German government released them to meet the demands of the hijackers of a

German government released them to meet the demands of the hijackers of a Lufthansa airliner the following month. Added to Israeli public’s shock over the massacre, there was anger at having to watch the murderers go free. In the weeks afterwards, I got occasional hints that a sustained Israeli response was underway, though I didn’t know the details. I was not aware that it was Ahrahle, at the direction of Golda herself, who was co-ordinating it. Nor that a special Mossad team was at the center of the operation. Yet from news reports of a series of attacks on suspected leaders of Black September, I, and most Israelis, assumed we were determined to convey a message which the Germans had not: that terror killings of the sort perpetrated in Munich would not go unanswered. It was not until late 1972 that I knew the full scale of the operation. We had no formal ties with the Mossad, but our intelligence work occasionally overlapped. In mid-December, the sayeret’s intelligence liaison was approached with a “theoretical question” by a couple of guys from the Mossad. Did we have the capability to attack three separate flats in a pair of apartment buildings in Beirut. I sent back my preliminary answer a few days later. I said it was possible. But there was no way I could say for sure without more information. Would the people in the apartments be armed? Were there guards outside? Was there a caretaker or concierge? Was there only one way in to the buildings, or also rear entrances? Would we be able to get a plan of the interior of the apartments? In another month, they came up with most of the answers. The buildings were fairly new, with glassed-in lobby areas and concierges. The Mossad men also gave us a fairly detailed layout of two of the three apartments. They did not know whether there were back entrances. They thought it was likely there were bodyguards, or at least some security detail posted outside. As for the people living in the apartments, all of them were likely to have at least small arms. Over the next week or so, we raised a series of other questions. Mainly, I wanted to know whether they were sure the people we’d be looking for would be at home. The Mossad officers said they were working on that, but were confident of being able to confirm this before any operation happened. Though they didn’t identify the people they were targeting, I had now learned, through Ahrahle and others, what had been pretty obvious since the Mossad’s initial approach. They were Palestinian leaders with ties to Black September. “I think it’s possible,” I finally told them. ““We’ll put a plan in place. We can finalize the arrangements if you come back and say you want us to do it.” 134 HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_027982