September 18, 1972
TIME followed its report on Mark Spitz’s gold-medal streak with a cover story on the tragic news of the massacre of 11 Israeli athletes within the Olympic grounds. The athletes had been taken hostage by Palestinian terrorist group Black September at a games that was initially intended to champion the demise of Nazi Germany and the rise of newly benign Germany. Initially, security was relaxed: “But when reporters complained—and accused the security men of “Gestapo” tactics—officials all but abandoned efforts to limit press entry to the village.”
TIME’s detailed reporting intimately painted the horror that descended on the 1972 Olympics, with the forward-looking proposal that security be at the forefront: “To counter the guerrilla terror, governments everywhere will have to pay far closer attention to security—not only on airliners, as they are learning to do, but at almost any public event or occasion that terrorists could disrupt.”