Security costs for the 2012 Olympics in London in July are expected to top half a billion pounds, or about $800 million, with plans calling for elaborate airport-style security at competition venues and for a force of more than 23,000 guards, including army reservists, blanketing the city. Certainly the security concerns at any large international gathering are heightened in the post-9/11 world, but the Olympics have operated on maximum alert for decadesâ??ever since the horror of the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich, when Palestinian terrorists took 11 Israeli athletes, coaches and team officials hostage and ultimately murdered them all.
The world watched incredulously as the crisis unfolded on television, ending in a bloodbath when German police botched a rescue attempt and the Palestinians killed the hostages. There followed an improvised memorial service in the Olympic stadium attended by 80,000 and seen by millions on television. When conductor Otto Klemperer, in a wheelchair, led the Munich Philharmonic in a moving performance of the funeral march from Beethoven's "Eroica," it was hard not to be moved to tears. But then the president of the International Olympic Committee, Avery Brundage, intruded.
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