Declassified docs show European nations shared intel to help Israel track down Palestinian terrorists in 1970s

According to a report in The Guardian, newly declassified documents show that a secret coalition of countries, most notably the UK, US, France, Switzerland, Italy and West Germany, joined forces to assist Israel with intelligence to track down Palestinian terrorists in Europe in the 1970s.

According to the report, the information gleaned by the secret intelligence-sharing coalition, codenamed Kilowatt, “was offered [to Israel] without any oversight by parliaments or elected politicians” from any of the involved nations, for fear of breaking laws or causing public or political scandal.

The report says the intelligence sharing began a year before the 1972 attack on Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics, and involved intelligence services from 18 countries.

The mechanism “circulated raw intelligence with details of safe houses and vehicles, the movements of key individuals seen as dangerous, news on tactics used by Palestinian armed groups, and analysis,” the report says.

The report adds that after the 1972 Munich attack, which killed 11 Israeli athletes, the intelligence-sharing mechanism was used to provide Israel with targets for its assassination campaign against the Palestinian terror operatives who ordered and carried out the attack, especially those who resided in European cities in the 1970s.

According to the report, the secret intelligence-sharing system was discovered by Dr. Aviva Guttmann, a historian at Aberystwyth University. while studying encrypted cables found in Swiss archives.