One Day in September Page #5

surrounded the event...

with every possible camera.

Endless cameras

around the Olympic village.

It was a great story to many television

stations and media around the world.

I mean, the climax

of the Olympic Games, such an event.

And perhaps even some

of the stations...

took a very cynical approach to it...

saying, "Wow!

What an audience we'll get now. "

On a lovely late summer afternoon,

the tense vigil continues.

In just a half an hour,

the deadline will have expired.

He definitely had

his hands tied. I saw it.

Late in the afternoon,

I saw that the window was opened...

of the apartment

where they were kept hostage...

and I saw Andre

in front of the window.

They asked him,

"Is everybody okay there...

and what is the situation

with all the other hostages?"

Andre said,

"Everybody is okay except for one. "

When the Germans asked, "Who is

the one and what happened to him?"

I saw that he was not allowed

to say that.

So he got hit with the butt of the rifle

of one of the Palestinians...

and pushed away,

and they closed the curtains.

That was the last time, really,

that I saw him.

After that, Mr. Genscher said...

he wished to have a direct discussion

with the Israeli hostages.

Then Mr. Schreiber said

he wished to accompany him.

They said, "No,you are policemen.

You are not allowed to enter. "

I said, 'All right. Then it's me. "

So we went up there...

and it was a terrible impression,

I must say.

One was bound to one chair...

and the others were on

the two sides tied together.

And then the one

who was killed...

was lying there.

The wall was full of blood.

I will never be able

to forget those faces...

full of fear, but also hope.

Then we had a discussion...

and the discussion was...

absolutely covered by the...

very depressed mood

of the hostages.

They wished...

to come to a conclusion

which might save their lives...

but they were not very hopeful

in that respect.

There's been one report attributed to

Wilf Brimsley of the Associated Press...

There's been one report attributed to

Wilf Brimsley of the Associated Press...

who said a police lieutenant

told him that at 5:00...

about 29 minutes from now,

Munich time...

a volunteer squad of policemen

dressed as athletes...

would storm the Israeli

Olympic team headquarters...

and would come in shooting.

These are the volunteer squad of

Because of very complicated laws...

the German army would not

be allowed to participate.

There you see an athlete

holding a canvas bag...

in which is obviously

a machine gun.

The commissioner of the police,

Mr. Schreiber...

selected some policemen,

you know...

and asked them...

have you ever shot a gun

or whatever?

That was it.

They had no training, nothing.

Jim, there are now a great many

of those security men...

in athletic uniforms...

moving off

in various directions.

I don't want to instigate

any false drama here...

but it looks, at this point, like the

beginnings of some kind of deployment.

The plan was for us

to climb up on the roof...

of the Connollystrasse building...

and go down the ventilation shafts.

Once in position we were to

await the code word 'sunshine'...

from the Chief Inspector

before attacking.

That's how we would

free the hostages.

Walking cautiously on the roof...

hopefully not being heard

in the rooms below.

You see how close these two men are.

Couldn't be 20 feet.

You see he comes out and

gets down on his hands and knees.

That's for him

to get a better look up.

Outside our studio here

and around the Olympic village...

a crowd estimated

at 75,000 to 80,000 people...

has gathered,

awaiting the outcome of this.

This building now swarming

with Germans...

trying to rescue the Israelis.

The deadline appears, to us,

to be less than one minute away.

Anything to report at all, Peter?

The commando looks very much

more nervous than he did a while ago...

and he certainly has an apprehensive

darting-about look from here...

almost as if they do sense

that something is very imminent.

Once again there is a delegation

directly under the building...

and the Arab guard,

not on the balcony...

but in the window slightly down

below him, is negotiating with him.

Now we've gotten

an official time check.

It is 5:
00.

This is the deadline.

The storming, if it is going to happen,

could happen at any moment.

We waited and waited, but the

code word "sunshine"never came...

because there was a film crew...

on the East German building

opposite us...

which broadcast live everything

that was happening on the roof.

Later we discovered that there

was a TV in every athlete's room...

and the terrorists had been able...

to watch us preparing

live on screen.

Thank God we called it off.

It surely would have been

a suicide mission if we had attacked.

If you had told me then that the Germans

did not have available in Munich...

Gerald Seymour

ITN News Service

a trained storm squad,

I think I would have disbelieved you...

because everybody in 1972

was totally transfixed...

by a myth of utter

German ruthless efficiency.

Fourteen minutes to 6:00,

Munich time, in the evening.

We were told not to let the situation

go on for more than 24 hours...

because psychologically that was

the most we could take.

If the Israeli government still

refused to release the prisoners...

we had been told

to demand an airplane...

to take us, with the hostages,

to any Arab country we could.

At 6:
00 p. m., the Palestinians

issued a new demand.

They wanted a long-distance jet...

to fly them and their hostages

to an unspecified Arab country.

But the German government

and the organizing committee...

decided that we were not

allowed at all...

to let foreigners bring out

guests of our country...

who came as guests

to the Olympic Games.

That led to the final conclusion that we

give the impression to the terrorists...

that we'll let them fly out...

but try everything

to then kill them...

or bring them into prison...

before they could leave the country.

Our aim was to

drag out the proceedings...

to wear down the terrorists...

and try to establish the best time

for freeing the hostages.

That was our objective.

The organizers of the Games

naturally wanted the Games...

to resume as soon as possible.

We had to find a resolution

one way or another.

To move the thing

from the Olympic compound...

Zvi Zamir, Chief of Mossad

(Israel Secret Service) 1968-74

in order to let

the Olympic Games to carry on...

this was their main objective.

The Israeli team...

and its rescue

were secondary to that.

The staff group decided

to bring them...

to the public airport of Munich

in order to try something.

I said, "Listen, that's crazy.

We have another airport...

which is not a public airport. "

So I proposed to make

Furstenfeldbruck the target.

The police plan revolved around

a decoy Boeing 727...

which was to be left on the runway

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