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Whenever the decision was made, what motivated it? In Moscow and the West, there are about as many theories as there are Kremlinologists, and it is likely that many of them hold at least some truth. Even athletic prospects could have played a role. In both Washington and Moscow there is speculation that Soviet Olympic Committee Chairman Marat Gramov surveyed the Soviet competitors, concluded that despite their prowess, they might not win quite so many medals as both Soviet citizens and Western sportsmen were expecting, and notified his political superiors of a possible embarrassment.
If that consideration entered into the debate at all, however, it was probably given relatively little weight. The dominant reasons for the boycott are thought to fall under three main headings:
SECURITY. To Americans, the precautions surrounding the Olympics appear more than adequate. The police departments in Los Angeles and surrounding communities plan to assign 16,000 officers to watch the athletes and spectators; in addition, 8,000 unarmed college students will be deputized to stand guard and summon the real police to any trouble spot. The FBI during the Olympics will increase its force of agents in the Los Angeles area from the usual 400 to 700. To the $100 million that the Los Angeles Olympic Organizing Committee proposes to spend on security, Congress has authorized the Defense Department to add $50 million. The Pentagon will lend more than 100 helicopters and crews to local police forces to keep watch over the Games, and the L.A.O.O.C. will erect fences and sentry posts around the Olympic Villages where athletes will live. For further security Soviet Olympic officials and coaches would have slept on a ship anchored off Long Beach. The first major assignment of the Pentagon's newly organized hostage rescue team, now training at Quantico, Va., will be to station itself in Orange County during the Olympics, ready to swing into action alongside the Los Angeles Police Department's crack SWAT (special weapons and tactics) team if terrorists try anything at the Games.
But Soviet ideas of what constitutes "security," as measured by the steps they took at the 1980 Moscow Olympics, are far more grandiose. Recalls TIME Correspondent B.J. Phillips, who covered the Moscow Games: "You could not find a dissident, a drunk or a child under 18 on the streets of Moscow. All had been swept up for the greater image of Mother Russia. A phalanx of Soviet army soldiers, sitting so close that their shoulders brushed, filled the first row of seats at every Olympic event. A militiaman in gray uniform stood in the middle of every intersection in Moscow, even those miles from Olympic sites. That was the unobtrusive part of the security arrangements. Despite a thorough search in customs, despite the fact that accredited Olympic journalists are due many of the same waivers as athletes under I.O.C. rules, our luggage was searched before we could even get to the front desk to register in the press hotel. The guards squeezed toothpaste tubes, dismantled cameras, unfolded clothes. And they would not let you leave the hotel—forget getting back in—unless you were carrying your credentials. After the ballet one night, I decided to see how far I could walk without someone materializing to stop me for inspection. My record was three-quarters of a block."