Wilfried
Huismann
was
born in 1951 in Godensholt, Germany and studied Social
Science and History. In 1981, he began working as a
freelance journalist with his first book Chile Reports.
Following that, he authored more books and numerous radio
features. Since 1987, he has been working for German
television, specializing in background stories and
investigative reports. He is a three-time winner of the
Adolf-Grimme-Award, the most respected German television
award. His films include: Franca Magnani - A Portrait
(1988), The Hidden Camera (1990), Bremen-Baghdad - Deadly
Cargo (1991), Cold Hearted? The President of the Treuhand -
Birgit Breuel (the 1992 winner of the Herbert Quandt Media
Award and the Friedrich-Vogel Award for economic
journalism), Raymond - The Boy with the Face of an Angel
(1993), The Ship of the Dead (1994), Munich 1972 - The
Secret Behind The Olympic Attacks, (1996), Opposition in
Cuba, Gambling with Power - Friedrich Hennemann and the
Demise of the Vulkan in Bremen (1998), Death of the Pharaoh
- Anwar Sadat and the Holy Warriors (1998), Biedermann's
Reich - The International Tracing Service and the Nazi
Victims (1999), Dear Fidel - Marita's Story (2000), and A
Snapshot With Ché (2007). He was the chief investigative
correspondent for the 1999 documentary, One Day in
September, which won the 1999 Academy Award for Best
Documentary. One Day was based largely on Willi’s
groundbreaking 1996 film, Munich, which he wrote and
directed. For that film, which concerned the 1972 massacre
of the Israeli team at the Munich Olympics, Huismann located
the lone surviving member of the Palestinian terrorist
assassination team, Jamal Al-Gashey, and persuaded him to be
filmed. Finding the killer was a feat that still eludes the
vaunted Israeli Mossad. By the time Huismann confronted
Al-Gashey in 1995, he had undergone plastic surgery, changed
his name, and was living in one of the most remote parts of
the world. Before Willi’s interview with Al-Gashey, Muki
Betser, commandant of the Israeli special unit, and Dr.
Georg Wolf, the officer-in-charge of the police at the time,
and a confidante of Yassir Arafat, it had long been unclear
why the siege became a massacre, in which all of the eleven
hostages, one police officer and five of the assassins died.
Huismann's film revealed that the hostages could have been
saved but the West German Government, under Willy Brandt,
bowed to Israeli pressure and decided against a diplomatic
solution that had already been worked out, resulting in the
sacrifice of the hostages for a political agenda. With
over twenty-five research trips to Cuba and Central and
South America, Willi was the perfect filmmaker to tackle the
Cuban intelligence angle to the Oswald story.
P. 116, fifth line from bottom
should read: “the fish is red.”
2. Addenda
P. 364, eight lines from
bottom: Not only did Marina lie about Mexico City in her early
FBI interviews, In her 1978 HSCA testimony, she referred to
Lee’s “trips” (pleural) to Mexico.
P. 304, re the Hotel
Cuba: In fact there was some evidence that Oswald had
previously stayed at the hotel. In the 1970s, author
Edward Jay Epstein located two employees of the Hotel Cuba who
were certain Oswald had stayed there. (Legend, p. 324,
Note 8)