The Sword of Gideon is based on the book of the same name and was recently remade by Steven Spielberg. The story is the same - it's real - with a bunch of Mossad agents sent in Europe by Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir to kill Palestinians who participated in the Munich Olympics hostage taking and ensuing carnage.

The team of assassin apparently used a number of safe deposit boxes in a Swiss bank as 'drops', to receive money and instructions and to contact their employer in the most confidential way. Full deniability was of the essence. In the book we read that:

Geneva had never been a very comfortable place in which to operate, especially for the Mossad. Safe houses were difficult to rent, and hotels were highly undesirable as bases for agents. The Swiss secret service, to put it mildly, was uncooperative. They welcomed foreigners but only as long as they conferred, shopped and banked, stayed on their best behaviour and departed as soon as possible. The Swiss did not object to rough traders inside their borders, only to rough trade.

The Banque centrale de Suisse
When Israeli agent Avner enters the bank, we see a large brass plate with the name Banque centrale de Suisse - 'Swiss Central Bank'. The name suggests it is the Swiss National Bank, although in reality it is called Banque Nationale Suisse . Such a name is not as implausible as it appears for a commercial bank, since many Swiss banks started out in the 19th century when there was no Swiss central bank. Indeed, in the very same block where Micheloud & Co. has its headquarters in Switzerland, there was a commercial bank named Banque Fédérale - Federal Bank. The name is quite plausible .

Bank building
The bank is typical of a grand New York bank, with huge marble colonnades, a large black neoclassical statue at the entrance and the semi open counter architecte typical of 19th American banks. All this makes for a beautiful scene but it is not very realistic one. The Swiss bank scenes were clearly not filmed in Switzerland, but most probably in the USA with a second unit. After all we see only the lead character, all others are bank staff never seen on location elewhere in the movie.

Vault and safe deposit box
The bank vault, the guard and the safe deposit boxes all look very much American. In Switzerland the grid is usually unlocked during the day and there is never a guard standing in front of the vault, the access being restricted by other means. Our bank boxes are in tin-plated iron with polished brass garnishing, never painted in black like in the US. It is not totally implausible that the teller would accompany the client to the vault, nor that he would stand in the room looking elsewhere while the client inspects the contents of his box. Clients of Swiss banks sometimes also show the banker what they have inside the box to share their excitement for a new item or ask for advice. Apart from the cosmetic details explained above, this scene is thus quite plausible.

Use of the account
The most troubling question is how does the Mossad access Avner's safe deposit box to put money or messages? Of course, Avner could have given a key and power of attorney over his box to his Mossad handler or another officially deniable go-between, but the movie suggests the team of hit men was sent out alone and was to have no further contacts with anybody. We will investigate what the book says and how this problem is treated in the 2005 remake.

Spies have always used dead drops, ie secret locations where one spy can leave documents, weapons or money for another to pick up later so that they don't have to meet face to face. Would a Swiss safe deposit box be a good 'dead drop' for a spy? We are of course speaking in the context of fiction and do not suggest that Swiss banks are actually used by spies or that they should. Anyway, the answer is probably no. Swiss banks nowadays usually log the date and name of every person who accesses a safe deposit box to avoid various potential problems such as key theft or estate looting. That means the spies would have to come with fake passports and leave a copy at the bank. All things considered, the safe deposit box would not be such an attractive way of doing business for real-life spies, although back in the 1980s it was probably more accommodating.

For those readers who saw this movie or 'Munich' but did not investigate the real operation 'Wrath of God' further, it may be useful to remind them that a sister operation finished with the Lillehammer affair in which the assassination squad glorified in the movies killed the wrong man. They incorrectly identified a Morrocan waiter as Hani Hassan Salameh and shot him dead in front of his pregnant wife, then got arrested. The leader of the squad, Michael Harari, made a narrow escape to Israel and later became the right hand man of Panama's leader and is suspected of drug dealing and arms trafficking. Not all facts are known at this time but reality certainly does appear less glamorous than in the movie, and certainly not compatible with present days Swiss banking practices.