Free Striking Back: The 1972 Munich Olympics Massacre and Israel's Deadly Response by Aaron J. Klein Page B

deathly silence,” Zamir recalled. “It was a terrible scene. We had a hard time watching it: we were standing on German ground, watching shackled Jews being taken to helicopters.”
    The night was illuminated by thousands of camera flashes. The remaining Israeli athletes huddled together on the balcony, watching in disbelief. “This isn’t a goddamn James Bond movie,” muttered one, as he watched the media frenzy beneath him. “This is life and death.”
    Zamir and Cohen stood next to Bavarian prime minister Franz Joseph Strauss and German interior minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher. “Suddenly I heard Strauss say to Genscher in German, ‘Hey, they got the number of terrorists wrong!’” Zamir later recalled. “I was struck by his words. I realized that they hadn’t known up until that point how many terrorists there were, despite the fact that they had been inside and spoken with them. Suddenly, as they’re walking to the helicopters they realize they got the number wrong. It hurt. I noticed that Strauss was shocked too. It was a serious blow to the German devotion to accuracy. I was sure that they had stationed five sharpshooters on each terrorist. They gave me the feeling that the plan was tailor-made, that they had thought of everything, and then . . .”

12                    THE CATASTROPHE
    GERMANY, FÜRSTENFELDBRUCK AIRFIELD TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 5, 1972, 2200H
    The two helicopters rose off the pad and slipped into the darkness. As soon as they were out of sight, a third chopper arrived. Senior federal and Bavarian officials ran out of the administration building and down to the landing pad. The Israeli envoys, Zamir and Cohen, were once again surprised to find themselves persona non grata. Bavarian officials tried to block them from stepping up into the waiting helicopter. “It’s full,” they said. Zamir and Cohen pushed past them and sat down, glowering.
    They flew directly to the Fürstenfeldbruck airfield, while the choppers, carrying the hostages and their captors, flew a preplanned, circuitous route. The German and Israeli officials landed ten minutes before the other helicopters and headed straight for cover in an administration building at the center of the airfield, next to the control tower.
    Ten minutes later, at 2236 hours , the two helicopters carrying the eight terrorists and the nine hostages touched down. Issa jumped out and hurried toward the Lufthansa Boeing 727 waiting a hundred yards east of the control tower. Tony jumped out of the other helicopter and ran after Issa. Four terrorists, two from each helicopter, stood guard outside their respective aircraft. The German pilots left the controls and stood stiffly beside the choppers, at attention, as though waiting for a superior officer.
    Issa had no way of knowing of the drama that, moments before, had taken place on board the cold Boeing 727. Twenty minutes earlier a group of thirteen officers from the police special task command force had abandoned the plane—and their mission—for “fear for their lives.” The senior German officials hiding out in the office building next to the control tower were equally ignorant of these critical developments.
    The policemen, under the command of Reinhold Reich, had aborted their mission while the helicopters were in the air, fifteen minutes before the terrorists and hostages landed at Fürstenfeldbruck. Reich, a rookie in all matters concerning counterterrorism, had, unbelievably, put the mission to a vote. The decision to abort was unanimous.
    Later Reich shamelessly explained that their decision hinged on operational instructions that seemed suicidal. Their commanders, Schreiber and Wolf, supported them wholeheartedly.
    It is possible to understand some of Reich’s claims and still reject their validity. At the heart of the matter lay negligence and a glaring lack of professionalism. Wolf and Schreiber were negligent because the plane in which their planned ambush was to