The Munich Olympics Massacre and the Development of Counter-Terrorism in Australia

Abstract

Counter-terrorism is a product of government, identifying as its target a kind of violence defined as terrorism. This article explores a particular moment in its development, as an intersection of international, national and bureaucratic responses to the Munich Olympics massacre of 1972. Australian understandings of the development of counter-terrorism have been dominated by a number of themes – principally by the Hilton Bombing of 1978 and the subsequent acceleration of security restructuring during the Fraser years, by the collapse of the Cold War focus of the security and intelligence agencies at the end of the 1980s and then by the ‘war on terror’ following 9/11 and the Bali bombing. Counter-terrorist planning was however an emerging business of government in the 1970s, in Australia as in its alliance partner the United States. While the Hope Royal Commission into intelligence agencies (1974–7) has dominated attention in later accounts of the development of counter-terrorism, a 1972 Interdepartmental Committee on Terrorism and Violence in Australia anticipated many of its concerns. In this developing concern with terrorism, the role and interest of the domestic intelligence agency (ASIO) at this time was limited. This paper contextualizes the Munich massacre as one of the factors shaping a rethinking of security and policing strategies in the early 1970s, a moment in the emergence of a modern government of terrorism.