Striking Back: The 1972 Munich Olympics Massacre and Israel's Deadly Response (3 page)

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NO WARNING BELLS

ISRAEL WINGATE INSTITUTE
JULY 11, 1972

Shmuel Lalkin, head of the Israeli Olympic Delegation, signed the letter, sealed it in an envelope, and dropped it in the outgoing mail pile.

Security and anti-terror precautions were not part of his job description, but they were important to the former Israeli Defense Forces major. Lalkin stuck out in a crowd: he was tall, forty-five years old, had broad shoulders and an athletic bounce to his step, a remnant of his days as a basketball and volleyball player. His hair was swept back and his mustache, a trademark of sorts, was always in perfect order. At first glance he seemed hard, unapproachable. But to those close to him, he was an easygoing family man, a sports lover who was always quick with a smile.

Lalkin slid back in his chair and looked at the envelope. The official letter was addressed to the chief security officer of the Education, Culture and Sports Ministry in Jerusalem. In it, Lalkin, a man who had paid attention to details his entire life, had carefully laid out all his concerns about the security arrangements for the 20th Olympic Games, to be held in six weeks’ time, in Munich, West Germany. Chief among them, Lalkin emphasized how dangerous it was to place the Israeli team on the ground floor of a dormitory in Munich, accessible to all. He assumed German authorities were handling Olympic security, which made the obvious breach all the more egregious.

Three weeks earlier Lalkin had returned from a seven-day visit to northern Munich, where the finishing touches were being put on the new Olympic Village. While he was there, he inspected the arenas, courts, athletic facilities, and dorms his Olympians would use. Other delegation heads were doing the same. In his notebook Lalkin sketched each and every facility the delegation might need. He planned to relay all relevant information to the athletes and coaches before they took off for Munich, as this would help prepare them for the competitions to come. He recognized the psychological importance of familiarity, the edge, however small, it might grant his athletes. Appraising security arrangements was far from his mind.

His priorities shifted when Walter Troeger, mayor of the Olympic Village, gave him a tour of the Israeli dorms at 31 Connollystrasse. The ground-floor location, insecure, vulnerable, made him uncomfortable. In Lalkin’s mind there was simply no defensible logic to support the decision to place the Israelis at street level. He asked to meet with an Olympic security official. West German representatives from the International Olympic Committee were quick to arrange a meeting with an officer named Ruprecht from the Munich police department. Lalkin explained that he bore no official security position but that certain points had come to light and he wished to review some of the security precautions in place for the Israeli delegation. Ruprecht listened in silence. When Lalkin was through, Ruprecht attempted to ease his mind, telling him that he would put the Israeli dorms under tighter security and heavier surveillance. Lalkin wasn’t satisfied. He asked whether the Israeli athletes could be moved to a more secure building, with higher floors, where the entrances could be properly supervised. “Sir,” Ruprecht responded, “I don’t think it’s any of your business. All our decisions concerning your delegation’s living quarters have been coordinated with your embassy’s security people and the Israeli Olympic Committee. Our decisions were made together.” Lalkin left the room in silence, hanging his head.

Back in Israel Lalkin was unsure how to act. The security issues continued to gnaw at him; his sleep was fitful. Eventually, he decided to call two friends, men he’d known in the pre-state Pal-mach fighting unit and later in the IDF, and who were now members of the Shabak. They directed him to Arie Shumar, the Education, Culture and Sports Ministry’s chief security officer. It was Shumar to whom Lalkin sent his official letter, outlining his concerns. “I didn’t feel comfortable with the security arrangements for our athletes. It was important to me to let people know that I thought things should be done differently,” he would later tell the prime minister’s official investigative committee, whose top secret report was made public for the first time as a result of the research for this book. In their findings, known as the Kopel Report, the three-member committee found that several Israeli officials had been given the opportunity to choose the location of the team’s dorms, perhaps in an area easily supervised or on one of the top floors, but hadn’t done so. Not one Israeli official, and many were contacted, asked to change the Israeli location in the village.

The response to Lalkin’s letter came in a plain brown envelope. “Dear Mr. Lalkin: As Manager of the Israeli Olympic team it would be advisable for you to concentrate on sports. Leave security to the security personnel. Yours Truly, Arie Shumar, Chief Security Officer, Education, Culture and Sports Ministry.” The few, arrogant lines ignored Lalkin’s warnings. He had a premonition, he knew the Israeli athletes were at risk, but it wasn’t enough to change the thinking of the entire defense establishment.

What Lalkin didn’t know was that the Israeli defense establishment was doing nothing to protect the country’s Olympians. Everything concerning the protection of the Olympic delegation (and other Israeli national groups) was falling through the cracks. No senior official felt any need to address the issue. Israel, at the time, was under mounting stress: planes were hijacked, Israeli officials targeted. The attacks were coming in quick succession, but the Shabak, the organization charged with homeland security, failed to connect any of the dots. Their failure went far beyond ignoring the security flaws in the Olympic Village. The deeper, more basic failure was rooted in a lack of interest, a downright disregard for a rapidly escalating situation. Only bloodshed would facilitate real change.

While Lalkin worried, at Mossad headquarters, in the Hadar Dafna building at
39–41
King Saul Boulevard in north Tel Aviv, no one was losing any sleep. Work flowed in and out of the cold concrete building as usual. Even three hundred yards away at the IDF’s headquarters, on the south side of King Saul Boulevard, where Branch
4’
s crude wooden cabins were located, there was no new activity. Branch 4 of Military Intelligence, charged with collecting, analyzing, and assessing data on Palestinian terror organizations, did not earmark a single piece of data relating to the possibility of an Olympic attack. The Kopel Report examined the intelligence agencies’ conduct in the prelude to the Olympics and revealed, “The Defense Establishment continually received information on the express desire to commit an attack in Europe. The flow of information was thin in comparison with other times during the year, but in August 1972 there was a rise in the number of reports regarding a planned attack in Europe. None mentioned the Olympics by name.” One report from that time did mention an “international event,” which might have hinted at the terrorist leaders’ intentions to carry out a high-profile attack, but it received no special attention.

Even on Thursday, August 31, the sixth day of the Games, when the heads of Military Intelligence, the Shabak, and the Mossad met for their weekly conference, no bells were sounded. The committee analyzed the week’s intelligence reports, but failed to associate anything with the ongoing Games. Intelligence officers who later went over the information that existed at the time had this to say: “Do you have any idea how many bits of intelligence we get that relate to future ‘international events’ and then result in nothing? On the basis of that type of intelligence you cannot issue an official warning.”

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THE GAMES OF PEACE AND JOY

MUNICH
SATURDAY, AUGUST 26, 1972, 1500H

The opening ceremony of the 20th Olympic Games was dazzling. A record 121 delegations and over seven thousand athletes entered the stadium in dress uniforms, took their places on the well-groomed grass, and watched as whip-wielding Bavarian dancers twirled and stomped. Thousands of doves fluttered skyward. An eighteen-year-old German athlete, Günter Zahn, ran into the stadium, bounded up the steps, and lit the Olympic torch. The Games were under way.

The positive feeling in the stadium was carefully constructed to erase the scars of Germany’s bloody past. Local organizers did everything they could to convey the message that Germany’s rehabilitation was complete, that
1936—
when Berlin, under Adolf Hitler, hosted the 11th Olympiad against a backdrop of discrimination and violence—was a relic of a dead past. Federal officials, the local Bavarian state government, German Olympic officials, the police, the press, and ordinary citizens were all part of an effort to showcase a progressive, an enlightened, a cultured Germany.

The Israeli delegation’s participation in these Olympics was central to Germany’s theatrical act of repudiation. Israel’s twenty-seven-member squad was that country’s largest ever. Henry Hershkowitz, a marksman, carried the blue and white flag through the stadium, trembling with excitement. “I felt awesome pride that Jews could raise their flag on German soil,” he told reporters after the event. “This is proof that the Nazis weren’t able to crush the Jewish spirit, the Israeli spirit.” An especially loud roar engulfed the Israeli team as it entered the packed stadium.

Over four thousand reporters, editorialists, and radio broadcasters were in attendance to cover the games—more evidence of Germany’s desire to be seen as a new country. About two thousand television reporters and crew were by their side. These numbers far exceeded those of the 1968 Mexico City Games—indeed of any previous Olympics. The main events would draw a billion viewers in over one hundred countries.

The live broadcast was one of the great achievements of the 20th Olympic Games. In today’s world, where a cell phone can take pictures, record sound, and serve as a fully functioning computer, a live broadcast might seem trivial, but in 1972 it was a technological wonder. The Munich Olympics would dominate the international airwaves. No war or major geopolitical conflict was going on; there was nothing that could compete with the Games. The Germans planned to squeeze every possible ounce of positive publicity they could out of the seventeen-day event.

From the outset, the Germans emphasized the Olympic message of world peace. They didn’t want the world to see them holding guns, which might evoke old images. No armed guards or police were positioned in the Olympic Village or at stadium entrances. Instead, two thousand Olys, ushers in sky-blue uniforms, were given the twin duties of perimeter security and traffic control. Only those with a pass could enter the fenced village. But as the Games progressed, the ushers’ diligence waned. The perimeter fence added little additional security: many of the Olympians hopped it with ease, well after midnight, on their way back from Munich’s beer halls.

Security costs for the Games came to $2 million. The relatively insignificant sum was not born of miserliness, but of a frank desire to keep security to a minimum. For subsequent Olympics, security costs rose exponentially, peaking in 2004 at $1 billion. The German security concept, one that held that guards, both visible and undercover, could only tarnish the Games and blacken the image of the new Germany they were trying to convey, unknowingly facilitated Black September’s plans. German authorities were well equipped to deal with unruly men and copious quantities of beer, but were utterly unprepared for a terrorist attack.

The Israeli delegation set out for Munich on the 21st of August. No security detail, covert or otherwise, accompanied them. Several days before their departure the delegation had been invited to the Wingate Institute, Israel’s National Center for Physical Education and Sports, for a standard briefing. Arie Shumar, the Education, Culture and Sports Ministry’s chief security officer, gave the address, which seemed brief and banal to the Israelis. They had heard the same advice each time they left the country to represent Israel. Don’t draw attention to yourselves. No loud conversations in Hebrew, no clothing with obvious Hebrew symbols. Beware of suspicious packages in your dorms. Avoid opening any type of mail, even if it comes from home.

There was no mention of a possible mega-attack in the briefing. Complacency? The mere appearance of control and order? Yes, that was how things were on the Israeli side.

Most of the Israeli delegation was housed at 31 Connollystrasse, along with the Uruguayan and Hong Kong teams. Security conditions in the dorms left the athletes ill at ease. The top secret Kopel Report states on page nine, “The testimony of athletes, delegation leaders, journalists and television crews makes clear that members of the delegation, other officials, and family members frequently talked among themselves about the obvious lack of security in the village, particularly regarding their housing. The uncomfortable feeling intensified as the alacrity of the security ushers abated. The proximity of the Sudanese team’s dorms and the ubiquity of Palestinian workers in the village intensified the general discomfort. Many of the athletes feared they would be attacked during their events. No one considered the possibility of a hostage situation. The fears festering in the minds of the athletes didn’t result in a call to bolster security. They didn’t act, they said, because they assumed that the security forces must be working undercover.” These words do not begin to convey the scandalous enormity of the German, and Israeli, security lapses in Munich.

On August 23, the chief security officer of the Israeli embassy in Bonn arrived in Munich to inspect the security arrangements—of the Israeli television crews. He met with Lalkin and the head of the Israeli Olympic Committee about “routine security matters,” according to the Kopel Report. Lalkin’s premonition—that his team was in danger—was stronger than ever. He requested a sidearm. The security officer refused.