The Electronic Telegraph Tuesday 5 September 2000 The Games' blackest September By David Miller ON this day 28 years ago, the world awoke to the appalling news that eight Palestinian terrorists had entered the Israeli quarters at the Olympic village in Munich. Two Israelis were killed when resisting, nine others had been taken hostage. The Palestinians, members of the Black September organization, were demanding the release of 200 Arab terrorists then held in Israel. They threatened to shoot their hostages one by one. Hearing the news around 8 am, I had gone directly to the now belatedly "sealed" perimeter. Under a clear sky, I pretended to sunbathe while a military guard patrolled the other side 30 yards away. By degrees, I rolled up the bottom of the wire mesh and, when the guard had turned his back, rolled underneath and continued to sunbathe a yard inside. Ten minutes later, I walked into the village. The mood among athletes and officials was uniformly and numbingly detached. It was as though everyone was unconnected with the slaughter and further impending doom on their doorstep. "I'm through to the fencing finals," one American competitor told me. "Don't ask me to be objective." There was almost no perceptible interruption of the day's normal business of training, eating and relaxing for those with a day free from competition. None of those I spoke with, Australian, Kenyan, American, Danish, believed the Games should be stopped - just another tragedy in a sick world. Three British competitors were off to have a sunbathe. "It's too bad," they said, "but what's it got to do with us." Psycho-somatic insulation, immunity to other people's terror. One of the most insensitive comments of my professional life came from the then secretary of the British Olympic Association. "As far as the British are concerned," he said, going off to lunch, "security here is very good." Within hours of the murders, Dr Roger Bannister, ex-Olympian and chairman of the Sports Council, put out a statement supporting a continuation of the Games - a decision taken unanimously by the International Olympic Committee, including president-elect Lord Kilannin, at a time when they were informed the hostages were saved. They had been enraged by the failure of Avery Brundage, the IOC president, to inform them of the attack at breakfast time before they left to attend sailing events at Kiel. Acutely embarrassed by the apocalyptic destruction of a festival intended to re-embrace once alien nations, Willi Brandt, the West German chancellor, flew from Bonn to Munich to lead negotiations with Golda Meir, Israel's premier. She flatly rejected the terrorists' demands. While the government and police plotted a hare-brained double-cross - an escape plane to Egypt allegedly to be provided for terrorists and hostages -the terrorists were flown by helicopter in early evening to Furstenfeldbruck military airport. By 10.30 pm there was still no detailed news, other than that the Israelis were safe. At 11.30 pm, I found the secretary of Hans Klein, the press director, sitting ashen-faced in a deserted office. What was happening, I asked? "There is still fighting at the airport. I cannot say more," she whispered. In that instant I sensed I held a world-exclusive political news story. I realized for certain that some, if not all, of the hostages must be dead if, in the double-cross at the airport, the terrorists were still alive. Yet, because I was unable to substantiate my unofficial information, the night news-desk of The Daily Telegraph felt unable to run my tragic story. For another 3.5 hours newspapers and television around the globe carried agency reports of a false German government announcement that the Israelis were safe. "Sorry, old boy," my desk said, "we'll stick with the agencies." Not until 3.30 am did Dr Merck, Bavarian minister of the interior, condescend to tell a hushed, stunned press conference the awful truth: in a bungled farce police marksmen had shot three terrorists, but the survivors had used pistols and hand grenades to assassinate the remaining hostages. The catastrophe, at the time and subsequently, defied accurate analysis. Had the Germans been lulled by the arrest two months earlier of the hard core of the Baader Meinhof terrorist organization? Did the retiring Brundage, who at times appeared to wish the ship to go down with the captain, pressurize the Germans into panicking? I was once an athlete aspiring to Olympic participation, and I did not feel alone in thinking that reason had departed from these Games. Events in Munich are recalled in 'One Day in September' on BBC2 at 9 pm tonight. Eamonn Condon WWW.RunnersGoal.com
