainly our u.s. team, we ve
a few hours from now, opening ceremonies at sochi olympics and the tsa is banning all liquids on flights to russia. this amidst serious fears terrorists could smuggle bombs in tubes of toothpaste. the ring of steel has sochi on lockdown right now. an estimated 40,000 security police are on duty, but experts are warning the terrorists could already be inside that ring posing as workers for the olympics. that may not be the biggest concern. listen to this one. i think for me, the big threat is the black widows and the threat that they really pose on being able to disrupt the games. the toothpaste piece and the information that came out yesterday i think is important, but it s not really new to us. since 9-11, we ve all had the issues of going through airport security with too much liquids. he s talking about women who potentially be homicide bombers there. as of now, homeland security
cooperation. for instance, there were arrests yesterday but inside russia, that s where the russians hold their cards closer to their chest and that s of concern because that s where the most serious threats seem to be emanating from and there are a lot of targets in russia. if they can t get inside the ring of steel, you have the transportation links, you have other cities where the groups are successful in recent weeks. let me bring bob baird into this situation. give us your concern about the threat level of these two weeks of olympic games in sochi. wolf, i think it s high. the chechens are capable of hitting at least somewhere in russia and i think they will. frankly, i m a bit surprised they didn t try something today and i don t think that hijacking clearly wasn t part of their operations. i don t think we ve seen the end of this. i can t imagine that the chechens or islamic groups would let this pass the entire olympics. the only thing we know is what
kind of deal the russians may have cut with them. that may pass without it happening but i would be surprise gld what i have heard, coming into these games and i wonder if you agree, i ve been hearing from officials here in washington, what they are worried about is so-called softer targets outside of the immediate area of the olympic village but potentially could cause a lot of casualties, a lot of damage and areas that are less secure than the so-called ring of steel. wolf, you re absolutely right. you cannot protect all of russia. there s still missing weapons around the rlc, improvised devices. any number of things could be used against soft targets, foreigners in st. petersburg or moscow. i don t think they are going to let this pass the entire olympics. i really don t. nick, you re there.
talk of the last few days has been about toothpaste bombs, but that sophisticated technique isn t really what s going to be bothering people on the ground here for the past few months. this is a region of the world where explosives are pretty common when you re away from the ring of steel near here in sochi and there are concerns about how well you can implement a dagnet across this whole region given the state of the russian police force often seen by russians as being a net being corrupt and actually with brutal tactics that many accuse of having fueled the insurgency here in first place, wolf. nick paton walsh on the ground for us in sochi. nick, thanks very much. still ahead, cnn s rachel nichols is also in sochi right now. she s standing by to join us live. she ll tell us how the u.s. olympic team is responding to all these terror warnings out there and whether it s throwing them off their game. and we ll take you inside the hotels in sochi where so many of the rooms are simply