For the first time, the games are being held during a world war--on terrorism. "The Olympics are an extremely tempting target," says Louis Mizell, a former State Department special agent and intelligence analyst. "Where else could terrorists get so much international publicity?" And he adds, "The games are easier to attack than to defend."
http://www.usnews.com/usnews/issue/040614/misc/14olympics.htm

Hole in the net. The potential Greek tragedy is that unprecedented mobilization may not be enough to save the games. In fact, the continuing "chatter" of threats, and the record of Greek delays and snafus, has scared off so many fans that with just 10 weeks to go, half of the event tickets are still unsold, raising the prospect of a financial catastrophe. And that's just the most alarming of the menaces. In recent weeks, the fairness of the competition has been called into question by allegations of athletes' doping and official corruption.

Mizell's biggest Olympic fear: that terrorists have already slipped onto one of the hundreds of hastily assembled construction crews around Athens and secreted a bomb in a now covered ditch or inside a now finished wall. That's exactly how Chechen terrorists planted the stadium bomb that killed their country's pro-Russian president last month, he noted. If Mizell's right, Athens's last-minute spurt of work could be too little, too late.

That is yet another risk every open society faces. "What country in the world does not have porous borders, easily infiltrated work crews, and loosely guarded construction sites?" Mizell asks. "It's a dangerous world today."

Finally, some experts worry that Greece simply doesn't take security matters seriously.

The athletes, however, are intent on making it to Athens. They say they're worried not about security but about the fairness of the competition. And with good reason. The recent discovery of a San Francisco Bay Area laboratory that was making a powerful but undetectable steroid has raised allegations that non-cheaters can't prosper anymore.