Why the CIA Came Late to the Palestinian Revolution
A month after the bloody debacle of the 1972 Munich Olympics, the CIA was still struggling to comprehend what had unfolded. Palestinian gunmen had slipped into the Olympic Village at dawn, taken 11 Israeli athletes’ hostage, and, after a botched and amateurish rescue attempt by German police, murdered them. In Langley, analysts responded as bureaucracies do: they compiled a background report on the Palestinian organizations suspected of involvement. It was orderly, methodical—and curiously hollow.






