The 1972 Olympics hostage crisis

ASSASSINS

The episode details the tragic 1972 Munich Olympics hostage crisis, where members of the Palestinian group Black September infiltrated the O

Key takeaways

• Security expert Georg Sieber had predicted 'Scenario 21,' which almost exactly mirrored the actual attack, but his warnings were dismissed by police.
• The terrorist group Black September used the high visibility of the Olympics to maximize the impact of their political demands.

Main topics

• 1972 Munich Olympics hostage crisis
• Black September terrorism

Notable quotes

We receive laundry baskets full of warnings every day.

Conclusion

A harrowing examination of how systemic security negligence and the po

Transcript preview

Speaker 3 (0:00) There are a lot of perfectly sensible reasons to start a war. Territory, resources, pigs. Wait, what? You've got to pay for that pig. Yes, a pig, a pastry shop, a football game, sometimes even birds. Speaker 1 (0:12) They don't seem to be easy to Speaker 3 (0:14) kill. History is filled with some stupid wars. On the No One Saw It Coming podcast, we are diving right into them with me, Mark Finnell. Speaker 3 (0:24) Search No One Saw It Coming Podcast on ABC Listen or wherever you get your podcasts. Speaker 2 (0:37) It's September the 5th, 1972. It's about 4.30am and the sky is still pitch black. We're in Munich, West Germany, and it's day 10 of the Olympic Games. A large group of mostly Canadian athletes have been out all night having fun. But now they're trying to sneak back to their accommodation in the athletes' village. Some are still a little drunk. To get back in, they'll have to climb a tall chain-link fence. A few of the Canadians bump into another group of men also trying to jump the fence. Eight guys wearing sporty tracksuits, but it's unclear what country they represent. One of those men later admitted that they all helped each other climb over. The Canadians head to their dormitories to get some sleep. Then... Sudden loud bangs. At first, one of the Canadians thinks it must be fireworks. But it isn't fireworks. Those eight guys in tracksuits have forced themselves into the Israeli team's rooms. It's the beginning of the Munich Massacre, the first terror attack broadcast live to a global television audience. Speaker 2 (2:00) Hello my friend, I'm Aslan Pahadi and this is Assassins, the show where we unravel the world's most shocking assassinations. Today, the 1972 Munich Olympic Games, where 11 members of Israel's Olympic team were taken hostage by a Palestinian militant group called Black September. The group named their attack Operation Ikrit and Biram. after two Palestinian Christian villages were forced to leave during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war. Residents had been told that they would soon be able to return home, but they never could. A few years later, their villages were destroyed. Black September understood the power of symbols like these, and it understood the power of the media. The world was watching the Olympic Games. And Black September unleashed something nobody was ready for. Over the next 24 hours, hundreds of millions of people watched the crisis unfold. Speaker 2 (3:09) When Germany last hosted the Olympics in 1936, Hitler and the Nazis were in power. The Munich organisers wanted these games to reflect a new and different country. The official motto became The Cheerful Games. Gone the red, black and gold fascist colour scheme from 1936. Instead, colours inspired by the Bavarian countryside. Security is low-key, unobtrusive and friendly. But in wanting to avoid the image of a militarized Germany, organizers ignored the vulnerabilities that would lead to a catastrophic failure. Speaker 2 (3:48) Before the Games began, a security assessment by a forensic psychologist named Georg Sieber had been commissioned. He devised 26 worst-case scenarios. Sieber later said the Munich police chief dismissed his concerns, telling him, We receive laundry baskets full of warnings every day. If we were to process them all, we would have to delay the Olympic Games by 20 years. Here's worst-case scenario 21. Speaker 2 (4:19) At about 5am, a dozen armed Palestinian militants would scale the fence of the Olympic Village. They would take some of the Israeli team hostage. They would likely kill hostages early on