ABSTRACT
Introduction One of the enduring principles of the Olympic Games is the promotion of peace through sport. It is deeply disheartening then that the Games themselves have repeatedly been both the location and target of threats and acts of violence in recent decades. Indeed, some of the most high-profile terrorist attacks of the past 50 years have been deliberately targeted against the Olympics, and on the eve of the 2012 Games, there is little sense that such threats to future Olympiads are likely to be rare. The two most significant terrorist attacks against the Olympics to date remain the Black September attack against the Israeli team at the 1972 Munich Games and Eric Rudolph’s nail-bomb attack carried out against the Atlanta Games in 1996. Munich, in particular, remains the benchmark by which all other terrorist attacks against the Olympics are judged. Indeed, for terrorist groups themselves, Munich remains an iconic event. Captured Al Qaeda documents, for example, show that the group regards Munich as the second most important terrorist attack of the past 50 years (not surprisingly, they rate 9/11 as the most important). Perhaps one of the most surprising features of the Munich attack, though, was just how late planning for the assault started. Black September only decided to try to target the Games at a meeting in Rome on 15 July 1972, barely six weeks before the Opening Ceremony (Wolff, 2002). While this was relatively late in the day to start planning for what would ultimately become such an extraordinary attack, Black September nonetheless still had some reasons to be optimistic. As a group, the organisation had considerable resources to draw upon. Israeli intelligence later judged that at least 40 people were involved in the planning, preparation and execution of the attack. Black September also had the benefit of experience and had carried out a number of other successful terrorist attacks in Europe in the run-up to Munich, including three in West Germany earlier that year. The terrorist group was also greatly helped by the fact that security surrounding the Munich Games was desperately lax. Indeed, Munich is now widely regarded within security circles as a superb example of what not to do on almost every level when it comes to protecting major events such as the Olympics.
