‘True’ account of Israeli hit-team is ‘work of fiction’

Press, 14 June 1984, Page 21

‘True’ account of Israeli hit-team is ‘work of fiction’

ROBERT CHESSHYRE

in New York reports on how a book which

has just been published in Britain and America, and released in Christchurch, which purports to tell the true story of an Israeli hit squad, set up to avenge the Munich Olympics massacre, is “a work of fiction.”

A book just published in Britain and America - and this week released in Christchurch — which claims to tell the true inside story of an Israeli hit squad set up to avenge the Munich Olympics massacre, is essentially ' a work of fiction, according to two writers formerly involved with the project.

They say that the source for the story, who claims to have been a member of the squad and an Israeli secret agent, has lied about his background and grossly misled both the author, George Jonas, and his publishers.

The “Observer" has learnt that the American publishers, Simon and Schuster, were warned five years ago that the account was flawed by serious inconsistencies and could not be relied on. That advice appears to have been ignored.

The book, called “Vengeance” and published in Britain by Collins, could gross about $1.5 million all over the world. It purports to tell the story of an Israeli, referred to only as "Avner,” who led an avenging Israeli counter-terrorist squad on a rampage of carnage round Europe after the Munich Olympics massacre of 1972. It is described unequivocally on the cover in Britain as a "true story.”

An investigation by the “Observer" in conjunction with “Mac Lean’s magazine in Canada, has raised grave doubts about the book's authenticity. We discovered that.—

® The story has been doing the rounds of the publishing world for more than five years, during which it has undergone major changes of fact.

® The Israeli source tried more than four writers before finding one who would co-operate. One of those writers told Simon and Schuster that the account could not be relied on. © The current author was not warned of the book’s previous history by his publishers.

® The original writer, whose painstaking research exposed the shortcomings of the source, was asked by Simon and Schuster for his advance back.

The story contained in “Vengeance" is the stuff on which publishers’ dreams are made. The young Israeli, “Avner,” briefed by Golda Meir and told he would “change Jewish history,” set out with four colleagues in pursuit of the 11 Arab terrorists as a reprisal for the massacre. He had access to unlimited funds through Swiss bank accounts.

Two years and a half, $l7 million, and 18 corpses later — including three of his own men, six of the designated 11, and a number of extraneous killings — Avner says he was cheated of his $200,000 nest-egg by the Israeli secret service, Mossad, and retired into private life in New York. His first known attempt to interest a writer in this story was in 1978, when he met a magazine journalist called Rinker Buck, who interviewed him, using Avner’s real name in his story, which had nothing to do with hit squads, but shortly thereafter Avner told his Munich tale, and Buck turned in a book proposal. Together with a highly enthusiastic agent, Don Congdon, he trotted it around New York publishing houses.

Simon and Schuster, in the words of Congdon, “took a flier,” pledging

$85,000 plus an advance and paying $32,000 on the spot. In those days the book was to be called "The Secret War” and Avner went by the nom de guerrel of Arik Shomron. That original proposal included startling differences from the story as finally told in “Vengeance."

The first assassination was said to have taken place in East Berlin, and at one stage "Shomron” claimed to have carried out a lengthy reconnoitre of rooms in a Russian resort hotel where one of their targets often stayed. However, when "Vengeance” came to be written. Shomron. now Avner, told the author that the Eastern Bloc was totally off limits to his team, and there is no mention of either incident.

Another example of the changes made in the story concerns the finale to the book, in which the source claims that the Israelis threatened the life of his daughter to persuade him to continue working for Mossad.

In self-defence he assembled photographs of Israeli officials' children in New York and threatened their lives in turn.

Five years ago he told his then writer a similar tale. But in that

version the threat had been made by Arabs, and it was Arab children he threatened in return. Such about-turns in his story have not been unusual. In 1979, he claimed that one of Israel's authentic heroes. Wolfgang Lotz, the "champagne spy," who posed as a former Nazi in Egypt in the early 19605, was his father. Today, he repudiates that claim.

Lotz, who knew Avner’s family in Israel, has denounced him as a scoundrel and persistent romancer. Buck attempted to check "Shomron's" story by patient research in Europe. Gradually he discovered that very little evidence matched his account. Basic errors of fact kept getting in the way. Buck assembled his case against the story in 13 closely typed and devastating pages, reporting that Shomron was failing to measure up to the standard of proof necessary for a responsible book. His prophetic conclusion was: “Had I been slightly less conscientious, Simon and Schuster could well have published a book that would have been immediately attacked by any number of authorities as bordering on the fraudulent, an event, I presume, the publishing

house explicitly wished to avoid." The publisher's response was to demand the return of the full amount of the advance and to go in search of another author.

Word went around the publishing world that Buck was not up to the job. But much of what Buck had found out on his research trip was later incorporated into the updated "Avner” version.

Further attempts to rescue the book at the time failed, and eventually Buck agreed to pay back $7OOO of his advance. Yet little more than a year later, while Buck still owed them money, Simon and Schuster once again bought the same story — this time called "Vengeance." When we put these facts to Michael Korda, the editor-in-chief at Simon and Schuster, he said: "I have never heard of Rinker Buck, or whatever his foolish name is, in my life. “You’d think that a guy whose name was Rinker Buck would change his name to something else if he wanted to be a serious writer. I have no reason to believe that he exists, for that matter.” Mr Korda denied personal know-

ledge of the 1979 deal, and said he was not interested in the possibility that his firm had bought the same story twice. “You write a story, prove the case, and we'll see what we want to do."

The agent. Don Congdon, after talking for a while, said he needed Mr Korda's clearance to see us. He promised to call back, but never did. “It wouldn’t do anything for me helping you guys," he said. After the Buck episode. Avner Shomron next surfaced in the offices of a New York impresario, who introduced him to yet another writer, Leo Heaps, a Canadian with 10 books to his credit.

Heaps brought Shomron to Toronto to meet the Canadian publisher. Lester and Orpen Dennys, but the pair fairly rapidly fell out. Heaps said he also did not believe the story and wished to fictionalise it. But Shomron — as he then remained — stonewalled endlessly over producing some tapes he had promised. Heaps asserted that the publishers went behind his back while he was still dealing with Shomron, while the publishers stoutly con-

tend that they acted "quite legally and morally and with absolute probity." However, they never told Heaps that the project was continuing. nor did they tell him that they had found a new author, a Hungarian-born writer called George Jonas, who not only knew nothing about the world in which Avner — as he now was — claimed to have lived, but whose approach to problems was entirely nonconfrontational. "I could have lost him several times if I had pushed him." says Jonas. “He was easily spooked." in effect, it meant that much of the book is based on Avner testimony alone.

The first Heaps learnt of the "Vengeance" project was when he saw an article about its publication; and the first Jonas learnt of Heaps was when Heaps threatened to sue. The first Jonas learnt of Rinker Buck and his earlier interest in the project was when we told him of it. Jonas, a man with an unimpeachable reputation for integrity, was clearly upset by these disclosures. When the "Observer" and

"Mac Lean's contacted Avner. he eventually agreed to speak on the phone. He would not comment on the differences between the 1979 and 1981 versions and the finished job: "All I am saying is that there is a final product, and I am satisfied with it."

He both claimed that the project had been "beyond" Rinker Buck, and that he had never given a writer before Jonas "enough information to finish a book "

He pleaded with a quavering voice for his name not to be used. "I simply cannot jeopardise my family. The only thing naming me would do would kill me." he said.

Buck, now aged 33. and working as a reporter for "Life." is remarkably philosophical. "When Shomron came to me he had what 1 discovered to be a cock-and-bull story By the time he went to Jonas he had it straight. He developed a sharp sense of what would fly." Speaking of the publishers and his agent, he said: "It wasn't greed, it was gullibility. Everyone was so anxious to believe this account that they never bothered to look at the facts."