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CNN Live Saturday

Interview With DeMaurice Smith

Aired February 02, 2002 - 12:45   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
FREDRICKA WHITFIELD, CNN ANCHOR: Joining us now to talk about the new levels of security at such big events like the Super Bowl is former federal prosecutor DeMaurice Smith. He was closely involved with the Secret Service security efforts for the Bush inauguration. Thanks for joining us.

DEMAURICE SMITH, FMR. FEDERAL PROSECUTOR: My pleasure.

WHITFIELD: Well you've got the Super Bowl, the World Economic Forum, the Olympics in Salt Lake City attracting more than two million people in all of these places in just one week's time. It would seem that this is going to be a logistical nightmare for the combined forces involved. What do you see as the biggest obstacle for these forces?

SMITH: Probably the biggest obstacle will be just the shear breadth of what they are going to be asked to do. But, Fredricka, the one thing to remember is these people are the best in the world. They have constantly trained to prepare for every contingency, and I'm confident -- as well as the American people should be confident -- that things will occur in a safe environment. And not only will they have a good game, but they will be well protected.

WHITFIELD: For the sake of the Olympics and the Super Bowl, it's the FBI which is leading all of the various police forces on the local and federal levels. But often times we see that when you have these various police agencies involved, sometimes they can mix like oil and water, we've seen in the past. In what way do you see this bringing some cohesion between some of the federal forces and the local forces?

SMITH: Well, perhaps the most important event that happened was something that probably didn't get a lot of attention. The designation of this event as a national security special event means that the Secret Service will be the lead agency in coordinating all of the efforts of not only federal law enforcement, but equally important, local and state officials.

And while there is certainly some friction between very proud law enforcement agencies, I think if you look back on the IMF protest here in Washington, the inauguration, one of the things that certainly came out of all of those events were that once these agencies were met with a challenge, they responded well, they worked together, and things worked out. WHITFIELD: Well describe for me what these investigators and the police officers are up against. For the World Economic Forum, protesters may be generally described as being combative. The football crowds may be termed as a little bit more aggressive. And then you've got the Olympic crowd, which in simpler terms, really you're just going to have so many people coming from various walks of life -- from all over. In what way do you prepare the police forces to try to best handle these crowds that are also very different?

SMITH: I think there's three things to remember. The first thing is preparing them to use the best intelligence and to be able to respond to it both quickly and effectively. The second thing is just coordinating the physical presence. What are the people going to be like on the street? The eyes of ears of what's going on is the most important thing to law enforcement agencies.

And for events like the Super Bowl, for the Olympics, the most critical thing that will be going on will be something else behind the scenes. It will be the MAC, as we used to call it in the business, the Multi-Agency Command Center. That is going to be the focus point, the heartbeat, if you will, of what's going on with all of these events. And it will be the location where every law enforcement agency, every emergency response team, will be coordinated. They will be focused in this one location, really responding and reacting and hopefully preventing anything that could occur.

WHITFIELD: All right. Thanks very much, DeMaurice Smith, for joining us. I really appreciate it. This is going to be a huge undertaking and perhaps a pretty serious test for the U.S. and local municipalities -- their police forces -- just after September 11 now.

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