SPECIAL EVENT INTELLIGENCE
Inside Our Game Plan
07/13/07
 |
| Inside
the Joint Operations Center during the
2007 Super Bowl in Miami. |
Picture
a crowded room, full of people and laptops,
wires running here and there, several flat
screen TV monitors hanging from the walls,
blaring loudly. People are staring intently
into their computers…or huddled together
talking…or wrapped up in conversations
on their cell phones.
It's
an intelligence war room of sorts, the
kind stood up routinely these days for major
special events—such as the nation's Fourth
of July celebrations, rock concerts, political
conventions, and sporting events like this
week's baseball All-Star game.
In
this case, the action is taking place on Super
Bowl Sunday, February 4, 2007, in Miami. On
the field, the Bears and the Colts are locked
in battle. In a joint operations center nearby
Dolphin Stadium, a bevy of analysts from the
FBI and elsewhere are engaged in a different
kind of struggle. Their mission is to wade
through, make sense of, and instantly pass
on to investigators any and all bits of intelligence
that might stop terrorists bent on launching
an attack on the Super Bowl.
The
center is the hub for intelligence at the
game, and information is flowing quickly
and freely between and among the players in
the room, who represent some 45 different
local, state, or federal agencies. Leading
the operation is FBI supervisory intelligence
analyst Christopher L. Eddy of Miami. He has
assembled a team of Bureau analysts from the
area, along with various specialists from
other agencies. In all, there are more than
a dozen intelligence experts on hand.
"Our
work started long before kickoff," says
Eddy. "Months earlier, we started having
a series of meetings, hundreds perhaps, to
work out logistics. About four weeks before
game day, we set up this center, got it wired,
made sure all the different agencies could
access their databases. Then, we immediately
started pulling together intelligence from
every possible source and sorting through
it all."
The
bits of information—say, a terrorist
in an Afghan prison cell talking about "game
day in Miami"—are carefully scrutinized,
with names and data often run through dozen
of databases. If a lead pans out, it's passed
on to a team of FBI agents and other investigators
to run down. "We're really the first
line of defense," says Eddy. "We
pull together all the intelligence, do our
analysis, run our checks. As soon as we know
it's not Super-Bowl related, we log it for
future reference and move on."
The
team ended up processing dozens of suspicious
tips. Just a few examples:
In
the end… You know the story: on the
field, the Colts went on to win the game.
Behind the scenes, unknown to most, our team
of analysts did their part to help ensure
a safe, secure event for all.
"This
kind of real-time intelligence operation is
exciting," says Eddy. "It's a ton
of work, but at the end of day when nothing
happens, when you know you helped keep players
and fans safe at one of the biggest sporting
events in the world, it's worth every minute."
Resources:
- FBI Intelligence
- More
stories on intelligence
