1973 and Today: How Similar They Are!

My new spy thriller, “Requiem for Betrayal”, is scheduled to come out on June 6. It is set in 1973 when an American pop star, a Honduran heiress, a vengeful father, a jealous former classmate, and international terrorists converge in Paris. The year 1973 has a lot in common with the current international status quo. In 1973 the United States was in decline. Inflation and the price of oil were major topics. Just as with today’s Afganistan debacle, the country had been defeated by the Vietnamese and forced to withdraw their combat troops. The regime they left in place would crumble and the final withdrawal would end in humiliation, chaos, and unnecessary loss of life.

In 1973, the body politic was painfully divided into two opposing camps – the hawks, traditionalists who wanted war, and the doves, progressives who wanted peace. Today, we have the conservatives who want to restore America’s traditional values of equality, hard-work and personal merit, and the progressives who want to establish a new set of values based on race, collective responsibility, and equity.

Perhaps the most stunning similarity between 1973 and today is the presidency. In 1973, Richard Nixon managed to corrupt the major institutions of government – the FBI, the Department of Justice, the IRS, and the CIA – that he used to further his personal political fortunes and punish his enemies. Nixon was eventually exposed and forced to resign. Today, it looks like Joseph Biden, well-known from his years in the Senate and Vice-Presidency as an influence-peddler, has managed to corrupt and weaponize the FBI and the Department of Justice in order to punish his political enemies and protect his own illegal and unethical behavior as well as that of his brother and son. He hasn’t been convicted yet, but the evidence is there and storm clouds are gathering under the auspices of hearings in the House of Representatives. Watergate, you might remember, started with this type of hearing.   

If the most stunning similarity between 1973 and today is the presidency, the strongest and most enduring similarity – the threat of terrorism – can be traced to an event that took place on September 5, 1972. Early on that morning, eight men dressed in tracksuits and carrying Kalashnikov rifles and grenades stuffed in duffel bags penetrated Munich’s Olympic Village. They were members of Black September, a subsidiary of the Palestine Liberation Organization. Their mission was to kidnap Israeli athletes and exchange them for the release of 234 Palestinian prisoners in Israel and the two leaders of the West German Baader-Meinhof terrorist group. Although their mission failed – 20 hours after it began, five of the hostage-takers, 11 members of Israel’s Olympic team, and a West German policeman were dead – this massacre changed how the world thinks about terrorism. It has had lasting repercussions on an international scale, alerting Western governments to the threat of terrorism, showing the power of live broadcast and setting the stage for future violence.

Black September followed up the Munich Massacre with numerous plots. Many were foiled and their operatives arrested in Cyprus, London, Turkey, Vienna, and Italy. Others had some success. In 1972 there was the letter bomb deluge of October/November and the December Israeli embassy hostage crisis in Bangkok. In 1973 Black September blew up the Jewish Agency for Israel in Paris and gunned down an Israeli intelligence officer in Madrid. There was also the attack on the Saudi embassy in Khartoum and the bomb plot in New York.”