- One lucky agent was tasked with protecting an American surfer in Tahiti.
- The other is a former college judo star who was assigned to the U.S. judo team in Paris.
- And a high school volleyball coach turned diplomat's bodyguard ends up keeping an eye on the stars of the girls' gymnastics team.
PARIS — Mike Bjelajac has earphones in and has packed a few suits, though he's not saying anything about cold weather gear, but he expects it to be a primarily business-casual assignment, with just a little more sand than he normally encounters on the job.
The State Department's Diplomatic Security Service has officers who protect dignitaries and diplomats around the world and is the United States' “chief security officer” for the Paris Olympic and Paralympic Games.
DSS officers will work with French and Olympic authorities to keep U.S. athletes, coaches, doctors, sponsorship executives and visitors safe in a city expected to attract millions of additional tourists at a time when major security challenges range from extremist plots and cyber attacks to civil unrest and sophisticated pickpocketing.
Not Special Agent Biela. Biela may have drawn the longest draw in the history of draws. He's not going to Paris.
Instead, the 46-year-old Wisconsin native will fly 10,000 miles from the French capital to Tahiti, the figure-eight shaped island in French Polynesia where the Olympic surfing events will be held, a location that organizers say reflects France's ambitions to spread the Games across its territory.
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Also, Tahiti has some pretty rough waves.
“I've discussed it with my family and friends, and with my colleagues, I'm a little nervous because I realize there may be jealousy,” Bjelajac said over a Zoom call in late June, a few weeks before he was to depart for Tahiti's black-sand beaches, extinct volcanoes and waterfalls that would provide a picturesque backdrop for his Olympic work.
“You can't beat this,” he says, his businesslike demeanor breaking into a smile. Agents like Bjelajac are trained to be cautious and avoid nonsense. If the stereotype of a surfer is the laid-back risk-taker, suffice it to say that Bjelajac is not yet a surfer.
Whatever happens, it's the right thing to do
Bjelajac wasn't born to surf — in Wisconsin he ice fishes.
After graduating from college, he worked as a police officer in Atlanta before joining the DSS field office in Miami in 2010, where he juggled investigating passport fraud and protecting foreign dignitaries visiting the U.S. He has also served as a security guard for former Secretaries of State Hillary Clinton and John Kerry, as well as serving as a security officer at the U.S. Embassy in Jakarta, Indonesia, and at the diplomatic compound in Baghdad.
After Tahiti, he plans to enroll in a master's program in diplomacy.
DDS's origins date back to World War I, but it was formally established in 1983 after the devastating suicide bombings at the U.S. Embassy and Marine Corps Barracks in Beirut that killed hundreds. Today, DDS has more than 2,000 special agents in the U.S. and in embassies and consulates in more than 175 countries.
The DSS is a sister agency to the U.S. Secret Service, which protects the President and Vice President of the United States, their immediate families, and visiting heads of state.
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Paul Benvie, deputy security coordinator for the DSS for the Paris Games, said that in the Olympic context, the job isn't a traditional “close protection mission.” That concept — sharp-suited, earpiece-equipped, gun-toting agents ensuring the safety of some of the world's most important people — has been popularized in countless movies, from 1992's “The Bodyguard” to 2013's “Olympus.”
“This is a protection liaison,” he said. “I get to know the security managers at each of the Paris locations, I liaise with the police, Military Police (a branch of the French military) sends information back to the Joint Operations Center, a security hub run by the U.S. Embassy in Paris.
Benvie, who has spent the past two years in Paris helping to organize US security for the Olympics after previously working in security roles across Africa, said the job is not a “traditional bodyguard” role, but that DSS officers “will take the right action, whatever response is needed at the time.”
No matter what happens “in paradise”
The Olympic surfing events are scheduled to take place from July 27 to August 4.
In Tahiti, Beelajac will be in charge of protecting five American surfers and their professional entourage: Caroline Marks (22), Carissa Moore (31), Katie Simmers (18), Griffin Colapinto (25) and John John Florence (31).
Moore became the first athlete in the sport's history to win an Olympic gold medal in women's shortboard surfing when the event debuted at the 2020 Tokyo Summer Olympics.
Paris:That could include helmeted surfers tackling giant waves in Tahiti.
In accordance with DSS policy, Bjelayats declined to say what specific steps the U.S. surfers will take to keep them safe, or whether they will be armed. A DSS spokesman said the agency does not release details about its security tactics, operations or procedures.
But Bjelajac says one of the big considerations is the possibility of natural disasters and Tahiti's relative remoteness.
Surfing is a dangerous sport. Participants are constantly at risk of being struck by sharp, shallow coral reefs. If an athlete is injured in Tahiti and requires advanced medical care, it is a six-hour flight to Hawaii or an 11-hour flight to the mainland United States.
Bjelajac said he plans to warn all athletes and their supporters to be wary of pickpockets and to avoid certain areas of Tahiti.
“It feels like paradise, but anything can happen in paradise,” he said.
The downsizing of culture, coral, marine life and surfing
The Olympic surfing events will take place in Te Ahupo, on the south side of the island, a controversial choice of venue.
Forty-eight surfers will compete (24 women and 24 men), along with judges, coaches, journalists, Olympic organizing committee members and, of course, Bielajac, bringing the number of participants in Tahiti to several hundred for an event that critics say could have easily been held on France's Atlantic coast, a short bus or train ride from Paris.
“The impacts and risks are too great for just a three-day event,” Matahi Drollet, a professional Tahitian surfer, said in a video petition last year alongside environmentalists, activists and other surfers warning that an influx of Olympics-related tourists was threatening Tchoupo's culture, coral and marine life. Original plans for the events included the construction of new roads, housing and an aluminium judging tower that would have required drilling into the reef.
Those plans have since been scaled back after backlash, but not abandoned entirely.
Others are outraged by the decision to hold a surfing competition in a place where indigenous Polynesian culture has been eroded and appropriated, and where France's main legacy is imperialism and oppression. French Polynesia is made up of more than 120 islands, including Tahiti.
Historians believe surfing's origins can be traced back to Polynesia, where British explorer James Cook is believed to have been one of the first Europeans to observe surfing during his visit to Hawaii in the 18th century.
Still, Bjelayatsi said he'll know he's done a good job at the Olympics if no one notices he's in Tahiti unless they need him.
“And let me say this,” Bjelajac said of his surfing skills, “it's on my bucket list. I grew up in the Midwest, and the only ocean I went to when I was younger was Lake Michigan and a few lakes in northern Wisconsin.”
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Bjelayatsi is not the only DSS agent interested in a protected individual's Olympic sport.
Washington, DC-based Special Agent Dan Baer is a huge golf fan who has been tasked with providing security for the U.S. golf team as it competes in Versailles, 12 miles west of Paris. Baer, 40, a former U.S. Army helicopter pilot, said he hopes to soak up some golf tips and tricks “naturally” while he's on the ground in France.
“Our focus is security. We're strong, we're discreet, we're in the background. We don't want to be in the spotlight. We just provide support,” he told USA Today.
“But at the same time, it's so cool, right? You're watching professional athletes,” Baer said, with a hint of fanboyism.
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Kendall Dyer, 30, a former Nevada high school volleyball coach and avid mountain climber, is assigned to the agency's Los Angeles office. The Paris Games will be her first Olympics and her first major overseas assignment. She will be guarding the U.S. women's gymnastics team.
“I'm really looking forward to the food, I've heard it's really good,” said Dyer, who has never been to France.
And Caleb Leonard, 33, a first-year DSS agent in Houston who provides security for the U.S. national judo team, thinks he may have faced them while at Texas A&M, where he was head of the judo club and competed in tournaments around the country. One spring break, he and his club practiced with members of the Puerto Rican Olympic judo team.
“Ever since I started judo, I've been watching the Olympics because it's the biggest competition for judo,” he said.
“I know what the players are going through and what they need.”
Veladjac said he “tried really hard” to learn to surf while working in Indonesia.
But unlike his field work as a special agent for which he had prepared diligently, things did not go according to plan.
“I didn't know there were so many different kinds of surfboards,” he says. “They put me on a hard board, which is not really for beginners. I couldn't stand up.”
