In view of growing pressure in the Knesset and the media to appoint a commission of enquiry, on 11 September Golda Meir proposed to the government, sitting as the Ministerial Committee for Security, that an enquiry commission be appointed according to the Enquiry Commissions Law. A majority of ministers opposed appointing a judicial commission headed by a Supreme Court judge, and she was supported only by Allon. They decided to delegate the prime minister to appoint a person or team of her choice, “to complete the collection of information regarding the security arrangements of the Israeli delegation to the Olympics in Munich, and to present the findings of its investigation and its conclusions to the government “. Golda chose Pinhas Koppel, until recently the inspector general of the Israel Police, to head the committee, and added two public figures: Moshe Kashti, former director-general of the Ministry of Defence, and an engineer, Avigdor Bartel, known to her from his work in the Ministry of Labour. Two days later she held a consultation with two committee members and the attorney-general, Meir Shamgar, at which the functions, methods of operation and scope of the investigation were defined. They were to gather information from all the bodies involved and to present their conclusions and recommendations to the prime minister (Document 28).
Outgoing Inspector-General Pinhas Koppel, left, and Police Minister Shlomo Hillel, 31 July 1972. Photograph: Moshe Milner, Government Press Office
The committee’s work lasted for about two weeks. It heard 36 witnesses, including senior members of the General Security Service, Zamir, surviving members of the delegation, and journalists and public figures who were in Munich at the time. In addition, the embassy in Bonn sent information on the involvement of embassy personnel in providing security for the delegation.
On 29 September the committee, officially designated as a “team”, presented a report to the prime minister, with its findings about the action taken before the opening of the games for protection of the delegation by the security forces both in Israel and in Germany. According to the delegation members, they felt insecure in the Olympic Village and feared an attack, but did not demand an upgrade in the security. They “explained this by their belief that there were German and Israeli covert security arrangements”. The report reviewed the tip-offs about possible attack plans collected by the intelligence community from 1 July 1972 until the day of the disaster, and noted that there was no specific warning about the Olympics, and that the amount of warnings “was not more intensive than at other periods of the year”. On 31 August 1972 a committee composed of representatives of the GSS, army intelligence and Mossad had met to analyze and assess “the information, and did not link it to the Olympics”.
In its conclusions the committee pointed to the “complete failure of the Germans”, but also to a number of unclear points and failures in the functioning of the Israeli bodies responsible for security, and especially noted the actions of the security officer of the Israeli embassy in Bonn. The committee determined that “GSS arrangements regarding security abroad did not keep up with the changing needs”. In fact, according to existing procedures, “the relevant ministries are responsible for events in their field of action, even abroad”. The report ended with recommendations for the improvement of security arrangements abroad, and that “the head of the GSS reach conclusions, as he sees fit, about senior operatives for whom the conclusions of the team point to faults in their actions” (Document 31).
See also: Document 29, Document 30.
