This summer, perhaps the most popular worldwide athletic competition will be hosted in North America – the World Cup. Venues for the tourney include AT&T Stadium in Dallas (nine matches) and NRG Stadium in Houston (six matches). 

It is estimated that 3-5 million people will travel to one of the 16 venues in Canada, Mexico and the United States to attend a match.

Given the high visibility of the World Cup and the volatile nature of world events in 2026, the World Cup is a natural target for any person or group with terroristic aims.

In view of this, the Monitor sat down with retired Dallas Chief of Police Bill Rathburn at his home just outside Mineola. 

Rathburn is a true subject matter expert on event security. He has singularly-unique experience in that he was intimately involved in security planning for the LA Olympics summer games of 1984 and director of security for the 1996 Atlanta Olympics. 

The circumstances which placed him on this path for large event security began with geography and some bedtime notes made before turning in one night.

Rathburn had left university in Mississippi to head west in search of work. He found his way to Los Angeles and hired on with Douglas Aircraft Company. The inconsistent nature of the aircraft industry led him to respond to an ad for police officers with the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD).  

“It turned out to be a pretty good fit,” Rathburn described. He steadily gained authority, from patrolman to sergeant to lieutenant to captain. His beat was South Central LA, which also happened to be the location of a number of venues in the then-upcoming 1984 Olympics (hence the geographical connection). 

Rathburn had a fresh view of policing. “The department too often judged their success by the number of arrests made,” he explained. “I took a different tack, I felt it was important that we made every single arrest count for something.”

He also added, that when the department made it clear that they were protecting a community, any community, that the community would respond in a positive manner. 

Due to his local responsibilities, Rathburn was appointed as part of a planning team for Olympic security. He recalled making some notes one night, before the first planning session that following day.

When they got to the meeting, he was the only person to have made a list of security concerns – his list was accepted as the meeting agenda. In that moment he became a mainstay of the 1984 Olympic planning and execution.

The Olympics came and went, and Rathburn’s career in LAPD progressed, from captain to commander to deputy chief of police. 

A search firm eventually contacted him about the chief of police billet for the city of Dallas. A new match was made, and he signed on as the senior police officer in Dallas. 

In 1993, he left Dallas PD to lead the planning for the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta. 

Rathburn shared a number of thoughts about large-event security that are certainly applicable to all such events, including the upcoming World Cup.

What he described was a huge and complicated undertaking. How large? In Atlanta Rathburn led an organization which had 17,224 security personnel on the roster, from local sheriff’s deputies to federal specialists. 

“Setting up the structure of the security organization was a top concern,” he advised. That matter was complex as local security forces are governed by jurisdiction while federal agencies are bounded by function. 

In order to maximize effectiveness of the whole force, Rathburn also solicited for foreign security representatives. Added to the mix were 2,000 foreign security specialists, mostly police officers, who brought language capability and cultural awareness to the policing effort. 

In any diverse group, communications are absolutely vital. Rathburn explained that this is a very difficult issue, as the natural tendency is to communicate within one’s parent organization, which may result in limiting the effectiveness of the greater security effort.

One of the first threats received against the 1984 LA Olympics, Rathburn advised, was a telephonic threat of a thermonuclear device to be exploded at the event. While that threat was investigated and mitigated, it illustrated that large event security ranges from crowd control to terroristic nuclear threats. 

The example also illustrated Rathburn’s second major point: a proper intelligence assessment. “The intelligence assessment must be a targeted assessment,” Rathburn stated, “it must take the environment of the venue in mind, as well as the international conditions and be prioritized in order to properly allocate resources.”

As an example, he offered that perhaps the greatest threat faced by planners before the 1984 Olympics was against the Turkish athletes, as Los Angeles was home to the largest Armenian population outside of Europe.

Another example offered was the threat posed by airborne attackers. Rathburn advised that in order to counter threats from small aircraft or other airborne vehicles, he had at his disposal 16 helicopters at the Atlanta Olympics.

The examples provide an illustration of the variety of threats which must be assessed and addressed. As Rathburn stated, “If you can imagine it, it likely has been considered as a potential threat.”

Yet another issue in which Rathburn took particular interest was credentialing. A strong proponent of biometrics, Rathburn explained that law enforcement has gotten pretty good at recognizing valid identification, but often that is simply recognition of a card and not of the individual carrying the card. He sees biometrics as a surety to the system.

The former chief of police also explained that the availability of private security personnel is pivotal to large-scale events. However, he commented that private security was neither as numerous or as well-trained as many people may believe.  

Following his stint as Director of Security for the 1996 Olympics, Rathburn was highly sought after as an advisor for other Olympic events and also served as an expert to the State Department and major commercial firms. 

When asked of his recommendations for people considering attending events such as the World Cup, Rathburn was straightforward, “Pay attention, use your common sense, but don’t be frightened off. If you are frightened off, the bad guys win.”