ATLAS Network: From the foundation until today
Guard Ulrich K. Wegener who was active as liaison officer to the Ministry of the Interior and who himself had been eyewitness to the botched operation in Fürstenfeldbruck in his function as advisor to the Minister of the Interior. Wegener then visited the Israeli special unit Sayarat Matkal and the British 22. Special Air Service Regiment (SAS). Both units provided valuable support for the build-up of the Grenzschutzgruppe 9 (GSG 9). In the then eleven German states smaller special units (SEK) were set up in parallel by the police, mainly to fight violent criminals.
cessfully accomplished in 1974. As his German colleague Wegener, Prouteau was a guest of the SAS regiment which at the time was based in Hereford. But Prouteau also frequently visited the young GSG 9 in Sankt Augustin near Bonn. In the second half of the 1970s several other counter-terrorism units were founded, e. g. the Genderarmerieeinsatzkommando Cobra in Austria in 1978, or the Grupo Especial de Operaciones (G.E.O.) in Spain in 1978. Western Europe prepared itself against international terrorism, others were to follow. The attack during the Olympic Games was also closely analysed in the countries of the former so-called East Bloc.
Several governments opted even before but also after this attack to either tolerate or actively support left wing extremist or anti-Israeli terror organisations. The intention was to avoid becoming a terrorist target themselves – in particular by Arabic groups – through passive or active support of such groups. A strategy which turned out to be quite successful. However, in the affected regimes and security organisations was a permanent fear to be attacked from inside a nation. They feared their own citizens who wanted to defend themselves against dictatorial regimes or wanted to extort their departure to the West by hostage takings or hijackings. These fears were well jus-
Ulrich K. Wegener who was ordered to build up a SIU within the German Federal Border Guard was himself eyewitness to the botched operation in 1972.
Belgium responded also very quickly to the events in Munich and created the special unit “Diane” in November 1972. Similar to that several special units were set up in federal Switzerland by the respective canton police forces, e. g. ARGUS (Canton Aargau), BARRACUDA (Canton Greater Basel) or ENZIAN (Canton Bern). In France the GIGN of the gendarmerie was also founded in response to the Munich massacre. Since 1966, the “Brigade de Recherche et d’Intervention (BRI)” with a tactical team had already been in existence. However, BRI was primarily intended to fight criminals and at the time was with regard to its personnel not in a position to fight effectively terror commandos such as in Munich. The gendarmerie officer and passionate parachute jumper Captain Christian Prouteau was given the order to set up the GIGN, which he suc-
Aerial view of the fiasco at Fürstenfeldbruck provided by the police archives Munich. 15
