however, they had no evidence that the women were a threat or had plans to travel to russia. what i m told is when it comes to threats outside of russia, there s pretty good cooperation but inside russia, that s where u.s. officials have serious concerns about whether the russian share everything that they know and, of course, with the olympics inside russia, create major concern for americans traveling. in addition to the so-called toothpaste bombs, they are worried about suicide bombers going after softer targets, maybe outside of the ring of steel to embarrass putin, if you will. that s right. it would in effect be an embarrassment so that shows the seriousness of tamping down these threats. one source saying we d be very lucky to get through this without an attack. that s a grave concern. jim sciutto, thanks. the u.s. is standing by to
because what i ve heard from experts here in washington repeatedly over the past several days, fareed, the ring of steel will probably be okay given the amount of security personnel that the russians have poured in but immediately outside, some of the softer potential target areas, there could very likely be some sort of terrorist attack. well, it s the point you made earlier, wolf, which is there are so many opportunities, whether it s toothpaste or, you know, all kinds of very simple technologies that can now create an incident. it probably wouldn t be something that would kill lots of people but it would be a place where the whole world is watching. so even a small attack would get magnified and with terrorism, you want a few people dead and a lot of people watching. sochi provides that opportunity and there is this huge cadray of
inconvenience. thank you. reporter: mother nature may be harder to deal with. after several days of cold weather, there is a warm front on the way. but a sochi snow specialist says, he s got enough snow machines to compensate for warm weather. first of all, don t worry about the snow. snow will be guaranteed. guaranteed. yeah. reporter: some of the olympic athletes are impressed. this is my first olympics. so for me, this is absolutely incredible, above and beyond my expectations of what an olympic village would be. reporter: as for the lingering question of security, there is a reason why they call it the ring of steel. tens of thousands of russian security forces have been deployed to protect these olympic games. now, suzanne and michael, this isn t just a couple journalists who have a tendency to complain and whine. we do as a profession, if i can speak as a journalist, there are bigger concerns here when it comes to lack of preparedness.
already arrived in sochi and have been there now for a while. the media, obviously, is already there setting up their equipment to film or cover the olympic games. obviously, cnn, nick paton walsh has been there for some time. people are already there. so if a sudden warning goes out to also check the check-in luggage, you know, it could be too late for that as well. and i think something else that people need to realize is that this has turned into a war of words. almost a trash talking like in the national football league only with life and death circumstance where putin is saying, we ve got the ring of steel. you re not going to get in here. and the terrorists since last july are saying, yes, we are, we are going to penetrate. and they ve had seven years to prepare and hide materials in sochi before that ring of steel was ever erected. so there s a lot going on here, and it s a very dangerous situation. certainly is. tom fuentes, thanks very much.
now we have this. went on to say we re working very closely with the russians and other partners to detect any threats we see and disrupt those. ivan, you ve been there for several days now. walk us through the security that you ve had to endure, obviously, out of an abundance of caution, the russians are being very, very determined to try to make sure that everyone remains safe. you know, wolf, i think the term that we ve been throwing around the ring of steel is a very accurate one. the olympic venues are very fort fied, not only by fences and metal detect erts but these scanners that you have to run your accreditations and your travel passes through, but also by the tens of thousands of russian security forces that have clearly been deployed here.