COMMENT: In AFA #22, among oth­er pro­grams, we exam­ined the 1972 mas­sacre of Israeli ath­letes at the 1972 sum­mer Olympics in Munich, Ger­many. The chief of secu­ri­ty for that ill-fat­ed event was Hans Lange­mann, an offi­cer with the BND, the Ger­man intel­li­gence ser­vice and the final incar­na­tion of the Gehlen spy orga­ni­za­tion.

Lange­mann report­ed­ly col­lab­o­rat­ed with Hans Koll­mar (then head of the BKA, the Ger­man Fed­er­al Police) in set­ting up provo­ca­tions to be blamed on “left­ists.” Ali Has­san Salameh, the leader of the Black Sep­tem­ber cadre, was work­ing for the Cen­tral Intel­li­gence Agency after the mas­sacre.

In FTR #333, we looked at Lange­man­n’s role in pro­vid­ing an ali­bi for Karl-Heinz Hoff­man, whose orga­ni­za­tion was impli­cat­ed in the 1980 Munich Okto­ber­fest bomb­ing. That crime, in turn, appears to have been part of a larg­er con­fig­u­ra­tion of inci­dents per­pe­trat­ed by ele­ments of the post­war fas­cist inter­na­tion­al.

Of par­tic­u­lar inter­est here:

• The rel­a­tive lack of inter­est on the part of the Ger­man author­i­ties into Pohl’s activ­i­ties on behalf of Black Sep­tem­ber. Was this an indi­ca­tion of com­plic­i­ty among those in rel­a­tive posi­tions of pow­er?
• The light sen­tence hand­ed to Pohl. Again, was the “fix” in?
• What role might Lange­mann have played in defray­ing inter­est in Pohl’s activ­i­ties?
• The report refers to “neo-Nazis”–plural–as being com­plic­it with the Black Sep­tem­ber con­tin­gent that per­pe­trat­ed the Olympics mas­sacre. Might Pohl have had accom­plices? How many?
• Did accom­plices with­in the Ger­man neo-Nazi scene–perhaps with the con­nivance of ele­ments of Ger­man intel­li­gence and/or law enforcement–have helped with obtain­ing “false pass­ports” for the Olympics con­spir­a­tors?

“Neo-Nazi Helped Black Sep­tem­ber Munich Attack” by Ben­jamin Weinthal; Jerusalem Post [Der Spiegel]; 6/17/2012.

EXCERPT:  New­ly released files from Germany’s domes­tic intel­li­gence agency Ver­fas­sungss­chutz (BfV) reveal that neo- Nazis worked with the rad­i­cal Pales­tin­ian group Black Sep­tem­ber in the 1972 Munich ter­ror attack, accord­ing to a Der Spiegel mag­a­zine sto­ry on Sun­day.

Accord­ing to the online report, police in the city of Dort­mund sent a notice to the BfV, in which they not­ed that “Saad Wal­li, an ‘Arab-look­ing man’ met con­spir­a­to­ri­al­ly with the Ger­man neo-Nazi Willi Pohl.”

Saad Wal­li was the cov­er name for Abu Daoud, who is wide­ly believed to be the ring­leader of the plot that result­ed in the mur­der of 11 Israeli ath­letes at the 1972 Olympic games. Pohl alleged­ly bragged to his employ­er about his con­tact with the extrem­ist PLO wing.

Accord­ing to the BfV doc­u­ments, which Der Spiegel obtained in advance of the 40th anniver­sary of the mur­ders, there are no indi­ca­tions that the Ger­man author­i­ties act­ed on the infor­ma­tion pro­vid­ed to them by the Dort­mund police. That helps explain, said Der Spiegel, how the Pales­tini­ans pre­pared the attack in the Fed­er­al Repub­lic with­out being caught. Pohl, who is now a crime fic­tion author, told Der Spiegel that “I chauf­feured Abu Daoud through the entire Fed­er­al Repub­lic where he met in dif­fer­ent cities with Pales­tini­ans.” Pohl also helped Daoud obtain false pass­ports and oth­er doc­u­ments. . . .

. . . It is unclear why the Ger­man domes­tic intel­li­gence agency and the state and fed­er­al crim­i­nal police author­i­ties failed to act on the infor­ma­tion from the local Dort­mund police offi­cials. Crit­ics have long accused Ger­man author­i­ties of a lax enforce­ment pol­i­cy toward rad­i­cal Islam­ic groups. The Iran-backed rad­i­cal Islam­ic enti­ty Hezbol­lah, which has engaged in ter­ror attacks in the Mid­dle East and South Amer­i­ca, is a legal polit­i­cal orga­ni­za­tion in Ger­many, with an esti­mat­ed 900 active mem­bers.

In con­nec­tion with anoth­er slat­ed PLO attack in Ger­many, the PLO’s secret ser­vice head – Abu Ijad – assigned Pohl to plan kid­nap­ping oper­a­tions at the Cologne cathe­dral and in the city halls of a num­ber of Ger­man cities. In late Octo­ber 1972, the author­i­ties arrest­ed Pohl and an accom­plice in Munich, and the police con­fis­cat­ed machine guns, hand grenades and oth­er mil­i­tary equip­ment. In one suit­case, police found a threat­en­ing let­ter by the Black Sep­tem­ber group. The let­ter was direct­ed toward a judge who inves­ti­gat­ed three PLO ter­ror­ists involved in the 1972 attacks.

After the PLO hijacked a Lufthansa plane in 1972, Ger­man author­i­ties released the three ter­ror­ists. Crit­ics say Ger­many had failed at the time to clamp down on Pales­tin­ian ter­ror activ­i­ty in Ger­many. Despite the over­whelm­ing proof of Pohl’s ter­ror activ­i­ty, Der Spiegel not­ed that Pohl was giv­en a mild sen­tence of two years and two months in prison for weapons pos­ses­sion. Four days after the sen­tence was imposed on Pohl, he fled to Beirut.